For anyone who reads me regularly (I have no idea if that animal exists) I’m still taking a vacation from my vacation. BUT, as I don’t actually own a home I have to be somewhere, and since it’s winter, I’m once again in Florida doing the snow bird/Disney World thing. I have rented a master suite in an apartment in the amusement park capitol of the world in the home of an Airbnb host I’ve gotten quite friendly with during previous stays (so it’s a bit like being at a friend’s home, but not quite), bought myself the obligatory yearly Disney pass (which makes economic sense after day 10) WITH the photo pass option, and have been going to the parks pretty much nightly. Regarding the pass, got talking with some other folks who I noticed were taking advantage of EVERY photographer in the park, and the father said he did the math and you need to have 8K photos taken before the extra cost of the photo option makes sense… I’m not sure I agree as most of my friends can’t take a decent photo and you don’t get the photoshopped in extras at home without a lot of work.
Regarding Why go to Disney YET again, particularly since when I left here two years ago it was with a case of extreme boredom. Well… After all my recent falls, I don’t feel safe walking most places anymore. My right foot seems to start dragging whenever I get fatigued, and if the walkways aren’t level, which most city streets are not, I run the risk of tripping. The past 3 months I’ve been staying in places that were pretty suburban and I’ve barely gotten ANY exercise… and put on more than few pounds as a result.
Disney walking areas are VERY level, as in you could be inside a mall while outdoors, level. And just walking from parking (I tend to arrive in the evenings so I park at the back of the lot) to the park and one rotation around the park itself gets me 1 hour aerobic exercise according to my apple watch, and about 10K steps… takes me about 3 hours to pull that off, but it happens. I haven’t stepped on a scale but my belt has gone from the last hole to the 2nd one… so I think I may be loosing some of what I gained.
Got here about Jan 7 and for most of the week the parks were still pretty packed, but just this past weekend there was a visible drop in attendance which should continue till about Spring break (early April) … at which point I’ll head back north. So in otherwords the first few days didn’t get on any rides because I’m no fan of standing in line for more than 10 minutes … but just this weekend I was able to walk right onto (with no standing and waiting at all) It’s a Small world, The Haunted Mansion, and Spaceship Earth over at Epcot (all of this done at or around 7pm +, i.e., after the tourists have gone to dinner or home, or were watching the fireworks show).
That said, my mornings are still spent playing World of Warcraft while listening to books on tape, just like in the last post. The newest books include:
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
By: Sarah Vowell
Sarah Vowell, whose voice on this audible book you may recognize if you were a fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (because Jon was a fan of hers), is a historian/comedian who with her squeaky/nerdy voice imparts a lot of wit, sarcasm and comments that had me full out laughing into her work that you might miss if you read it instead of listened to it. This is the sort of book where I want to now, having heard it, buy a paper copy, and listen again while underlining and highlighting the text — because she says some really insightful things about our history that at 55 and having been a history major I’ve never heard before and went, “DUH! that makes so much sense… why haven’t I heard that before?”
In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, By: Tom Holland
Was originally assigned this book for a class on Israel and the Arab nations, or some such, which I ended up dropping during the first week (could already tell the professor and I would be at loggerheads and I had over enrolled anyway … but a few years later decided that since the book was on Audible I’d get it and listen… I vaguely remember our professor had only assigned various chapters telling us the book goes WAY off topic, and boy does it. It almost feels like the writer knew a lot about Christian and Jewish civilizations of the period around the time of Muhammad, and wanted to throw all that in since what we actually about about the development of the nations under the umbrella of Islam is kind of sketchy other than there’s actual secondary independent historical evidence that the guy actually existed, which is more than you can say for Jesus or pretty much anyone in the old testament, let alone Moses. So, in short the book is hard to follow, and harder to remember because there’s so many details and no central storyline.
Jane Austen at Home: A Biography
By: Lucy Worsley
Fascinating book. I’m an Austen fan, have read most of the books, seen all the movies (and different versions of… including the modern retellings)… and have even watched any number of documentaries about the lady… and MOST of what was in this book was eye opening for me. For any serious fan of the lady and her work, this is a must read. That said, I listened, not read… and the reader is VERY good…. Worsley does the intro and the little extra bit at the end, and sad to say her writing is easier to take in when not read by her.
That said… am currently working my way through:
The Art of the English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock
By: Lucy Worsley
This book focuses on the British fascination with murder. Apparently once public hangings and the ability to trounce all over active murder investigation scenes was denied the British public, this morbid need was replaced with murder mysteries. Or at least that’s Worsley’s theory. She then goes through a history of famous murders and talks about how they worked their way into English Literature. Apparently for instance, readers of Dickens’ time would have known Oliver Twist was a crime novel based on the title, as a twist was slang of the time for someone who hung from a noose; and Austen’s Northanger Abbey wasn’t a romance so much as a sendup of the popular horror novels of her age (the heroine is a young girl who’s read too much of them goes to the abbey expecting ghosts and horror — as the world Abbey would be another keyword in a title that would communicate to readers of the time that this would be a horror book, only to discover more realistically disturbing issues, such as how many rich people of Austen’s time owed their wealth to slavery… something the Austen Biography I read just before this had also discussed). …. but like I said I’m not done with this book yet.
Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned! 