After getting accepted into the Disney College Program, I decided to set up a blog to detail the before and during of this adventure. This is that blog.
Well, it's officially summer, and almost Fourth of July. Summer has to be my least favorite times. It's so hot, so busy, so hot. Did I mention it's really hot? So far I seem to be keeping up with my once a month posts, which I've decided is both good and bad. Good, because those of you that actually read this don't have to suffer through such long posts anymore, bad because I struggle a bit more with figuring out what to write. Give me a minute. Give me a minute. Okay! I think I have an idea.
June has been quite a busy month, and July is looking to be the same. I don't remember how the month started, just know that it was both long and fast at the same time. Someone please explain that one to me? Nevermind, I forgot nothing ever makes sense to me :P Anyway..... where was I?
Oh yeah! I WAS in Anaheim, but that's the middle of the month. A few days just before, I decided to do something insane: I signed my death wish, aka signed up for a half marathon. For those of you that don't know, I'm NOT a runner. I've never been a runner. I've always hated running. I tried out running once. It made me sick. Literally. I finished the race dead last by at least a lap and nearly threw up. Since then, I haven't done much. However, when they announced this half marathon at the beginning of June, I couldn't resist. It's a Star Wars Half Marathon! The first Star Wars Half Marathon here in Disneyland. I'm sorry, but Star Wars, I had to. Guess that means I only have 5 1/2 months left to live, better make it worth while ;)
In all seriousness though, I'm working on training as hard as I can. I'm honestly nervous because of my history with running. I overheat really easily, not just when running, but even when just standing around. When I overheat, I become extremely nauseous. I also get terrible side stitches really easily. I'm trying to take things slow and see if that makes any difference. I just finished week 2 of training. The "program" I'm using calls for 2 days of half hour runs and one longer run.
The first week went really well. At the beginning of the week, I started with running for about 30 seconds, then walking about a minute. I say about because I had no way of timing these, so it was what I thought was close to accurate. The long run was for 3 miles, and I decided I'd run a song, walk a song. Week 1 finished successfully. Week 2 not so much. The first day, I had no problem with running half a mile, walking a quarter of a mile, but the second day was a total failure. I had a side stitch after running just 5 steps. I spent the entire half hour walking. I think I managed to do 2 miles at least, so at least I'm still within the minimum finishing time of 16 minutes per mile. Monday's run was more successful. 4 miles, managed to do the run half a mile, walk a quarter mile the entire distance. Not sure how long it took me to do though, I should time it next time.
Also in June, I moved! Good news: No longer in Anaheim. No longer in a sweltering hot apartment. No longer have extremely loud neighbors who play movies at max volume at 2 in the morning. No longer have to smell someone below me smoking pot. Bad news: No longer live 2 miles away from the park. No longer able to wake up just an hour before work and still make it on time. Despite being further away, I really like this new place, with the exception of the one cockroach I found in my bathroom over the weekend. Haven't seen any since thankfully (knock on wood). Sadly, because of the move, it's been over a month since I've done any real cooking. Fortunately, I finally settled in enough to start that back up a couple days ago. As of this posting, I've been able to make scones, a tuna casserole, and a Bearnaise Essence that I still need to figure out how to use..
Speaking of cooking, I register for classes in 2 weeks. Nervous and excited about that. Has it really been 2 years since I've taken a class? 3 years since I've taken classes in a classroom setting? Here's to hoping for a lot more hands on than lectures.
I also spent a lot of time playing in the park in June. I've come to the realization that whenever I just need to get away and destress or escape reality for a while, I end up in the park for a few hours. I also keep every single ticket. You should see the stack that I have right now..... it's scary.
I think that's about it for my monthly update. Time for another busy month. Busy work schedule, traveling, running, cooking, playing in the park. Lets see how well I can survive the heat this year.
