How I Spent My Winter Vacation

I went to Disney World. Yes. I did. And I loved it. I love the sight of hundreds and hundreds of people in Santa Hats with Mickey Ears. I love the sight of many of those same hundreds in bright red sweat suits. In public.

On the other hand, I did not see a single instance of public personal grooming.

On still another hand, the husband and I got to engage in one of our favorite pastimes: being in other peoples photo shoots. On purpose. We wait until someone is about to snap a shot, and as we walk through the frame we turn and smile, or wave. We've been doing this for years, it started on our honeymoon, when we saw the same Japanese tourists day after day, with their video cams. We just started waving, and saying "Still married! Still honeymooning!"

This time we even got to toast the people at the table in front of us, as the waiter took the shot of the table from one end, thereby including us at the other end. What fun!

But seriously, I do love Disney. My girlfriend tells me that there is a special spot in hell for us stockholders, where we will be forced to wear the Mickey/Santa hats all year long... while we ride for all eternity through "It's a Small World." I say, as long as it keeps my portfolio from being in the red, I don't care what Michael Eisner does.

In fact, I have a couple of suggestions on how to increase the bottom line, if Mr. Eisner would like them, he can just drop me a line here at Girlyshoes.

The food at the park hotels is phenomenal, and when I get the chance, I will tell you about the 12 grain vegetarian dish I had at Jiko, in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. But tell me this: when was the last time you had a meal so good that you wrote a little love poem to it on the Styrofoam box in which you took the leftovers home? Yeah. Didn't think so. But this dish was so damn good, I did. And the two people I let see the leftovers ended up sticking forks in it and moaning in ecstasy as they ate.

I took lots of photos, which I may or may not post. I shopped at both the high and low end outlet malls. We indulged our audio/visual habit with trips to some obscure CD stores, and bought a box set of Rough Guide to Indian Music, a box set of Kurasawa's Samurai films, another box set of garage/psychedelic bands from England (Rubble) and the soundtrack to Our Man Flint and In Like Flint.

We bought books, and Legos and fabric for my quilting habit. We ate like starving stoats and all in all had a marvelous time, thank you for asking.

And you? Did you all have nice holidays? Or did they send you back to therapy for another ten years? Oh, well.