Trunks Mandatory

This month I'm going to post a fair amount of Jungle Cruise/Adventureland shots. I finally got around to editing my Disney shots in lightroom over photoshop, and man...it's a difference. I've totally fallen in love with that program, and just how simple it can be to batch edit photos. So, to start things off, here's a shot of the infamous Elephant Bathing Pool, and as you can see, they all have their trunks on.

Black Hole

What if I told you about a place where time stood still. Where you hear the same thing every five seconds, and you can't speak at all? What if that place was real? What if that place is where I am? Time has frozen. The words are blurred and repetitive. I can't speak at all. 

This, is Senior Seminar. 

Where the professor says 'kaaaay?' at the end of every sentence or question. 

Where the students eyes are glazed over like the donuts they had for breakfast this morning. 

Where we can't do anything to help ourselves. 

Apparently we're halfway through the class. I really don't know. I've almost given up hope. Hunger has taken over my midsection, roaring and growling, competing with every monosyllabic 'kaaaaay' coming out of the professor's dry, boring body. 

I don't know what's happening. I keep pinning food recipes in the hopes of having a celebratory feast if we ever make it out of here alive. 

Did I mention there aren't any windows? For all I know a revolution could be happening outside, and I'd miss it because I paid a man I don't know, but have to trust completely that he's smarter than me, to teach me what he knows on a topic. In fact, a revolution is happening. A presidential debate is going on as I type, which is another step towards the deciding factor of who will run this country next year. 

OH, look! We're free. Dinner time. 

Last Roar on The Mountain

I don't even know really what to say, so I'm just going to ramble. I wish I kept in touch with him more. But it sucks losing a friend. When I was in high school, Disney had re-imagineered a new animatronic for their nighttime show Fantasmic!. At first it had its issues, and at the time when I was really apart of the fan sites, it started as a joke. I created an account as the maleficent dragon in Fantasmic!. Soon followed many other animatronic twitter accounts. The Red Headed Wench from Pirates of The Caribbean, Esmerelda on Main Street, the seagulls in Nemo Bay, and Harold the Snowman...all of them were creating these stories and adventures through twitter as a fun way to create this sort of...alternate realm where the AA's had a voice. It was a blast, and quite frankly, I forgot about it after I stopped writing my part.

But, today I found out some really terrible news. Brett, the guy who wrote as Harold died in a freak accident during a flash flood while hiking.

It's insane. He was such an amazing guy. Funnier than most people I knew, had an incredible wit to him, and was so incredibly happy any time I talked to him. His writing as Harold brought so much entertainment to the Disney fan community. It was fantastic to read what this guy could write. He would weave these after-park-hour stories with his 'neighbors' the Nemo bay Seagulls about eating butter packets, or chasing off the ducks, and if I remember right, there was one time he wrote that he stole the Red headed girls' dress and had Harold run around in drag. It was just wildly off the wall, fun stuff.

Yet here I am, writing out my memories of a guy only two years older than I am, who died far sooner than he should have. I've been mulling over it since I heard about it, and I can't wrap my head around the fact that he's gone. I mean, just a few weeks ago we were chatting on Facebook about stuff, and now the conversation's ended. The roars on the mountain are fading with the breeze whistling through the caverns, and the Gulls lost their neighbor. I'm gonna miss this guy, and all the amazing things he was. Rest in Peace, Man. 

Faith Restored

My life really isn't too terribly exciting. I've got a 9-5 job, going to school, the usual stuff, y'know?
But my job is a bit different than most. I work with developmentally disabled adults at a autism facility (basically a school for these guys during the day). It's not the easiest thing to do, but it pays well, and is a good placeholder until my college classes are over.

So most days I'm on a van run that takes the clients back to their homes they live at. It's easy enough. Ride in a van, make sure no one has a temper tantrum, and go home. But, one of my clients' moms is going back to junior college to get her degree. She's had a lot to handle in life, and is doing her best. Dad's a truck driver, other siblings of this client are in and out. Mom's doing her best she can. She takes the bus cross-town to get to the campus.

She called before classes started and tried to work out a system of meeting up with us in the afternoon at one of the bus stops to drop off her kid. We worked around it, and accommodated her. That alone was enough her to give us a lot of thanks and gratitude. It wasn't a big deal to us, we were just doing business.

But, last week she missed the bus.

Now, from the campus to where we pick up/drop off, it's probably a solid 25-30 minutes on the bus route, with stops included. So when she called us in a panic, trying to figure out what she was going to do, I just told her not to worry, we'd drive cross-town and drop her kid off there.

You think we just had given her a million dollars.

I haven't felt or seen the gratitude this woman showed us in a long time. I'll get to the reason I'm even writing about this in the first place in a minute. She was in tears by the time we were done on the phone. Said things like "Thank you so much, this means so much to me" and "this is a godsend". She was ELATED, and that was just on the phone.

We get to the school, and she's still wiping tears away. She hugged me, thanked me and the driver again, and went back to her afternoon/early evening classes with her autistic son in hand.

So, think about this: she's a mom who is working, has an autistic son, takes the bus to the junior college to get her degree to then try and get a better job, while her husband is truck driving to bring in money, with older kids out of the house already. If you want a role model in perseverance and dedication to getting through life, she's number one on the list to me.

This struck me as we left the school. I didn't think about it until about halfway back to work, but she's literally the real MVP. I'm not looking for a pat on the back for helping someone out. I don't care about what I did. I care about how that lady reacted. She was genuine, she was truthfully, and legitimately grateful just for something that we would have done for anyone that was in a tight spot and couldn't pick up their kid the usual way. That's just what we do.