I realized I never showed a picture of my "new" costume, so here's one of me working. Photo courtesy of my dad
It is now June. That means it is beyond officially summer at Disneyland. I have to say this is the first summer I'm less than excited for. At least right now. I'm going to try to post something once a month or every other month. That way they won't get so insanely long again.
I've finally been able to get back into playing in the parks. Just in time for the parks to become to crowded for me to tolerate. I still struggle with finding people to go with me, so I've been going a lot by myself and just wandering around because the lines are too long. It's also gotten too hot too quickly. If anyone knows of a way to keep from getting nauseous while out in the sun, please let me know. I have also been placed on transitional at work. For those unfamiliar with it. Transitional is an "in between" position between being away from work and coming back to work from an illness or injury. For the last couple weeks, my wrist had been bothering me, finally went to the cast health center and they said it was tendinitis. Now I'm greeting for at least the next week at various locations, mostly stores. I think it would be more fun if they moved me around every couple of hours. Okay, that's all the negative stuff. Now on to the fixing part.
Last post, I made a serious mistake. I kinda confused birthdays and anniversaries. I mistakenly said it was the beginning of the church calendar (not looking up facts and thinking Pentecost, of course that's when the church had to have started and therefore the calendar. Nope). Pentecost may be the birthday of the church (I looked up my facts this time, dad "http://catholicinformation.aquinasandmore.com/2011/06/12/pentecost-the-birthday-of-the-catholic-church/" and other websites say close to the same without specifically saying "birth of the church"), but it's not the beginning of the calendar. I'll admit that's always been a detail that's confused me, which is probably part of why I made the mistake in my last post. The beginning of advent is the beginning of the church calendar. Okay, I think that's all the mistakes that have been pointed out to me. Onwards!!
I feel like this post is going to be a lot shorter, probably because there's been a lot less time between this and my last post (finally!). Other than being on transitional at work, most everything is the same. I've made it through the spring break season only to now be in summer season. For one of the first times ever, I decided to do something for my birthday this year. I was hoping that the dates I had chosen would work really well, but apparently any time in the end of May is bad. Guess in that regards, I don't have a very good birthday date. Disney once again decided to do a 24 hour event (from now on, I'm just going to say that this is their way of celebrating my birthday) on Friday and Saturday of memorial weekend.
My bright idea was that Thursday night would be great to get everyone from work together for medieval times. Nope. I had two people show up: my roommate and a friend from Fantasyland. We had a blast though, so I guess it worked out. Then I decided to get a small group of friends from work together to play in the park on Tuesday. That worked a lot better, but it was frustrating figuring out all the details. Ended up having a girls brunch, followed by sporadically meeting up with the guys. We were all together (minus one that worked) by the time the evening ended at least, so that worked out as well. Because of the weekend, my birthday present was also late, but I got that as well: a food processor! Now I don't have to ruin as many blenders attempting to use them as food processors. I also got a target gift card (thank you Connie), starbucks gift card (Thank you Tyler) and couple bouquets of paper flowers and an owl, handmade by Tricia. All and all it was a good weekend, and I'm really happy with the friends and coworkers I have. I think that's about all on the Disney front, but wait! I have more!!
I've made a bit more progress towards culinary school in the fall. last month I was feeling like I had hit a brick wall, and it was putting me down, but I've finally been able to make more progress. As of this year, California has decided to have a priority registration deadline. This means that you have to have grades, transcripts, credits, and education plan all in by June 1 in order to register before classes start. Everyone else gets whatever is left (and with how overcrowded the California schools are, that's nothing). My biggest hangup was the meeting with the counselor to create the education plans. Meetings had to be set up in advance, but by the time I would figure out my schedule, all the appointments would be taken. Thankfully, as the deadline got closer, they did away with the appointments, and made it walk-ins all day every day the counseling center was open. It meant I had to wait 2 hours, but I was able to go on any one of my days off to finish the last requirement. Now, I'll get an email any day now telling me when my registration appointment is. All I know right now is that it will be for some time in July. Classes start late August. I was also approved for some financial aid, but I don't know how much since the amounts they gave me were assuming full time, and I won't be going full time. At least I won't have to use my entire savings to pay for everything. I'll keep this post up to date with the school stuff. I'm really excited to finally start. 2 1/2 more months!!
