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Snow White Rehab
A few months ago we found out that Snow White's Scary Adventures was going to be closed for over a month starting on April 19th. Needless to say, we were worried about how Ben would react. One of the cast members there was kind enough to take some excellent pictures of the entire ride for me, and early last week I made up a new picture album that pretty much covered the entire ride, so Ben would at least have something to look at during the downtime.
Last Wednesday was his first visit to the park with Snow White closed, and he was very confused when he came around the corner and saw a blue wall up in front of the ride. I had expected that he would throw a fit, but was pleasantly surprised. I gave him the new picture book, and he sat and paged through it for about fifteen minutes. After a while he was ready to go try something else, and we wound up going on a bunch of stuff he hadn't done in quite a while. Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo, Tomorrowland Transit Authority, Buzz Lightyear, Mickey's PhilharMagic... he had a great evening and was very happy the whole time. Every now and then he would stop and look at his Snow White pictures for a while, but he never really got upset.
Today did not go quite as well.
He came home from school already talking about the Magic Kingdom, and he went into his room and grabbed the diecast metal replica of the Snow White mine cart that I got him for Christmas. Uh-oh.
("Chopper Dave, we have uh-oh, over....")
He had his usual Wednesday dinner at Cosmic Ray's and then made a bee line for Snow White. He was, um... less than understanding when he discovered it was still closed. He tried to force open the construction wall. He opened up both of his picture books and repeatedly pointed at the pictures of Snow White.
"I want Snow White, please!"
"Go there!!"
I kept trying to calm him down and explain that Snow White was still closed, and would he like to go see Pooh instead?
"FUCKING!!"
Now that's a doozy of a word for him to have learned. On the upside, at least he was definitely using it in context.
After a while we convinced him to leave there and go get some candy. After a trip to the Main Street Confectionary he went over to Exposition Hall to watch cartoons in the theater for a while. He sat all the way through The Band Concert, and most of the way through Steamboat Willie before he was ready to leave. We were just walking under the Main Street train station when he started frantically looking through his backpack. I asked him what he was trying to find, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Skittles, please."
Sure enough, he had dropped his bag of candy back in the theater. I ran back and found it, and he was perfectly happy. On the monorail he was smiling and laughing. By the time we got back to the car he was as happy as could be. So all in all the day wasn't a waste, and I think he actually handled his frustration pretty dang well aside from the one outburst.
The good news is that the rehab is going faster than they had anticipated. Originally it wasn't supposed to reopen until the end of May, but now the official date has been pushed all the way up to a week from Saturday. With any luck, it may even be ready sooner than that. Given that Small World is closing for a seven month long rehab starting this Saturday, they will be wanting to get Snow White back open as quickly as possible.
Genocide on my Windowsill
One thing about Florida, and I know this going in, is the bugs. Back in the fall I had a problem with ants in my office, and a few weeks ago they showed up on the windowsill in my bedroom. Teeny tiny little things, perhaps an eighth of an inch long, but what they lack in size they make up for in numbers. Needless to say, I went right over to the apartment office to ask for help.
The thing about these kind of ants is that the only way to effectively deal with them is to put down this sugary liquid that they eat up like crazy and then take back to the nest to poison the entire colony. If I thought I had ants before, their numbers quadrupled as soon as the bait was put down. To be fair, they were all swarming right on the windowsill and not venturing forth into the room anymore, but still... For three days it seemed like every tiny ant within sniffing range was feasting at my bedroom window. By day four, however, they had disappeared. Hopefully I wiped out the entire colony. When it comes to bugs in my bedroom, I am firmly in the Genocide-Supporter camp.
Troll Hunting
The downside of operating two different message boards is that every now and then I have to deal with knuckle-dragging trolls. In this case it was a little depressing. There is a guy who has been posting on the Axler board for years now. Historically he has had a bit of an anger management problem (trust me, I'm being very generous), and I have tried to politely keep him in line. Unfortunately I let it go on for far too long without really dealing with it head on. Yesterday when I again asked him to not be hostile to new users, he responded by sending me a vitriolic and profanity-laden private message. It's not the first time he has done that, and I finally ran out of patience with him. I had to ban him, and boot him from my website. He was not especially happy about that. At this point I have had to add a new filter on my email server to delete any messages from him before they even reach my inbox, I have had to ban two different IP addresses, two different email addresses, and swith my registration process to requiring admin approval for all new members. I expect I still haven't heard the last of him. I really hate this crap.