But what struck me, was that she didn't expect it from us. She was trying to find a way to do it on her own. She was looking for any and every option before she even asked us for help. I don't see that mentality much, nowadays. I see a lot of people whining for a handout, or complaining when they don't get the exact thing they asked for from someone. It gets old, and unfortunately becomes the norm when you hear the complaints for so long.

This woman stood out to me because she was grateful for something as simple as us driving cross-town to drop her child off, rather than us standing up and saying "nah, we'll just wait at your house, you can come here".

The point is: it feels a lot better on both ends of the story when someone is truly grateful for something you did for them, and something you did for someone that truly needed help is grateful for you doing it. There's been times I've tried to help people in the past, and then they come back at me with "well this isn't what I wanted, why did you even do this for me in the first place if you aren't going to do it right?". I feel like crap after hearing that, because all I try to do is help someone else out to the best of my ability. Where is the grace, and thankfulness from people anymore? It's such a rare occurrence by people, that this feels bad to write about. It's sad that we live in a world where expectancy trumps gratefulness in terms of lending a hand to humanity.

This lady gave me a bit of restored faith that there are still people out there who are grateful for the help, and don't expect it. I just wish there were more of her in the world.

A Glance at Race Day

Here's some shots from around Carsland. I need to practice more at shooting on-ride shots along the side of the car, because I want more shots like the one posted below to turn out along various parts of the track.

LAX Photos

I really can't wait to get down to L.A., mainly because there's SO many different things to photograph. I love urban art and architecture, so when my family went to pick up some family from their trip to China, I went around LAX and snapped some photos. Here's two of them that I really liked. I'm still trying to work on long exposures with so much light around me. I'm used to standing out in the middle of a field in Bakersfield shooting stuff and making the dark sky light up, so this is a fun new challenge to me. But, I think these turned out well, and would love your opinion.

Blasting Through A Solar Flare

I love this ride. It's old, and admittedly needs some upgraded love, in my opinion. However, it's still a lot of fun. Every time I'm with family or friends, we're on a constant competition to see who gets the high score. But, I don't think it's fair for the rest of them, because I found out where all the high score hidden targets are. Do you know where they are? 

Is This Your Sign? Magic On Main Street

This has to be one of my favorite stores on Main Street. It's small and quaint, but it has some cool history. Steve Martin got his start here before he went on to be an actor. In fact, there's a photo of him near the cash register. Also, this is the only building (outside of the Coke Corner's red lights) that has colored bulbs, outside of the traditional white that adorn the rest of the buildings along Main Street.

Disneyland Forever: An Orange Start to a Magical Kingdom

I'm trying to get back into a habit of posting more photos I've shot. Most of these have been sitting on my desktop for a while, and I've done nothing with them. A while back a friend of ours signed us into Disneyland, and we got to check out the new 60th Celebration stuff. All of the shows are fantastic, and the upgrades to the attractions are top notch. So, let's start this off with a opening shot of the new fireworks show, Disneyland Forever.

This show's technology is fantastic. Steve Davison and his team took the projection mapping from previous shows they've done in other Disney parks and brought it home for the 60th. It starts out with orange groves, as it once was before Disneyland was built. To see something like this, even projected, gives a really surreal idea of what it must have been like for Walt to look at trees, and see where his Castle would go, or where the world of Tomorrow would be. Tying it back to what was once there was really awesome to see, and to think that imagination truly has no limits is inspiring, to say the least. 

Meet Winnie

It's been about a week since we've had our new family member, and she's already captured my heart. It's funny, because I didn't even want her. Hailey has been on me for about the last six months, trying to convince me that we needed a dog. I haven't wanted one since I lost my first dog DJ. It just never really felt right.

But, a week ago, after coming home from a trip to Long Beach, she had looked up at least half a dozen puppies of various breeds, and wanted to 'just go look'. I had started to take a nap, but I was woken up around 8:00pm with a phone in my face and Hailey saying "Theres puppies we can 'just go look' at right now. Well, look at how well 'just go look' went. We 'just bought' a puppy. Not just any puppy, the first puppy we looked at. There wasn't any hesitation or doubt. She was ours.

The owner was a good old country boy. I'm not talking your basic redneck. I'm talking, the guy had a definitive twang, and when we walked up, he was finishing up a pack of bud light with his friend, and smoking deer jerky from a recent hunting trip. Shorts, tank top, fishing hat, he fit the stereotypical bill for redneck. But, he was an absolute gentleman, and came off as a guy who would hug you over hit you. His dog, our puppy's mom, was super clean, well behaved, so I figured the puppy had to be the same way. We walk to his backyard, and there she was, laying by the side wall of the house, in the shade. There she was, a little half Queensland, half uhm...half...Schnauzer? Terrier? We don't really know. Anyway, Hailey held her first, and watching her, I knew that this was it. The minute I would hold her would be it. I'd melt, and say yes.

Now I've got two girls to look after. 

Well, that obviously happened, because now we're a week into owning this puppy, and she's adapted so well into our little family of two. Hailey was right. A dog would be great for us, especially me. I've been grumpy lately, because of a variety of reasons. Coming home now to a dog gets my mind off things, and I've got a little thing that loves me unconditionally and doesn't care what happened during the day, and just wants to play. It really is the best.

 Obviously we're still learning how to train her and housebreak her a little bit, but she really is quite adorable, and learns fast. On friday nights, we decided she gets to sleep up on the bed with us, but otherwise she's adapting well to her crate. In the next few weeks we go to get her second round of shots, and once she's cleared, I'm thinking a trip to the park to play is in order.

As for now, I'm going to go play some tug of war with this little one, and just enjoy some pure happiness.