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Florida Vacation

Laura's parents rented a villa at a resort in Orlando. Told all the kids they were welcome to come down for the week and could stay free. So Laura and I took them up on it... as well as her other sisters (And 4 year old niece, Ella). Here's a rundown of what we were up to.

Sunday
Flew in from Cincy, waiting an hour and a half to get the worlds ugliest rental car, drove to WalMart to pick up some tasty beverages, and then to the resort for the night

Monday
Spent 13 freakin hours at Disney World. It was fun, but my legs were ready to fall off by the end of the night. We were at the parks almost from open to close. We started out the day at Hollywood Studios, and then went over to the Magic Kingdom about dinner time. We rode a few rides (The new Toy Story ride/game was fun... I kicked everybody's butt!), walked around a lot, saw some shows, walked around some more, saw the lighted night parade and fireworks... and then back to the resort. Tiring day. Oh, we also saw the Space Shuttle launch from Hollywood Studios. We were too far away to see anything other than a trail of smoke... but we saw it


Tuesday
Tuesday was MUCH more relaxed than Monday. We spent some time hanging out in the resort, spent some time at the pool, and then Laura and I went to an Iron Chef show at 5:00. The resort basically did their own version of Iron Chef (On Food Network). 2 resort chefs competed against each other, each had 45 minutes to make 2 dishes with a secret ingredient, which were judged at the end to decide a winner. To spice it up a big, they picked members of the audience to help them out and be their sous chefs, and other members to be the judges. Lucky me, I was selected to be a sous chef! So I went up there, got a REAL quick lesson on what he planned to do, and then the clock started. Oh, by the way, I'd been drinking for many hours at this point... and they gave me knives =) The secet ingredient was crab... so we made a few appetizers (crab cakes, crab rangoon, and some sort of crab based sushi), and for the entree we did some sort of sea bass with a crab based topping. I was skinning things, chopping, dicing, frying, tasting, drinking (Oh yeah, they also provided us with free wine =), and it was a blast! Then, to top it off, we won! The judges loved our dishes, and were very impressed with the presentation. I got to keep my apron from the event, embroidered with the Iron Chef logo. Laura better watch her back =)


Wednesday
Wednesday morning we got up and went back to the Magic Kingdom, Laura wanted to check out the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor (It was an interactive comedy show between monsters on screen, and people in the audience. Pretty cool). After that we went to Epcot and walked around the world and had some lunch. After Epcot, we went to Downtown Disney, which is pretty much just a big collection of shops (Because they haven't squeeze enough money out people with the crazy park costs!). Spent a while there, and then headed out when we were just too exhausted to keep walking. Went back to the resort and swam for a while... and then dinner. Oh man, dinner. Laura's dad and I enjoy a show on the Travel Channel called "Man vs Food". This guy just goes around the country and does crazy food challenges. Some of them are just spicy enough people can't eat them, others are quantities large enough people can't finish them, etc. We decided we wanted to try a challenge. There's a place here that we heard had a 30 inch pizza challenge... 2 people have to finish a 30 inch pizza in an hour. We decided to give it a shot. Well, we were misinformed... it was a 30 inch pizza BY YOURSELF! But, they did give us 2 hours instead of 1. We were already there, so what the hell, we gave it a shot. 2 30 inch pizzas please! This thing was freaking MASSIVE!!! I think it was the size of my dining room table. Each slice was 15 inches long, and about a foot wide! The pizza weighed about 10 pounds! The first slice went down in about 5 minutes. We were both feeling pretty confident. Slices 2 and 3 took a bit longer... after 3 slices were were about 35 minutes into the challenge. Confidence quickly fading. Slice 4 kicked our butts. Neither one of us made it through slice 4 (The halfway point). Dennis came close... he got about 75% of it down... I couldn't quite do half of it. At this point, we went back to the resort and spent the rest of the evening sitting on the couch trying not to move. I don't recommend this challenge to anyone =)


Thursday
On Thursday, everybody went back to Downtown Disney except for me... I stayed back at the resort, laid by the pool, and drank margaritas... Yummmmmm. That night, we all went to Tampa to catch the Tampa Bay Rays/Cleveland Indians baseball game... it ended up not being a very good game. Cleveland pretty much just smoked the Rays. Tampa's stadium is also really goofy. It's in pretty crappy shape, looks weird... and I can't really explain it, I just didn't really enjoy being at that stadium. I"m glad the Reds have a good ballpark.

Friday
Slept in, played a couple rounds of mini-golf, went swimming, ate dinner, played some more mini-golf, played some card games, went to bed. Very relaxing day


Saturday
Checked out of the resort in the morning, and Laura's parents and Ella (The 4 year old) left to drive home. Laura, Melinda and I went back to Downtown Disney to waste some time before we could check into our hotel (We didn't fly out until Sunday). Checked into the hotel in the afternoon and went to M&M's World at the Florida Mall, then had some dinner and went to Howl at the Moon (Dueling piano bar). Awesome time!


Sunday
Woke up, drove to the airport, flew home

And that's it. A pretty good vacation. Now I guess it's back to the job search!

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