And now for the video of the post. For some reason, any time I watch a marvel movie, my villain obsession increases. This video is one of the not so common-anymore villains. The beginning of the video is just the intro to the song, so bear with it :P
Happy Easter (season) Everyone! Easter's a time of renewal, a time of rebirth. Spring in general feels that way sometimes. Spring cleaning? Time to restart the slate with a clean house (apartment). It's also almost the new church year, which can also count as a new start in my book. With that in mind, I spent my Easter weekend doing a lot of thinking (and church, and work, and all around being busy, busy, busy). Where am I going? What am I doing? What's the point of this blog? Why do I have this blog? What am I going to do with it. For those that know a bit about me, I'm sure you've heard all about the events from the beginning of this year (or the results of them at least). It's because of all those events that I haven't written a new blog post. For the past several months I have very strongly debated even deleting everything. I finally came to a conclusion: If the Easter season is a time of regrowth and new beginnings, why can't I do the same with my blog? Why give up just because life changes? I started this blog to document my Disney adventures. Specifically during the college program, but I'm still at Disneyland, so I'm still having Disney adventures. Just because I'm no longer getting married doesn't mean I'm not still able to have adventures, therefore I'm going to keep working on my blog.
As I mentioned in my last post in November, I'm no longer in Fantasyland. I am now at Market House on Main street. This is the Starbucks located inside Disneyland. I'd applied for Starbucks once or twice when I was living in Washington, but that was because I was in need of some sort of job. I've never DESIRED to work at a Starbucks, even though I thought maybe it would be fun when I was filling out the applications. I was never one of those people that always wanted to work at a Starbucks. Working at the Market House Starbucks is definitely a lot different than anything I ever expected to do. Apparently I had to leave Washington to work at a coffee place. Guess I missed Washington that much (not surprising). Over 6 months later, I still love working there. The only thing that I don't like about Market House is the lack of directly working with food. In that regards, it hasn't really been helping with my goal of becoming a chef, but I've been able to get more advice from my mangers and chefs here, which is probably more beneficial. I've also made quite a few more connections with other chefs and managers.
As much as working at Market House has been able to help currently, it's still not the final stop. Eventually I'm going to have to move over to table service (the sit down restaurants in the resort). My goal is to do this within the next year. Table service is considered a different department (I'm currently working in the quick service restaurant department. There's also many other departments such as custodial, attractions, merchandise, etc.), so I will have to do something called an internal transfer. Basically, I'll fill out an application as if I'm applying to work at Disneyland. If I do get accepted into the Table Service restaurants, I'd have 30 days to decide if I liked it enough or not. Within those 30 days, if the transfer doesn't work for me, my original position will still be available to me. However, I don't know how this would affect my chances of returning later in the future. Right now, my hold-up for transferring is my need for money to pay rent and insurance.
I am also currently enrolled in one of the local community colleges. Assuming I can get all the requirements finished in time, I will be able to start taking classes in the fall and finally start working on my culinary degree! I can definitely say I'm excited about that. In the process of making sure I have everything together, I have been to the college campus twice. As far as California goes, I really like the campus. It's really open, has quite a few grassy areas, and some trees. Every building also has a bike rack in front of it, which makes me really excited since I'll be riding my bike to and from school.
Let's see..... is there any other significant changes to talk about? I guess if I think of anything else, I'll include them in a future post (which, with my average will probably be August :P). On to the fun stuff!
