After dinner at Jiko in the Animal Kingdom Jambo house lodge, we decided to spend our first night in the flagship Magic Kingdom park at Walt Disney World. It’s a really brilliant concept -guests who stay in the Disney-owned resorts can stay after the park closes on certain nights; for today, that meant the park remained…
Many of you know about my Douwe Egberts coffee obsession. No, not the roasted beans, the machine itself that combines with a concentrated form of the coffee produced overseas so that every cup is identical. It’s normally only available to restaurants but I called the company and just bought one outright so that it sits…
Ashly and Ian arrived safely in Orlando! Woo hoo! Although it was a tough journey for them after the crazy plane re-routes and fog landings, we were able to keep our dinner reservations at Jiko, a restaurant featuring upscale African, Indian and Mediterranean cuisine. The blog has quite a few foodies and we eat…
Aaron and I hung out in Downtown Disney until meeting up with Karen, one of our oldest friends. We’ve known her for 10 or 11 years, having first met her when she and Aaron were assigned to a Freshman orientation group at college. Within two weeks, she became one of the most awesome, cherished people…
After arriving at the Animal Kingdom Deluxe Resort in Walt Disney World, Aaron and I headed to Downtown Disney to check out the shops and wait for the other people in our party to arrive from elsewhere in the United States. We found our way to the shuttle “motor coach”, in Disney speak, and upon…
After graduating from college, Aaron and I have regularly visited and vacationed with our close friends as a way to keep in touch. There are many times this included 1,000+ miles road trips and weekend home stay, and other times, visits to theme parks, such as Cedar Point, the North American roller coaster capital. In…
To avert inner-office strategic hoarding of the Cherry Flavor and Vanilla Flavored Tootsie Roll Fruit Midgees after the semi-annual candy-run last week, I finally tracked down a distributor and am purchasing around 2,000 pieces of candy (roughly 30 pounds) at a cost of 5.5¢ per piece including shipping. I don’t know why Tootsie Roll Industries…
Most of the mail bag questions come from letters submitted through the contact form, on Facebook, through About.com, etc. But every once in awhile, I’ll elevate a question submitted in the comments section of an article to a mail bag post if I think the response might be useful to others, rather than just the…
To Have a More Successful Life, Understand the Motivations and Motives of Yourself and the People Around You Last month, I promised to pull more essays from my past out of the file cabinet. This one dealt with motives and understanding how they influence human behavior. This insight is one of the reasons I decided…
One of the weekly traditions in my life, the family get-together of four generations, rolled around again today and it was our turn to provide the food, meaning the kitchen was a flurry of activity for three or four hours as the dishes were prepared. The menu was set as follows: Main Dish 1: A…