A few months ago we found out that Snow White's Scary Adventures was going to be closed for over a month starting on April 19th. Needless to say, we were worried about how Ben would react. One of the cast members there was kind enough to take some excellent pictures of the entire ride for me, and early last week I made up a new picture album that pretty much covered the entire ride, so Ben would at least have something to look at during the downtime.
Last Wednesday was his first visit to the park with Snow White closed, and he was very confused when he came around the corner and saw a blue wall up in front of the ride. I had expected that he would throw a fit, but was pleasantly surprised. I gave him the new picture book, and he sat and paged through it for about fifteen minutes. After a while he was ready to go try something else, and we wound up going on a bunch of stuff he hadn't done in quite a while. Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo, Tomorrowland Transit Authority, Buzz Lightyear, Mickey's PhilharMagic... he had a great evening and was very happy the whole time. Every now and then he would stop and look at his Snow White pictures for a while, but he never really got upset.
Today did not go quite as well.
He came home from school already talking about the Magic Kingdom, and he went into his room and grabbed the diecast metal replica of the Snow White mine cart that I got him for Christmas. Uh-oh.
("Chopper Dave, we have uh-oh, over....")
He had his usual Wednesday dinner at Cosmic Ray's and then made a bee line for Snow White. He was, um... less than understanding when he discovered it was still closed. He tried to force open the construction wall. He opened up both of his picture books and repeatedly pointed at the pictures of Snow White.
"I want Snow White, please!"
"Go there!!"
I kept trying to calm him down and explain that Snow White was still closed, and would he like to go see Pooh instead?
"FUCKING!!"
Now that's a doozy of a word for him to have learned. On the upside, at least he was definitely using it in context.
After a while we convinced him to leave there and go get some candy. After a trip to the Main Street Confectionary he went over to Exposition Hall to watch cartoons in the theater for a while. He sat all the way through The Band Concert, and most of the way through Steamboat Willie before he was ready to leave. We were just walking under the Main Street train station when he started frantically looking through his backpack. I asked him what he was trying to find, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Skittles, please."
Sure enough, he had dropped his bag of candy back in the theater. I ran back and found it, and he was perfectly happy. On the monorail he was smiling and laughing. By the time we got back to the car he was as happy as could be. So all in all the day wasn't a waste, and I think he actually handled his frustration pretty dang well aside from the one outburst.
The good news is that the rehab is going faster than they had anticipated. Originally it wasn't supposed to reopen until the end of May, but now the official date has been pushed all the way up to a week from Saturday. With any luck, it may even be ready sooner than that. Given that Small World is closing for a seven month long rehab starting this Saturday, they will be wanting to get Snow White back open as quickly as possible.
Genocide on my Windowsill
One thing about Florida, and I know this going in, is the bugs. Back in the fall I had a problem with ants in my office, and a few weeks ago they showed up on the windowsill in my bedroom. Teeny tiny little things, perhaps an eighth of an inch long, but what they lack in size they make up for in numbers. Needless to say, I went right over to the apartment office to ask for help.
The thing about these kind of ants is that the only way to effectively deal with them is to put down this sugary liquid that they eat up like crazy and then take back to the nest to poison the entire colony. If I thought I had ants before, their numbers quadrupled as soon as the bait was put down. To be fair, they were all swarming right on the windowsill and not venturing forth into the room anymore, but still... For three days it seemed like every tiny ant within sniffing range was feasting at my bedroom window. By day four, however, they had disappeared. Hopefully I wiped out the entire colony. When it comes to bugs in my bedroom, I am firmly in the Genocide-Supporter camp.
Troll Hunting
The downside of operating two different message boards is that every now and then I have to deal with knuckle-dragging trolls. In this case it was a little depressing. There is a guy who has been posting on the Axler board for years now. Historically he has had a bit of an anger management problem (trust me, I'm being very generous), and I have tried to politely keep him in line. Unfortunately I let it go on for far too long without really dealing with it head on. Yesterday when I again asked him to not be hostile to new users, he responded by sending me a vitriolic and profanity-laden private message. It's not the first time he has done that, and I finally ran out of patience with him. I had to ban him, and boot him from my website. He was not especially happy about that. At this point I have had to add a new filter on my email server to delete any messages from him before they even reach my inbox, I have had to ban two different IP addresses, two different email addresses, and swith my registration process to requiring admin approval for all new members. I expect I still haven't heard the last of him. I really hate this crap.