Tuesday, July 11, 2006

   Back from Vacation! (continuation of recap!)
Hey everybody. How’s it going?

I was hoping more people would see my last post, mostly because it was long and you would have had a few days to slowly meander through it at your own pace.

Oh well, anyway, this post will be a continuation of my recap of my vacation in Williamsburg from where I left off on Friday.
Thusly, if you want to read this post, first check out the post before this.

If you’ve already checked it out, that post is just like this one: you can read through the recap at your leisure, saving it for when you’re bored or mildly interested.
If you wanna’ save reading the recap for later, skip down to the bottom (like last time, this one’s marked where the recap ends).

Friday Night (after my previous post):
After I finished typing & posting, my parents got home to the hotel room. We ate some dinner, than my parents drove us through a self-guided car-tour of the Williamsburg battlefields that night. The woods we got to drive through were fairly pretty (there were some cool-looking swamps as well), but aside from that it was just empty fields. 9_9
On an interesting note, that little nighttime-drive helped show how big a pussy my little brother is. He was nearly hyper-ventilating when we were driving through the woods, due merely to the fact that he “didn’t want us to get lost”. :P Even my parents thought he was pathetic. Heh, not only is he an obnoxious brat, but he’s not even tough enough to back it up.

Saturday:
For our last day in Williamsburg, we started the day by going to Colonial Jamestown. It was an extremely boring walk around a muggy, grassy outdoor area, with a scrawny tour-guide/park ranger talking her head off about this or that monument. =P Booooooooring.
For whatever reason, she had a massive dog (I have no idea what breed) named “King” on a leash with her. Normally I like dogs, but I had to sit and watch this one drool the entire time we listened to the guide. XP Yucky.

After the guard stopped talking, we wandered around following my mom and looking at the various monuments and archaeological excavations. That may sound interesting, but it wasn’t. >_< The “monuments” and “exhibits” were crumbling knee-high portions of brick that were the only remaining parts of buildings that existed in the original settlement. Wooooo, corner-stacks of brick. How interesting. =P
And let me tell you people; I have never in my life seen so much goose-crap in one place! DX It was everywhere!!!!! Ugh, it was disgusting! One would think they’d have a yard-worker or something to clean that stuff up! >o<

Anyway, after touring a mildly interesting indoor exhibit featuring Colonial artifacts they dug-up and then aimlessly following my mom as she led us past more crumbling knee-high brick remains, we finally blew that popsicle-stand.
From there, we spent about 45 minutes stopping to check out some of the 2 or 3 various mini-stops they have on the way out, including a glass-blowing workshop, which I actually enjoyed (I love glass-blowing and metal-working).

After that whole thing, we went a few miles across town to visit the Colonial Jamestown Museum. There was a lavish (but mostly barren) building with some exhibits on Colonial Jamestown, but the main focus was on the outdoor area. The outdoor exhibits were split into 3 main areas: The Indian Settlement, The Docks and The Fort. Each was full of reenactment-people you could talk to.
The Docks were especially cool, mainly because you were able to step onboard a genuine Colonial Ship and explore its different decks and rooms.
I got to see a black-smith at the fort (who was a cool-cool guy, by the way). And since they had Colonial metal helmets set out for people to try on, my brother and mom took the liberty of getting a picture of my brother hanging out a window and imitating the “Taunting Frenchman” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (My mom and brother are obsessed with that movie).

After that, we went back to the hotel room at about 4.
We ate lunch and then went back to the water park for one last time before we left on Sunday. My mom stayed back at the hotel to pack for the trip back to Charlotte.
It was mildly crowded, but I got A LOT of sliding in before the park shut-down at 8 that night (I discovered a whole area of the water park I had previously missed).
We then scored some burgers at Wendy’s and came went back to the hotel for our last night in Williamsburg.

Sunday:
For Sunday we got up, ate breakfast and got the car packed.
We then decided to go for one last visit to Bush Gardens before we left.
We intended to get there when it opened at 10 AM (avoiding the lines) and leave for the 6 hour trip home at noon. But believe it or not, we managed to get lost again, going to the one place we thought we knew how to get to. >_<
We didn’t arrive till 11:30 or so, and by that time the park was crowded. >o<

However, surprisingly enough, lines didn’t interfere with what we planned to do. While my parents rode coasters, my little sister went with me to ride “The Curse of DarKastle” (which is described in detail in my previous post) one last time. Let me tell ya’, I was able to appreciate the ride’s 3D effects even better the second time, mainly because I was able to ride in the front seat of the car that time. *brain-gasem from remembering the ghost of “Mad King Ludwig” coming at him with a meat-cleaver*
After that, I took my sister to ride “Corkscrew Hill” (also described in detail in my previous post) one more time before we left.
Afterwards, we met up with my mom and went to see the “Jack Hanna Animal Exhibit” they had going. We caught a live show they were doing featuring trained animals (hoop-jumping dogs, a parrot that could do math, etc.), and then got to see some of the zoo-style exhibits they had (they had a bunch of parrots, as well as an awesome den of mountain wolves).

After that we finally left at quarter past 2 (over 2 hours later than we had intended @_@ ).
It was a long drive home, but my Gameboy Advanced and Symphony X CD’s kept me entertained the whole way through.
We didn’t get home till 8:30 Sunday night, and we were busy unpacking and settling back in until about 10:00.

****Start reading here if you skipped the above recap****

Meh, but it’s very nice to be back.
It’s great sleeping in my own bed again, and needless to say, I missed my friends here on The Otaku. ^_^
I was gonna’ post yesterday (Monday), but I kept putting it off and time just got away from me.

And on that note, how have my friends here on The Otaku been?
What did I miss while I was gone? I want you to update me on anything that happened here in my absence!
How was your July 4th? What did you do to celebrate? You can read about mine on the previous post! ~_^d

Anyway, this post has gone on long enough, and I’m not exactly in the most chipper of moods right now, so I’ll go ahead and get to the Art Feature.
“Soaring” by jamilla:


“Spirited Away”? Maybe. I’m not completely sure.
But weather it be original or fan-art, this is still an awesome painting of an oriental dragon.
The smooth strokes and silky colors & textures give this piece a lovely, soft feel, which is very hard to achieve with the subject-matter of a dragon.
The clouds for the sky background were done with spectacular expertise, and the lighting used here is of that same impressive quality.

Heh, and wouldn’t you know it, “In the Dragon’s Den” by Symphony X just started playing on my music list on Media-player. ^_^
Though the feel of the song is very different from the feel of this piece (“In the Dragon’s Den” is one of their harder and faster songs), it’s still an interesting coincidence.

OK everybody, I’ll see you tomorrow! Glad to be back on The Otaku! ^o^
(*sings along with Symphony X* “Silence fills the shrine, giving us the sign….
Forever lost, forever in the Dragon’s Den….”)
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