Blog Archives
Musings update
Hello, we are still hoping to get back to Disney this year, but finding travel insurance is proving troublesome, mostly because the tumour is so unpredictable, what they don’t tell you is that with 6 weeks Radiotherapy everything is shifted over 3 weeks, you don’t start getting the side effects until week 3, hair loss, side effects continue another 3 weeks after treatment has finished, brain swelling, loss of use of left side again, not sure if we get to critical mass at 1 1/2 weeks or if I have to wait the full 3 weeks then back up other side. What they also don’t tell you is life isn’t like tv, i’m still waiting to do the fun stuff. You write a bucket list, which you can’t complete due to spending too much time at the hospital, which will only prolong your life maybe a couple of extra months if you are unlucky, you get shafted by scottish provident, because they can’t input dob correctly from proof of id. So called specialist travel insurance companies, won’t touch you if you want to go to USA, no we don’t want to go to Disney Land Paris, we want to go to our Disney World Florida, our happy place, so don’t even suggest it.
Chemo has messed with my bone marrow, so having regular blood tests 😦 and platelet transfusions 😦 😦 not sure how long bone marrow takes to recover, everyone is different. Waiting for Arnold marrow to kick in 🙂 My Dad’s family has a history of making too many platelets but not until into their 60s-70s so I have a little while to wait yet.
Hoping to get back to dressmaking soon, I have two tops cut out one of them is started, a forte top and another larger Plantain cut out but not started. When I got my overlocker, I thought, ‘why does it come with a pair of tweezers, who is going to want to use them to thread, just makes it more difficult’, turns out if you have a brain tumour and Shakey hands they help a lot. Though I wish I had spent a bit more money and got a self threading one, it seems every time at the moment when I want to use it I have to change the thread colour. Though I have made it slightly easier, the same as the sewing machine it has handy dandy diagrams inside, what it doesn’t tell you is which order to thread it in, so to get round that I have numbered up the thread spools.
I’m going to be 50 at the end of next month, so hoping side effects will be finished by then, including looking about 6 months pregnant. Steroids/chocolate. If I was going to have to grow ‘a life sucking parasite’, a baby would be preferable to a brain tumour, even at 50.
Sorry if some of my ramblings are repeated from other posts, fuzzy brain syndrome (side effect). Sorry for calling a baby a parasite, hope not to offend anyone.
More soon…
Florida 2017 post three
Tuesday was Animal Kingdom we had a quick breakfast at Denny’s so we could get to our first fastpass which was Kilimanjaro Safaris, it was raining again as we got out of the car so straight into ponchos, which are far easier to get into if you start off dry 🙂
By the time we had got from the car to the park it had stopped raining but the humidity had gone right up, ‘just like a real rainforest – probably’ 🙂
The same as last year Animal Kingdom was fantastic we did Kilimanjaro safari again, Kali River Rapids and we also stayed to watch the Rivers of Light which is the new late night show. We saw the Gorillas and Colobus Monkeys.
We had dinner at the park Flametree Bar-b-que place.
The new light show was very colourful and relied on projections onto spray of waters it showed animals jumping from one stream to to another.
Universal
We had an early start on the Wednesday we had early access Park Ticket to Universal which meant we could get in at 8am, we didn’t actually get to the the park until 8:30 but it still meant we could get onto the Harry Potter – Forbbiden Journey ride, which Simon adores. We went on it twice in quick succession. Then after travelling on the train to King’s Cross we went to the leaky Cauldron for a rather expensive greasy breakfast.
After breakfast we looked around Diagon Alley then went on the Men in Black ride which was great fun, we also went on the minions ride, shrek 4d, transformers and Spider-Man.
More soon….
Florida 2017 post two
We have had a busy couple of days, we are currently on our third car, the first car passenger side mirror had an accident, so we had to change it, then a couple of miles down the road from picking it up the second car flagged up a problem with the traction control/four wheel drive so the nice Virgin rep lady arranged for us to get another one delivered to the magic kingdom instead of having to go back to the airport.
