Catching Up

The Friday before the 4th was the day we were planning on heading out to Disneyland. The plan was that we'd leave in the evening, after Elaine got home from work. Marc was going to go in and do a half day of work, so that morning he took Bandit with him to drop him off at my parents' house.

Marc decided to take the Mustang that day, since we were driving the TL down to D-land. I was still sleeping when the phone started ringing around 7 am, a short while after Marc had left. When I finally answered the phone, it was Marc, telling me that he was stuck on the Sunol Grade with a flat tire. And because they were doing construction, there was no shoulder, and the car was sitting in the middle of the right lane. He couldn't get it to move any further.

Needless to say, it was a pretty scary situation. Cars usually try to pass trucks on that stretch of the Grade on the right-hand side, so there were all these cars that were coming into his lane at 80 mph, realizing the Mustang was stopped there, and quickly braking and swerving back into the other lane. So Marc had to climb out of the car from the passenger side and carry Bandit over the concrete barrier and off the freeway.

It didn't take too long for the emergency freeway tow truck to arrive, and the driver took Marc, Bandit and the car to a gas station in Fremont. From there, the tow truck driver from AAA picked them up and drove them to the tire store in Dublin. They ended up having the cut the tire off of the rim, because it was starting to catch on the fender (it caused a little damage there, but not a lot, thankfully).

I went and met them at the tire store, and miraculously, the rim wasn't bent or out of round, and they were able to just put a new tire (at a cost of $600!) on it. Bandit seemed to be enjoying the adventure, and he discovered all sorts of new sounds - the tow truck driver's walkie-talkie, the pneumatic nut driver. Marc ended up taking the TL to drop off the dog and go to work, albeit about 3 hours late.

So after that adventure, we managed to leave as planned later that evening, and got down to Disneyland at around 2 am. Marc and I stayed at the Grand Californian, and got a complimentary upgrade to our room, but there was some glitch and our reservation was listed as being for 3 adults, so we ended up with a room with two double beds instead of a king. The first night we thought it would be fun to sleep in separate beds - the second night we decided to sleep in the same bed, but in the middle of the night I woke up to find that Marc had gone back to sleeping in the other bed - he felt too cramped!

We had a fun time in Disneyland - we watched the fireworks on Saturday, and on Sunday we watched the new World of Color show at California Adventure. It was really cool. It was a huge water fountain show, with video from most of the animated features (starting from Beauty and the Beast) projected on to giant water/mist curtains. This was accompanied by the music from the movies. It doesn't sound like much, but it was super impressive. We all liked it more than the fireworks.

The highlight, for me, was when Marc won me a large plush Bullseye (from Toy Story) from one of the carnival games. It was one of those horse racing games where you try to roll a ball to get your horse to move a number of spaces - the four of us were all going to play together, but somehow Marc got blocked out and couldn't get a seat. So I played with Elaine and Dean, and Elaine won. Marc played in the next round without us - it wasn't looking good for him, but somehow he won! Seriously made my day, lol. I had bought a stuffed Woody the day before, so now I had a Bullseye to go with him!

We drove back Monday afternoon - traffic was considerably worse than the drive down, and it took us almost 7 hours to get home. But it was a good, fun trip!

The day after we got back we picked up a litter of small kittens to foster - there are four of them, and they are totally adorable. I'll post pictures as soon as I can get non-blurry pictures of all of them.

Alright, time to get some work done around the house.