Sunny Florida

Stan Here:

I think my vision of Florida was for everyday having some sunshine but at least for today that is not true so far.  It gives me a chance though to update Deb's blog which she asked me to do a couple of days ago.  We are here for a conference for my business and we decided to stay a couple of days longer to take in some of  the Disney stuff. We bought tickets for this long before Deb knew she could work again and we were doing the "enjoy every moment" phase.  It does bring back some good memories because this is the place we came 37 years ago for our honeymoon. 

 Believe it or not there are a few things that have not changed.  Those bears are still singing every 15 minutes at the "Great Bear Jamboree" they are looking a little more tired and they seem a little sick of the same songs. Anyway there are a number of things that just don't change all that much.  They do a good job down here and the place is amazing but I must tell you that after a few days in those lines I start to feel like a cow in a stanchion.  So today we are just in the room. It is raining and I am writing and I am not standing in line listening to a tape of how long it is before something starts. 

I think many of you tune in to these posts to see how Deb is doing so let me give an update.  Some of you know that 6 weeks without chemo have to take place before a surgery scheduled at the end of March.  It seems like with the absence of the chemo somewhat of a reprieve from normal cancer health feelings and lack of energy has taken place.   The way I can tell this is when the park tickets are purchased Deb quickly notes that the place will be open on this day till midnight.  What that has always meant when you travel with Deb is you arrive when the park opens and you do not think much about going home till the place closes.  Then on the way home you take an extra lap on the monorail in case some fireworks duds might ignite as the park closes.   I said to Deb on one occasion that I thought she was doing pretty good.   She also seemed surprised by her stamina. She was somewhat concerned that with the absence of chemo that the cancer cells might have a chance to rejuvenate but for now we have to worry about that later.

In the conference one of the presenters talked a little about Disney and how the place works.  It takes 60,000 employees to run this place.  Their big moneymaker though is when they have a hit movie.  The parks and the movies kind of feed each other. We did have a real nice dinner last night at a place  called the "Flying Fish'. Here is a picture of our dessert, banana napoleon, it was good! Thanks Lori for the suggestion for this place, the steak and scallops were wonderful.

Then a return trip through Epcot for the fireworks.  There was a surprise concert going on done by Jose Feliciano whose most famous song is "Light My Fire".  He does a good job of entertaining  and it brought back memories of past years.  He plays the guitar real well and did several numbers solo with no singing.  Pretty amazing and something we really enjoyed.

 We got stuck on a couple of the rides. I think that some of these rides have gone around so many time that they get stuck a little more that they used to. Really no problem but my rides always seem to get stuck watching some robot with clothes running a printing press or something.  Another new thing around here is that they show a lot of these 3-D movies.  At some point a dog or elephant or something has to sneeze and the chair in front of you squirts some water on you right when this is happening.  By the end of the day I was getting pretty wet and felt like telling somebody that I was getting the idea and they could turn off the squirters on the chairs. 

Deb finishing up this blog. We are looking forward to Stan's cousin Steve and his wife Rhonda coming to have dinner with us tonight. They live not too far from here near Lakeland. I enjoy meeting up with old friends at these conferences. Here we are after a wonderful spouse brunch. See you next year girls!! It was fun spending a few days with you again.