The nice Virgin rep lady has also arranged fo us to change Villas, instead of being at Highlands Reserve (which always makes me think of expensive whiskey) we are back in Providence where we have stayed the last two years. Which means good water pressure, fast internet and no plastic plants.
Monday after picking up the third car we went to Epcot, the ‘Topary’ is amazing, the Flower and Garden Festival is running again this year and they have moved the characters about since last year. We also had fast passes for spaceship earth and Soarin’, Spaceship Earth is in the big ‘golf ball’ at the entrance to Epcot, to be honest it isn’t something I would want to do again, it smelt funny and I assume it was just concentrating on communication as it starts off with cavemen working as a team and cave paintings, then papyrus and printing presses, it was narrated by Dame Judy Dench who as usual is easy to listen to .
Soarin’ was whole different thing it was a simulator ride, you get strapped onto a bench seat and it lifts you up then projected onto the screen in front of you is the various places around the world, it is very clever, because every time it changes scenes it sends something towards you to make you blink. The two problems with it is, we were in the second row so it is slightly off putting to have row of legs just in your eyeline, and because the screen is curved and we were sitting to one edge everything was curved, I would imagine that if you are in the front row and in the middle the illusion would be perfect.
While we were walking through the World Showcase it started raining, just after we left United Kingdom it started coming down quite hard, Simon had bought out ponchos so we were kept relatively dry.
While we were in the United Kingdom we had a glass of lager, one that I hadn’t heard of Samuel Smith pure brewed organic lager it was very nice, we had a walk round the Twinings Tea shop they had some great teapots and other tea related stuff.
Then into France where we had some delicious Ice-Cream and some Macarons which were alright but not a lot of flavour, the texture was amazing with the crisp outer shell and a soft gooey center.
While walking around Epcot we received an Email from the Virgin rep lady to say she had a new Villa for us to look at, so after leaving Epcot we stopped off at the current villa and packed our stuff up, because the new villa was in Providence we were confident that we would approve.
The new Villa is about 10 Villas away from where we were last year, the only problem with it is that it is the floor plan is reversed from the one we had last year which slightly freaks out Simon.
We went to Wendy’s for dinner which is a fast food restaurant.
Florida 2017 post one
Hi, as this is the third year running we’ve gone to Florida for our big holiday of the year, you probably won’t get one post per day, phew, you are probably thinking.
The flight was bumpy but uneventful, first time out of the North Terminal at Gatwick and I must say compared to the South Terminal it was looking a little tired and on a lot of different levels and stairs not slopes, what were you thinking, North Terminal Architect?
Getting out of MCO took longer than expected due to refurbishment, it seemed that no sooner had you got to the end of one queue you joined another.
The villa is in Highlands Reserve and to be honest after the two Villas at Providence, it was a bit of a let down, if this had been our first Florida Villa it would have been, this is all right, pity about the slow internet, but Providence has spoilt us. It didn’t help that when we got here they were still cleaning it even though we were later than expected, it looks like it is someone’s home. (Alison you are right – white all the way) it is very off putting to be confronted by other peoples taste in crockery and plastic plants.
Enough about that lets get on to the good stuff.
Magic Kingdom:- not a lot can be said that hasn’t been said before but we had fast passes for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad which might be my favourite, and Spash Mountain close second. We also had Seven Dwarves Minetrain but that was for later.
After Splash Mountain we came back to the Villa for an hour before going to Red Lobster – yum and going back to Magic Kingdom, this year we are determined to do all the late night stuff starting with Wishes, which is the 9pm firework display, 9pm might not sound late but Florida is 5 hours behind the UK so from our point of view it is at 2am.
Seven dwarves mine train
Some general photos of the park
Tomorrow land looks really good at night even though it looks like it stepped out of the Jetsons
After wishes they project stories on to the Castle.
More later
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 
