EDIT: Okay, this post turned out waaaay too long. I'll sum it up: My weekend at Disneyland was fun but tiring, then I got back to work and got a raise which was depressing. Oh, and my niece and nephew are the smartest, cutest, funniest kids in the world. **...It's where you look for things, and it's also a pretty good description of my weekend.
This weekend between Saturday and Monday have been one huge rollercoaster ride -- wait, scratch that, log ride --, and I'm beat. On Friday evening I stayed up until 3:30 waiting for my sister to show up. She and her husband were staying over at my house and taking a taxi to San Jose Airport in the morning (I figured they should be up early enough to avoid the roving one-woman gangs of malcontents that rove the halls most mornings). At 3:30, when they still hadn't shown up yet, I finally called them and told them I would leave the door unlocked (why didn't I think of that sooner?). When I finally got up at 6:30 and left for the airport, I was not in a good mood, especially since I hate flying, or at least taking off. It set the stage for the rest of the ride.
Saturday was a blur. The kind of blur you get when you smear a morning without enough rest across the pane of your consciousness, leaving nothing left behind but existential streaks of...no, wait. That's a hangover. I didn't have a hangover. Moving on...
In any case, I eventually got to Anaheim at around 4:00, and all I could think of was getting to the hotel room and getting some sleep. That night we got the whole family together for dinner, and it finally seemed worth it. My brother and sister were there with their spouses my brother's mother-in law and brother-in-law, and his wife. I like my brother's wife's brother (I'm always confused about what to call him). We really tend to get along, even though he and I would probably never really get to know each other if we weren't related by marriage. The undisputed guests of honor, however, were my niece and nephew. They are the cutest, funniest, smartest kids in the world.
** Due to a mix-up, we didn't end up going to the local medieval-themed restaurant like we had planned, but we still got them some Lego knight outfits and watched them duke it out. Nothing is more purely entertaining than giving disruptive toys to other people's children and never having to deal with the results.
Sunday was time to hit the theme parks. I'd never been to Disney's California Adventure. The Muppet 3D adventure was pretty good, but they were missing Pepe. I really miss that show. The rest of the park was okay. The kids liked the Bug's life rides, and I have to admit I have a soft spot for Heimlich, and his ride was pretty cute. Oh, there was one other thing...
THE CONDOR FLATS RIDE WAS SHEER TERROR
...and not in a good way. I didn't know what to expect, and don't let me discourage anyone else from trying the ride, but for me it was one of the most profoundly disorienting experiences I've had in a long time. I was seriously reaching for my seatbelt pondering whether it would be worth jumping the 20 feet to the floor below. The ride is basically a series of benches that are lifted in such a way that you can't see any of the other benches above or below you, and your feet are dangling. In front of you is a huge concave screen that fills your field of vision. The camera zooms through the clouds and past the many sights of California. As your field of vision dips and swoops, the bench tips and turns with the picture, adding to the feeling that you are flying through the air. Really it's pretty impressive as long as it doesn't make you want to kill yourself rather than continue. Judging by the number of people that continue to line up for the ride, most people are impressed rather than compelled to commit suicide. Go figure.
Disneyland was a much better experience for me. True to form, it was the vivid, artificial bombardment of the senses that I remembered. Greasy, warm smells mixed with sticky sweet smells and the tension of tens of thousands of people determined to have a good time despite tired feet, lack of sleep, and children with the attention span of fruit flies that hit the saturation point a few hours ago were a few of the highlights. Children are resilient, however, and you never know what little thing will bring that spark back into their eyes, and that gravity-repulsing bounce back into their step.
OH MY GOD!
Standing there with my knees aching and ankles throbbing, shivering from the onset of sunburn-induced fever, I had an epiphany. I'm an adult. Yes, I'm immature, and yes, I still love toys, but I love going to DisneyLand just to watch my niece and nephew have fun. I've become just another life-sucking vampire, feeding off of the youthful enthusiasm of the children, drinking in the precious nectar of their innocence in an attempt at prolonging my own youth. You know, it's not half bad.
Like any decent log ride, this one ended with a steep drop. I woke up this morning at 3:40 because my phone was ringing. It was the automated travel service, informing me that there were no delays for my flight. Thank you very fucking much, Orbitz. I was able to drift off after another 20 minutes or so, then slept for about an hour before it was time to head back to the airport. I dropped off my car and had 40 minutes to spare before my flight was going to take off. Unfortunately not only was there an unimaginably long line, but I was "selected" for double security screening, which meant I got to take off my belt and shoes and pull out the contents of my bag and have a pudgy man's sausage fingers pat down my body while making bad jokes about doing it longer if I laughed. I desperately hoped that he wouldn't notice the rip in the crotch of my pants that I had managed to create earlier while tying my shoes. I missed my flight by a few minutes, and had to take the next one.
Once I had arrived at home, I ran inside, changed my pants, disposed of a sizeable dead and bloated rat, and headed off to work, where I received my performance review. For those of you still following along with the log ride analogy, we're about to hit the water. I was pulled into my boss' office where he proceeded to tell me that...I was his best employee, and I got a raise. This may sound like good news, but it really just made me feel like crap. You see, I've been trying to find another job for a while, and have been heavily courting my old place of work. For the last couple of months haven't been putting in as much effort as I should have. I've been doing a lot of web surfing on company time, and working on a contract job for another company on my time off. Not everybody even got a raise, and I think the 6% I got was way above the average. My review described me in glowing terms, and I feel like such an asshole. I felt like walking out to the cubes and apologizing to my co-workers. It's true that my technical knowlege and skill are higher than theirs and I've pulled a few rabbits out of the hat, but recently I feel like they've been working a lot harder than me, and now I'm literally being told that I'm the most important person in the group, and I need to be a role model for the others.
Splash.
** They are. It's true. It's in the Bible somewhere. Your niece and nephew are grotesque in comparison, and if you want them to live a normal life both of you had better just deal with it and get on with your lives.
