I am getting ready to start my journey to be with Thom and his family in Virginia for Christmas. He left last week and has been there since Monday; tonight I fly out on a redeye and will join them tomorrow.
We booked our flights separately and several weeks apart, so our outbound flights ended up being completely different. Thom took Delta to Lynchburg via Atlanta, and I am taking United to Charlottesville via Washington (Dulles). (CHO-IAD may well be the shortest flight I’ve ever taken, just 77 miles.) And fortunately we coordinated our return next Monday.
We had a great time at Disneyland a couple weekends ago. It was our first time visiting during the holidays, and it really is pretty magical. A couple of highlights were a four-course dinner at Napa Rose inside the Grand Californian Hotel; and the Disneyland Holiday Time tour, which takes you all over the park, and gets you priority boarding for the Haunted Mansion and It’s a Small World (both are redone for the holidays) and reserved seating for the Christmas parade. There we were, sitting in chairs at the start of the parade route, drinking hot chocolate, and waving to the characters. It definitely made me feel like a kid again!
Here’s a video I shot with my new digital camera and edited in iMovie, though to see it larger and in HD splendor — notwithstanding my beginning camera skills — go watch it at its page on Vimeo:
I’ve uploaded my photos to my Disneyland set on Flickr, which also has photos from previous visits.
I think this has to be one of my signs of adulthood: I am going to Disneyland for the second time within a year. When I was a kid, the thought of going twice in the span of a few months would be kind of ridiculous to my parents. But very soon after Thom’s and my recent visit this past June, we thought, OK, when are we coming back? Christmas! So that’s where we’ll be this weekend, especially to see the park all decked out for holidays. Love this commercial:
Just to backtrack and quickly re-cap the June visit: It was a lot of fun, despite the weather being oh so hot! The main reason for the trip was a merchandise event for the forty-fifth anniversary of the Enchanted Tiki Room, and we were also celebrating our own five-year anniversary of when we first met.
Travel notes: We flew Virgin America, our current favorite airline. We’re usually á la carte kind of travelers, but for the other arrangements we went with a vacation package from AAA that included admission tickets, parking, hotel stay, and assorted freebies and coupons. We stayed at Hotel Menage, which I really like. It’s basically an old Holiday Inn or similar, but redone as a chic motel. We had rented a Prius from Alamo (I like them ’cause you can check in online or at a kiosk, and then just go out to their lot and choose your car). The nice thing about the hybrid: we drove little enough (just among LAX, the hotel, and the park) that the gas gauge was still at F when we returned the car, so we didn’t have to fill up the tank.
At the park we rode old favorite rides and new ones, like Toy Story Mania; considering the last time I’d been to Disneyland was very pre-California Adventure, a lot was new to me! And thank goodness for FastPass. Sometimes you still have to wait in line even with a FastPass, but it’s a lot shorter and sure beats waiting in the regular line.
Here’s a quick video I slapped together in iMovie, of a few scenes: the Tiki Room and Fantasmic! at Disneyland, and “Circle of Life” (country style) and the Aladdin stage show at Disney’s California Adventure:
So fast forward to this weekend: We’re pretty much following our travel logistics template from the last visit. But in addition, on Friday night we have dinner reservations at Napa Rose in the Grand Californian Hotel, and are scheduled to go on the Holiday Time tour on Sunday. Can’t wait!
Tomorrow, Saturday, November 15, simultaneous protests will take place all over the country to speak out against marriage inequality, especially Proposition 8, which eliminated the right to same-sex marriage here in California. The events start at 10:30 a.m. Pacific (1:30 p.m. Eastern). We’re going to the one in San Francisco at City Hall (Facebook page).
All democracies are systems in which citizens freely make political decisions by majority rule. In the words of American essayist E.B. White: “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time.”
But majority rule, by itself, is not automatically democratic. No one, for example, would call a system fair or just that permitted 51 percent of the population to oppress the remaining 49 percent in the name of the majority. In a democratic society, majority rule must be coupled with guarantees of individual human rights that, in turn, serve to protect the rights of minorities and dissenters — whether ethnic, religious, or simply the losers in political debate. The rights of minorities do not depend upon the good will of the majority and cannot be eliminated by majority vote. The rights of minorities are protected because democratic laws and institutions protect the rights of all citizens.
This publication is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs. This is the story we tell the world. It’s apparently lost on those here at home who voted to eliminate gay couples’ rights — my right — to marry.
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Proposition 8 was approved here in California, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry. And as you might expect, I am sad and angry, but ultimately resolved to continue fighting. If the newly filed lawsuits don’t overturn Prop 8, then for sure we will have a new initiative on the ballot in a couple of years to restore our equal rights.
There are some silver linings: state domestic partnership, while not equal to marriage, is intact; among various age groups, opposition to Prop 8 was highest among young voters; and on a personal level I am proud of my home county (San Mateo) for voting 62% against it.
Thom and I took part in a massive protest march in San Francisco last Friday (photo of us here courtesy of Julie). The march started at Civic Center and followed Market to Castro, ending at Dolores Park. What an amazing sight. This is the kind of passion and momentum we need to carry going forward.
Thom has written a thoughtful post on Proposition 8. Go check it out.
Lest there be any confusion: same-sex marriage is currently legal in California. Prop 8 would amend the state constitution and take that civil right away from hundreds of thousands of Californians, including me. Let’s not write discrimination into our constitution.
If you live in California, I ask you to vote NO on Prop 8. Ask your friends and family to vote NO. And anyone can make a donation — big or small, every bit helps — to the No on Prop 8 campaign.
I couldn’t let a whole month go by without blogging at least once and without at least quickly mentioning that we had a great time on our Alaska cruise. At our port excursions we did some firsts for us, like ziplining through a forest canopy and riding a floatplane over glaciers!
Trip report is forthcoming (eventually), and I’ve started to upload some photos. I skipped ahead chronologically and just uploaded one from the middle of our trip, at the border between British Columbia and the Yukon, which we visited on a bus/train excursion from Skagway, Alaska:
Our Alaskan vacation, which has been months in the planning, is finally upon us! I still can’t believe it’s here. Tomorrow morning we fly to Vancouver, where we’ll spend the weekend, and then on Monday we board the Coral Princess for a seven-day cruise to Whittier, Alaska, with stops in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. And at the end, we’ll spend a couple of days in Anchorage before flying back to San Francisco.
This will be my first cruise and my first time to Alaska. As usual we’ve packed at the last minute, but we’re basically ready! We should have Internet access now and then during the trip, so hopefully I can write or at least update status as we go along.
Happy holidays!