It's Alive!

So if anyone is still reading this, I haven't completely abandoned my blog! I just neglected it for a good, oh, 3 1/2 months? Those of you who know me and know what I do for a living know that I don't have much of a life between January and May, although this year I did manage to squeeze in some social activity during that time, which is pretty amazing. I've also been preoccupied with other social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, which have helped me keep up with what my friends are up to and have also proven insightful for work as well.

I'll get around to posting reviews at some point, but one of my new-found sources of enjoyment is Sweet Home Cafe. It's a Taiwanese hot pot place located in the strip mall across from Old Stadium Park on King Street, just before Isenberg (there's a Kozo Sushi and Kiawe Grill in the strip mall), and it just plain makes me happy.

In Kailua, there's a place called Crepes No Ka Oi that is also worth trying. They have both savory and sweet crepes, and I tried both. They also have a nice selection of fancy teas. Again, will post a full review later, but if you're in the area and looking for something new to try, go for it!

I've spent a lot of time cooking meals for myself at home too. Whole Foods has become my source of grocery-shopping pleasure. Yeah, it's expensive, but what do you expect when you're buying stuff that's pesticide and hormone-free? The local stuff really does taste better. Hopefully there will come a time when our agriculture industry grows to a point where the local stuff will be cheaper than the mainland stuff.

What else have I been up to? Well, all nine of my readers know that there have been a number of changes in my life over the last year, including transitioning back to singledom (and if you didn't know, well, now you do!). Thankfully the split was very amicable and we're still friends, so that makes things much easier. Being single again has made me refocus my life on other things, including strengthening friendships, as well as creating new ones. While I never "lost" my friends, I think the amount of time we spend together goes up and down depending on what is going on in everyone's lives. I feel fortunate to have the friends that I do, most of whom I've known for a good 20-25 years now! I'm also fortunate that I consider all of my coworkers friends too.

Now that I have a life again, I've also been thinking of where I want to travel this year. Unfortunately, no travel for work this year because of budget restrictions. But I'm just thankful to still have a job after seeing what others have gone through. However, I'm still going to do my part to support the economy by traveling this year! My first trip is in about a month to Las Vegas and California. Part of my time in Vegas will be spent helping a friend with a baseball tournament, but of course there is always time for shopping and other delights! Then I plan to drive to Northern California and down the coast, ending up in LA where I have an aunty and a couple of good friends to visit. Later on in the year, maybe September or October, I hope to swing a visit to the northeast (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont). I absolutely love the peacefulness and quaintness of New England!

So all in all, I would say life is pretty good! I have a good job that I enjoy, and I have great friends to help make life all the more enjoyable! More to come later...

Disney World, Here We Come! (Yeah, I know, it's 3 months late...)

Okay, so a lot has been going on in my life over the last three months and I've been slacking on the blog posts! I had a discussion in my mind about what the topic of this post should be, and I decided to continue where I left off in Florida.

After the conference in Tampa, my three coworkers and I drove to Orlando to spend some time in Disney World. This was a first-time event for two of my coworkers, the Hamster and Finance Man (I guess now he's Judiciary Man, but we'll just call him Finance Man for purposes of this post). Gym Boy and I have both been there several times. What really made this trip enjoyable for me was seeing the reaction of the Hamster and Finance Man as they experienced things for the first time. Even though much of it was not new to me, the newness they were experiencing made it much more pleasurable.

The Hamster, Finance Man, and I all had rooms at the POP Century resort, while Gym Boy had a room at All Star Sports (a long story which is a sore subject that we won't get into here!). These are all "value" resorts by Disney standards. Basically, it's like a motel, but Disneyfied. Disney was very smart in creating their resort system -- value, moderate, deluxe, and home-away-from-home. The price levels are commensurate with the level of amenities provided, as well as convenience to the parks. But a value resort is still better than staying offsite, in my opinion. Transportation is very convenient, and one of the best amenities is package deliveries. You can even have one small item delivered from the parks to your resort.

I did not make any special requests for my room, but was quite pleased with the location. Top floor (4th), with a view of Spaceship Earth way in the distance. I also had a view of a lake. The room itself was adequate and comfortable for my needs, but again, it's Disneyfied, so that makes it more special than staying offsite. The "mousekeepers" do special things like making towel animals and leaving them in your window to greet you upon your return from the parks.

But you know what my favorite thing is about POP Century? The Food Court. It's the awesomist food court ever. Just ask the Hamster. The Hamster never lies. Well, almost never. Even during slow periods of the year, it's open from 6 a.m. until midnight. It's kind of like a school cafeteria, where you grab a tray and you can go to different stations to select different types of food. There's also a general area with a refrigerator if you just want to grab something and go. Then you go to a bank of cashiers and pay for your food. It's super convenient if you just charge it to your room. You don't even have to sign for it. And the food is actually pretty good! My favorite is the pizza, especially for a late night snack.