Since January, I haven't had much chance to play in the park. Partly because life has recently been getting in the way, and partly because it's been too hard emotionally, as well as no longer having anyone to go with. I am pleased to announce that the last half is getting easier and easier. I have occasionally found people to go to the parks with me, and I have even gone once or twice by myself for a short time. As a self-diagnosis, I think I'll recover from the "Disneylandphobia"
Other than hanging out in the park with friends or by myself, I have also been able to do some new and unique things this year. 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the small world attraction. To celebrate this milestone, Good Morning America (talk/news show that's on ABC from 7 AM - AM weekdays, not sure about weekends) had a segment to celebrate. During this segment, they had choirs from all the currently open Disney parks sing part of the Small world song. Rehearsals were intense because of the times. During the week of this event, we had a rehearsal Monday night from 6-10. We then met "Tuesday night" at 3:30 AM - 8 AM (This is actually Wednesday morning, but they kept referring to it as Tuesday night). then the following day (Thursday morning) at 2:30 AM for final dress rehearsal, call time and performance. 12 hours for 22 seconds of tv. They filmed our segment and the segment for Disneyworld live. Everyone else was lucky and had their segment recorded. No crazy hours for them! Even Disneyworld was late enough that they didn't have crazy hours (since the show was at 8:30 for them).
Backtrack a couple years ago. Peter introduced me to a group of people he met back in 2008. These people are a part of what's known as the Disney Podcast Network. This is a site filled with various Disney podcasts. Back in 2006, they decided to create an event where the podcasters and fans could meet and spend time together. From my understanding, it is now more some of the fans that get together every year. This event is called Westfest (since it takes place in Disneyland on the west coast). Two years ago when I met them, I immediately decided it was a fun group. Fast forward to February. After everything that happened January and February, I was worried that I would no longer be able to join these people, and if I did join, I wouldn't be able to fit in very well. My (unrealistic) impression was that these were people that were huge fans of Disney and knew virtually everything from every date to every important piece of history, and I struggle with remembering all that stuff. Luckily for me, that wasn't entirely true, and also luckily for me, I was still asked to join them this year.
This past weekend was the 2014 Westfest. From the informal meetup Thursday night through the official end Sunday night as well as those still around meeting up Monday afternoon, the weekend was filled with so much fun. I met many new people from all over the country. The only thing everyone had in common? A passion for Disney. This doesn't translate to knowing EVERYTHING about Disney like I thought it did. This translates to people who love spending time in Disneyland. They may or may not know more than the average person, but most people don't know everything. This was evident when, on a couple different occasions, we were asked trivia questions and it took a while to come up with the right answers. One question, which 5 names are mentioned in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, took 3 people to get an answer. Another question asking about the date of an old Mickey Mouse cartoon took an entire group and several hints to come up with the answer. I can definitely fit in with this group!
While this last month has definitely had some fun things, it also meant it was really busy, partly why I'm only just now writing this. Even as I right this, it's only a "calm before the storm." Yesterday, I ran away from the heat, winds and forest fires of Southern California only to be met with....... heat, no wind, no forest fires. (It's the heat that I hate the most) It is the first day of May, and it is 87. At least it's slightly better than 102. I keep hoping it'll rain before I have to go back to work. Maybe if I get a bit of rain and cold weather, I'll be able to tolerate the warm weather a bit longer. I also blame the busy schedule for the lack of "humor" in this post compared to others. Maybe next post will be a bit more normal. Maybe one day I won't be going 50 gazillion directions. Maybe.... Or maybe not. But hey, I'm happy, I'm having fun. I don't care! (too much) And I'll also try and make these posts more frequent so that they're easier to read when you're short(er) on time. I've noticed that these posts become very long when I wait 6+ months between posts. More proof that I have too much to talk about regarding Disneyland.
P.S. Instead of my normal song video at the end of the post, I have posted the Small World segment from Good Morning America. I'm sure everyone that wants to has seen it already, but it means I can still post a song and be lazy at the same time! Actually, I just figured it fit with the earlier part of the post.
