Friday, July 31, 2009

Clippy's log - page 10

21/7 1:35pm. Krista takes us through a car wash - in technicolor! The soap is a mix of pink, blue, slightly green and white - like bubblegum.

3:03pm. I stay with Krista as Midga goes to find Rosuav - after departing one of the most amazing stores to walk in 98°F heat to a bank. Did he find him? Does he have money after all? Walk to a bank instead of seeing the ocean - the Atlantic ocean, oh my gosh!

3:06pm. Still no sign of either brother. Aaaaack!

3:07pm. Midga returns, which is OK even though I was enjoying the company of Krista and Jodi immensely. The male-female balance in the clipboard population gives me fairly bad odds, and since Orange left me things have been bad. Anyway, moving right along... We're out shopping at Wal-Mart. Midga has certain pre-conceived ideas about it from "In Search of Excellence" and they couldn't be more wrong. The place is huge - think of a nice big Coles, a big KMart, KMart Auto, Garden Centre, and a fairly huge Liquorland, put them together as one shop and shove about 40 registers at the front. Then put mini shops out the front like it's a shopping centre of its own!

3:20pm. We visit Sam's Club, which is a Bunnings and a big furniture shop with a dash of Autobarn and (interestingly) fresh food. They also own the car wash outside.

22/7 5:53am. Krista, who rises early in the morning anyway, gets us all up to finalise preparations for a large and growing party to go to Disneyworld. Hey, it's pi day, let's email a happy birthday to Belinda. I like her, she always greets me when Midga takes me to work.

6:01am. Rosuav and Jodi seem to be up, which is not far short of a miracle since we were all up drinking and talking until well after 3am. And we had only about 4-5 hours of sleep the previous night.

6:36am. Off we go! Krista drives a Prius, but it seems just like any other car to ride in. It sometimes switches its motor on at unusual times (to run the air con maybe?) but not usually off. There's a nice LCD saying how much power has been reclaimed through the regenerative brake, and average fuel consumption. It sits on the 70mph speed limit with ease.

9:45am. Tsii has brought Sparkie along. He's the Mini-Threshcon mascot, and I must say he enjoys it. He poses for all sorts of ridiculous photos and makes everyone laugh a lot.

10:49am. We're here, we've met Elise, got our tickets, and we're getting the "tram" to the gate. It's like the one at the airport - a train of rubber tyred toast rack vehicles. A nice TUAG service is provided. Even without rails it manages the u-turn (quite a bit of the tail moves the opposite direction to the tractor) without any problems.

1:57pm. We've just come out of a tour of the special effects studio. Awesome stuff, lots of burning propane and high pressure water. We rode another of those "tram" thingies through an actual set. There was some stunt driving too, skid turns with obstacles to avoid, good fun. Now for something sweet and frozen for those poor human beings who try to stay at their own temperature instead of adapting to the atmosphere's.

2:19pm. Krista took me and Sparkie on a small journey to visit with Mike and Sully from Monsters Inc. They are a bit late clocking into work.

3:50pm. We just got out of the Star Wars exhibit. First was just a bit of loose animatronics around the old props. Then we go through an airport lounge (hey, we know them!) into a small room which is a full on flight simulator! Combined with some great graphics and sound, we get the full benefit of the hydraulics - lots of positive G. Complete awesomeness!!

4:11pm. We have just found seats for "Lights Motors Action" - a display of stunt driving. What we saw before was just the bits that leaked off the main set. The show includes jetskis... this promises to be great! World+Dog were in the queue, but we're in a full stadium so there's lots of space.

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