One last thing about the food court, and this is something offered at all Disney resorts -- refillable mugs. The initial cost may seem pricey, about $12-$13 for a plastic mug, but if you fill it at least 4 or 5 times, you've already made up the cost. Plus, once you've paid for the mug, you don't have to wait in a line to get your drinks filled since the drink station is beyond the cashier. There is a whole slew of drinks to choose from, including hot chocolate! One woman told me that you can even get milk or orange juice if you take the mug to the bakery area. We all got a mug. I only used mine at night after spending the day in the parks, but my cohorts used it for breakfast too.

I'll stop here and will continue later -- it's not much, but it's a start! Coming soon...day 1 in the Magic Kingdom and getting soaked in EPCOT.

Dolphin (NOT!) Cruise and International Plaza

On the last day of these conferences I attend, there is usually some kind of social activity offered after the serious stuff is over. This time it was a dolphin cruise off of Clearwater Beach. Sounded like fun, so we decided to go.

We hopped on a superstretch tourist bus (complete with the bendy thing in the middle) for a ride to Clearwater. The ride was longer than I expected, maybe about one hour -- I thought it would be more like 20 minutes. Sometime toward the end of the bus ride, one of the conference coordinators said that the dolphin tour people canceled at the last minute because of some kind of problem with the boat. Fortunately, the bus driver was able to suggest another boat company that might be able to take us.

We arrive at the harbor, and we're watching the conference coordinator walk over to "The Calypso Queen," which apparently is the replacement boat. I need to add a picture of it later (UPDATED to add photo at left!), but just picture the cheesiest boat you can imagine -- yellow, with a fake coconut tree on top. The logo on the flag consisted of martini glasses, and the interior was even more cheesy, with tropical print plastic seat covers over all the chairs. But, my theory is that at least we have a story to tell, and this boat was definitely more interesting than the one we were supposed to be on (see picture on the right)! While we didn't see any dolphins, the captain pointed out some nice homes that belonged to celebrities such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise. The cruise lasted a little over an hour.

The adventure didn't end there. On the bus ride back, I noticed that we had been sitting at a traffic for quite a while. Several minutes went by and I saw cars passing us on the left as we just sat there. The conference coordinator came on the PA system again and said something about a truck hitting the bus. None of us even felt anything! So, we sat there for a while. One person commented that it's too bad this didn't happen near a Starbucks or something. Instead we were stuck in a boring area surrounded by houses on one side and a couple of office buildings on the other. After a while, the bus moved. But we were turning right onto a side street to get out of the way of traffic. Bummer. Stuck there for a while longer. At least we were having a good time on the bus sharing stories and getting to know people better. I think the whole ordeal took about an hour. Again, I just looked at it as another story to share when I get home!

After we got back to the hotel, we decided to hop into our car rental (our friends picked it up at lunch so we'd have it ahead of time for our drive to Orlando) and go to a mall. The hotel gave us directions to two malls on the same street. We ended up at International Plaza. It was a very nice mall, although surprisingly dead. I guess everything in Tampa is dead! We went shopping for a while, then set out to find dinner.

We found an outdoor restaurant and entertainment area. THIS is where everyone was! No wonder the mall was so dead, everyone was out here eating, drinking, and having a good time! There were a number of places to choose from, but we chose a quiet place that had no wait or huge crowd, the Gallery Bistro. Although being that quiet was a little scary...was something wrong with it? The food was terrific. We all started with a cup of blue crab and corn chowder, which was most excellent. We shared an appetizer of bistro chips, which were freshly made potato chips topped with a balsamic syrup and gorgonzola cheese...yum! For my entree, I had a cobb salad. It was good, but too huge after eating the soup, and a bit overdressed. I should have just ordered a small salad (which was still pretty big!) like my friend did.

Once again, our adventure was not over. By the time we finished dinner, the mall was closed, and we couldn't go back to the car the way we we came in. We found an escalator down to the parking garage, but we were parked on the other side of the mall, so we started walking. Then a security truck pulls next to us...uh oh, were we doing something wrong? Were we going to get busted? "Do you guys want a ride?" the friendly female security guard asked. There were five of us, so two walked and three of us hopped in with her. I figured she was probably bored and enjoyed having some company for a little while! We have found the people in Florida to be very friendly overall.

Coming up...driving to Disney World!

Ybor City

When researching what to do in Tampa, you will most likely come across a suggestion to take a streetcar to nearby Ybor City. Sounds like a fun thing to do, so we did. The street car ride was kinda fun, and the stops are pretty convenient.

When we got off in Ybor City, I didn't really know what to make of it at first. It seemed pretty dead. What kind of place is this? We figured we'd be able to cover the whole thing in an hour and go back to the hotel! However, it began to grow on me.

While I've never been to New Orleans, I imagined that Ybor City shares some similarities with the French Quarter in its quirkiness and kind of dark nature. We later learned that we were there on what is typically a quieter night. Apparently things pick up from Wednesday to Saturday, and we were there on a Tuesday night. A lot of stores had "Sorry We're Open" signs in the window. They definitely have a sense of humor here!

There were also a lot of "Guavaween" signs. I wish I'd taken a picture of one. We heard that a long time ago, someone had set out to make Ybor City a kind of guava capital, but it didn't take, and now Ybor City pokes fun at itself by celebrating Guavaween during the Halloween season.

