Now that Thanksgiving has safely passed us this year, we begin the chore of digging out boxes marked Christmas from attics and garages.
Untwisting lights and finding broken ornaments are just what we look forward to this time of year. May all your shopping, panic stricken days before Christmas be bright.

*Note: Not my parents home, but one on the corner of their street. They even have yard music for your enjoyment. It’s pretty neat. Not tacky, thats next weeks picture!! :0)

Sorry I have been around for a while. For a self-proclaimed blogging addict I haven’t had much presence here. But hey, I was in Thailand for 3 weeks, that’s got to count for something.

If anyone wants to see some pictures that I took I’ve posted many of them in my LJ.

Wild Kingdom

Random Culture

Thai in 10

XII aka Vanity

A Quick 10

All right, that’s enough self-glorification and ego-trippin’. I’ll catch you all again and I promise to be more of a contributor from here on out.

Later.

…and it seems that I’m the first Metroblog ‘exchange blogger’.

Usually I live in Vienna, Austria. And as I’ll stay in Apopka (Indoor Foilage capital of the World, located near Orlando, Fl.) December 1st thru 23rd I applied for Orlando Metroblog blogging status. And it worked. (Thanks, Sean!)

I

Well I was one of those crazy people in line at 4am. However I wasn’t number 20 in line, I was number 300. My brother and I stood outside in the VERY COLD elements at the West Oaks Best Buy in the hopes of getting some REALLY great deals… and we did.

Good news – we got everything on our short list of must haves. Bad news – if we had been 20 more people back in line (give or take) we would have missed out on several things.

Its very bizarre to walk up to a fixture, see what you want/need, reach out for it, take it into your hand and as you are drawing it back to you … you see the rest of the merchandise disappear before your very eyes and within moments there are NO MORE!
(more…)

It could possibly be one of my most favorite days out of the year. behind my wedding anniversary and my son’s birthday…..I think.

And this year was even better because I actually saved up enough money to get all the great deals. I mapped out my course last night and left the house around 8 am this morning (no, I am not so obsessed to arrive at 4 am and be the 20th in line).

Besides some local stores I went to the Seminole Towne Center mall where I was fortunate enough to get a parking space relatively quickly (albeit, far back) and I guess I missed some of the rush, since it was after 9 am when I got there.

The only ‘hot spots’ I encountered were KB Toys (which I left since we have all my son’s presents and there was nothing I needed that required a lengthy check out line) and Bath & Body Works, where I waited in line for 35 minutes but loved every second of it, since I was raking in the deals!

I am sure there were worse places, seeing as how I narrowly avoided running right into someone about 25 times trying to navigate my way through the mall, but by now I had all I needed (I’ve done some online shopping too) and could leave, happy to arrive home before 11 am.

GREAT day!

Dear Orlando,

Why are you lacking in hip craft fairs like the Renegade Craft Fair or the DIY Trunk Show?

Please bring something like this to us so that I might have a place to peddle my robots and felty crafts. Or if it already exists, I need to be informed and participate.

Love,
Kat, age 5.

This was only part of the large feast we had for Thanksgiving. My own dish (Marbled Mashed Potato Casserole) was not yet there, neither was the turkey and a few other items. But with 20 people in the house, including my three year old who cannot be left to his own devices yet, it was the only chance for a picture.

We drove into Orlando from Deltona and traffic was pretty easy around 4:30 pm. When we drove back after 8 pm, going east, we had clear sailing, but westbound I-4 was backed up for miles and miles after an accident in which we saw an overturned vehicle (looked like an SUV) and a very crumpled up smaller car. They were letting one car through at a time and as we drove down we could see people with their cars turned off standing outside talking with other drivers. I felt pretty bad for them all.

Nevertheless, I was ‘thankful’ it wasn’t us!! I hope you weren’t one of those poor people and I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Hope you’re having as much fun as we are!

Well, almost. As the soon to be new kid on the block I hope to post on all my new experiences in Orlando. Since I have never been to Orlando for anything besides business this should get quite interesting. If anyone has any suggestions on attractions or venues that I should checkout please let me know, I want to know as much about my new home as fast as possible.

Thanksgiving is traditionally the most traveled holiday in the country and this year looks to be no exception, especially here in O-Town and at the Orlando International Airport.

I was driving home from work today at about 4:30pm down Frontage Road. Suddenly the normally brisk moving traffic began slowing down as I approached the curve just east of the Beeline tollbooth. After a few minutes of slowly inching forward I was able to see the cause of the slowdown. There is an off-site parking service on the curve, one of those places where airport patrons can park their cars for less per day than the parking garage at OIA charges, and grab a shuttle to the terminal. There was a woman standing in the middle of the entrance waving off drivers who wanted to enter and park their cars and the reason was obvious; the entrance was backed up to the road with cars, and the lot was so full (overfull, actually) that the parking service had put about 200 vehicles in the grass on the side of the road next to their lot.

Man am I glad my family’s celebration is closer to home.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!