The Den

Hi everyone, just a quick note to give some advance warning:  I've been planning to make some cosmetic changes to the site, mostly moving things around in the sidebars and cleaning things up. But I just noticed there was a recent major upgrade to Drupal (the open source software I use to run this site). So, I'll probably take the opportunity to upgrade it, and who knows, while I'm at it, I might make other changes if something looks cool.

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Finally I'm taking time at the coffee shop this morning to add another day or two to the DisneyWorld saga.

So after two days at the Magic Kingdom, we decided to spend friday at the Animal Kingdom, the newest theme park at Disney World. I think of all the surprisingly cool, and even impressive things I experienced this week, the Animal Kingdom park was high on the list.

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A few known facts, realizations, admissions, and observations have lately come together and prompted me to make what might to some be an unexpected purchase. Firstly, since moving to the Bay Area, I don't get enough exersize. Over the 5 years I've been here I've put on too many pounds. Well, most of them were put on in the first 2 years - I've been pretty stable since then. But still, I'm heavier now than I've been since I came back from NZ in 1985, and least healthy, and I can feel it, and I don't like it.

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A couple things about the Magic Kingdom, one up, one down: On the upside: even though its clear that there's subtle marketing going on everywhere, and things are arranged to help you spend more money, I never found that aspect to be overwhelming and annoying. Yes, I saw it, but it wasn't glaring or obnoxious, and it was easy to ignore it. The shops and the street vendors all blended into the surroundings pretty smoothly. All this was another reason why the whole week was much better than I'd feared.  

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For those who're familiar with Disneyland in California, the equivalent at Disney World is the Magic Kingdom, which is very similar, but bigger. It has a main street lined with 'in-character' shops, leading to a circle in front of Cinderella's Castle. Around the circle are the various "lands" - Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland. Each land can take half a day or more to explore. We started in Adventureland, where we wandered throught the Swiss Family Robinson's treehouse.

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I know  - its been like nearly a month, rather than the week I 'd promised. Fortunately when I make non-blogging promises to individuals, I'm much better at keeping them!

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A little less than two weeks ago I flew out of Oakland Airport headed for one of the few places on earth I've really never wanted to go in my adult life. Now that I've been back for five days, I'm happy to report that Walt Disney World in Florida was not nearly as unpleasant for me as I'd feared. Its gonna take me a while to get my impressions all written down, so I'll do it in chunks.

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Here's some random, train-of-thought bloggishness for y'all :-)  Definitely more of my inner philosophical thought processes than I've ever posted publically before.

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Once again, its been way too long since I've written anything in the ol' blog. Its so much easier to think about writing something here than to actually do it. So, here's a bit of an update with some of whats been going on with me since October, and a little bit into the future.

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