There were a number of interesting places to consider for dinner. Initially I was looking at a place called the Green Iguana, a bar and grill type of place. There was another place that had wood-fired pizzas that sounded interesting. We let one of my coworkers choose, and she felt like eating Greek food, so we headed for Acropolis. It turned out to be an excellent choice! I ordered the mousaka and a glass of wine. They had a pretty extensive selection of Greek wine.

Before we decided on dinner at Acropolis, we walked by a place that served crepes. We decided ahead of time that we would go and have a crepe for dessert, so we made sure not to overstuff ourselves at dinner. The crepe place ended up being a good choice too. So good that I didn't even think of taking a picture of it before we started digging in! (UPDATE! Found a picture taken by my friend...) My friend and I shared one that had Nutella, bananas, and walnuts in it, and was topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

While Ybor City appeared to be dead, Acropolis was quite popular, which isn't surprising given the goodness of the food and the funness of the live Greek entertainment, complete with napkins falling from the sky and dishes breaking. There were definitely more people walking around by the time we left, around 9 p.m. The cigar shops were pretty interesting too. We got to see cigars being rolled, and the guy in the window even posed for my friend. I'll have to post that pic later when I get it from her. All in all, a worthwhile adventure.

Cafe Dufrain

Okay, it looks like Blogger is finally letting me do my thing, so I have some major catching up to do! I'm in Disney World right now, and today was a lazy day for me consisting mostly of shopping and taking pictures. Tomorrow is my spa day, so I want to be nice and rested and relaxed for that!

Back to last week...so last Tuesday, lunch was not included in our conference, which kind of sucked given that we only had a little over an hour to walk around and find something. We went on a little bit of an urban trek thinking we could find something over a nearby bridge, but to no avail. So we basically ended up just a short walk away from the hotel at a place called Cafe Dufrain, which I had on my list of possible restaurants to try. It turned out to be a good choice.

It's a cute little place with indoor and outdoor seating. Two of my friends had a pulled pork sandwich, and my other friend and I both had the chicken rigatoni, which was excellent! It was in a creamy sauce which was very tasty. And I still say you can't beat the taste of fruits and vegetables on the mainland. Our produce at home sucks, unless it's locally grown. So all of you who live in Hawaii, SUPPORT LOCAL AGRICULTURE!

Our little adventure ended up making us a half hour late in returning to the conference, but, oh well...at least we returned! A lot of other people didn't!

Coming up...Ybor City.

Splitsville!

I gotta write super-fast since Blospot has not been cooperating with me these past couple of days!

Most of today was spent in a conference, which for the most part was pretty good. Especially the lunch part! The hotel food was surprisingly good, and you really can't beat mainland fruits and vegetables. Most of the stuff you get in Hawaii, especially things like berries, suck.

Anyway, tonight we started out with a conference-related reception. Again, good food: mini beef wellingtons, mini chicken quesadilla rolls, really good cheese, fruit, veggies, and spring rolls. Then we decided to venture to a place called Channelside. But it was pouring, so we caught a taxi. It only took us about 5 minutes to get there. Channelside is an entertainment complex, pretty similar to Aloha Tower. And just as dead. Which is really sad, because it seems like a really cool place. There are a number of hotels in the area, so I'm not sure why more people don't go there. It appears that some places close pretty early too. I guess that's what happens in downtown locations.

Anyway, so we went to a place called Splitsville. It was a bowling alley, pool hall, and bar, all in one. The layout was quite weird, with the pool tables right BETWEEN the bowling lanes! We decided to shoot some pool and have a drink while we were there, before they got taken over by a private party. After that, we headed over to Hooters. Believe it or not, I've always wanted to try their buffalo wings. We got the boneless chicken, fried pickles, and a steak quesadilla. It was all pretty tasty, as was the mojito!

Enough for today. Tomorrow is another conference day, and hopefully a trolley and street car ride to Ybor City tomorrow night!

I have arrived!!

Quick post, since I am about to drop dead from tiredness! I did not get a lot of sleep on my flights here -- from Honolulu to Houston, then Houston to Tampa. We had a 4 hour layover in Houston, and we managed to get one hour of sleep there.

We arrived in Tampa at about 5 p.m. and are staying at the Westin Harbour Island. The weather was not good, as it was pouring on the ride over from the airport, so we decided to stick close to the hotel. Besides, we're all dead tired! We found a very nearby restaurant called Jackson's. At first it looked a little to frou-frou, based on the atmosphere, but it turned out to be a very good choice and not over the top at all.

I started with a wine flight (4 white wines) and had an entree consisting of grouper topped with lump crab meat, served atop a potato cake and some stir fried veggies. It rested on a bed of cream sauce that was wine-based, but I can't remember the name of the wine. Two of my friends had the shrimp & scallop linguine, and another friend had a chicken focaccia sandwich served with french fries.

Tomorrow begins our conference, but hopefully we'll be able to find something equally good to eat for dinner tomorrow!