Valentine's Day In Pooh Sticks Land

I know, I know, it's somewhere between cliched and sickening to say that for Lisa and I Valentine's Day has never been much of a big deal because we celebrate our love everyday, but it's also true. We're that gross couple kissing in Walmart. Don't judge. She's just that kissable. All the time. And I have no filter. Or much self control. Don't feel alone if you see us and are made a bit uncomfortable by the blatant displays, we regularly horrify and gross out our teenager. But it works for us and we're happy so, deal with it.

This year as Valentine's Day approached we decided that our gifts to each other would be brand new Blu-rays of two classic Disney animated features, Jungle Book (because it was just re-released on Blu-ray a couple days ago) and Robin Hood. Romantic, huh?
We'll also go out to dinner at a little Italian place with a Irish pub inside near here, but we're bringing the boy along because, well, we love him, too.

The Jungle Book was Lisa's idea, really. I was seeing commercials for it and saying I was going to buy it the day it was released. It's one of my top Disney favorites. I'll give it its own post after we crack it open and check out the shiny new version. Anyhow, Lisa suggested that maybe I wait because, ahem, someone might want to get it for me for Valentine's Day. While she was looking into pre-ordering it on Amazon (where strangely it isn't going to be available until March) she ran across the Blu-ray of Robin Hood and asked if we would just like to get both for each other and be done with it. That sounded like a fine idea to me and so there we go, V-Day covered!

But it's really not so un-romantical as all that. Lisa knows how much I love Disney's Robin Hood and she has come to see the two of us in its main characters. Lisa fancies herself a princess and I fancy myself a bit of a rogue. Silly, maybe, to you reading this, but we buy it and love it. Lisa IS a bit like Maid Marion, maybe more like her than like any other Disney Princess. Maid Marion does a lot of giggling in this movie. She goes through the whole thing, even the scary parts, with a sense of humor based in the trust that her anti-hero from the woods will always be there for her. She isn't the sort to just play damsel in distress, though, and hope for rescue. Nope, Marion joyfully fights her way through the bad guys, giggling all the way, and helps Robin as much as he helps her. They are a team. Like us.


Like Robin, I'm not much for authority and I tend to jump in without much testing of any waters. I've always been the sort to do what I want no matter what I'm told. Sometimes, this works out great, often it gets me in trouble, like it does Robin. But no matter what happens, my Lisa is there beside me. Whether it's something big like picking up and moving 500 miles away to a place we've never seen before, or small like waking up and deciding we just must see Charleston that day, or just plain weird like jumping with both feet into a community theatre with absolutely zero arts experience of any kind, Lisa is there to be a sidekick, cheerleader, partner and sometimes protector, ready to knock anyone who doubts me over the head with a figurative iron pot. I couldn't ask for any more and I wouldn't have the freedom or courage to be who I want to be without Lisa beside me.

A couple of Christmases ago, Lisa bought for me a hand-drawn picture of Robin and Marion. She found it in an animation shop in Downtown Disney and just HAD to have it for me. It isn't a scene from the movie, it's just Robin and Marion together. Robin is gazing at his Princess with a real look of "how the Hell did I ever mange to deserve HER?" on his face and Marion is looking out of the picture exuding simple happiness that she has everything she wants in her bandit from the woods. He can't give her riches and he is sometimes more of a challenge than would be ideal, but he is hers and she loves him. It's us. It really is. And I couldn't be happier.

But the best part of that picture is that they aren't standing still. They are Moving Forward. Always. Like us.

Disney Monorail - The First Ride At Walt Disney World

We're Disney Transportation people. We leave the car keys in the room while we're at Disney. We take long,
convoluted routes between resorts and parks just so we can use the Disney transportation system. We love the boats and even the buses that move you around the World, but from my earliest Disney memories, I've been totally in love with the monorail.

I mean, if you can look upon that thing, futuristic even though it's as old as the park, and not get excited, you're wasting your money on a Disney vacation. If public transportation was like this, I'd support the heck out of it! I love waiting at the station, peering down the track to see if it will be Monorail Blue, or Monorail Orange, or maybe, just maybe, Monorail Red. I love the silly door warnings in English and Spanish. I love seeing the resorts as we slide past, especially getting to go inside a hotel! I love people watching and seeing what "types" seem to be staying at the different resorts. I don't mind standing at all but I love when we get a whole car to ourselves. I love the whole experience. It's the perfect introduction to the Magic Kingdom, a little magic outside the gates.

So here is a tour of the monorail loop, with stops at all three monorail resorts, the Transportation and Ticket Center and of course the Magic Kingdom. It's shot by my son at almost 13 years of age, so understand you're seeing what he is interested in. Watch for the Avengers Monorail, the docked Electrical Water Pageant and Mary Blair's awesome mosaic in the Contemporary. Enjoy the trees and the parking lots and the glimpses inside the Magic Kingdom. But most all, Please Stand Clear of the Doors.

A Teen's-Eye View of the Monorail Loop

Mary Poppins On Stage

Outside the DPAC before the show

We didn't make it to Broadway for this one, but the next best thing came to us. Or kinda sorta close to us. Ok, a 3 1/2 hour drive away from us that required a vacation day to make work, but it was totally worth it. A couple weekends ago the lovely and talented Miss Lisa and I made a weekend out of going to see Mary Poppins the musical at the Durham Performing Arts Center, and it was a spectacular experience. I'm not at all qualified to "review" a Broadway style show, but I can tell you about what an awesome experience the whole weekend turned out to be.

This whole adventure started on a whim, like many Stites activities tend to. Lisa bought me the DVD of Mary Poppins for my birthday and one of the extras was a documentary on the making of the musical. I started out watching it by myself, but before long all three of us were glued to it and talking about how much we were able to appreciate better what went into putting on a show after our family's experience in Oz over the summer. During the rooftop chimney sweep scene, the musical features a bit of technical wizardry that had all of us floored. Bert takes a walk up the side of the set, across the top upside down and back down the other side. It's a really impressive piece of work and after seeing that we all decided it would be really cool to go see this show. Lisa wandered off and came back a few minutes later with the news that as luck would have it, Mary Poppins was coming to Durham in February and tickets were still available, but only a very few. We found a few seats for a Sunday night show, the final show as it turned out, and ordered them up.

Our trip went from being a family adventure to a couple's getaway after John's church youth group retreat got rescheduled for the same weekend. We were disappointed but found we'd crossed some sort of threshold in the parenting world. The morning of our last day in Durham we admitted to each other that this time we really didn't find ourselves missing John. That sounds terrible, I know, but it isn't a bad thing at all really. We were in touch with him and he with us all weekend. We were sharing our experiences, though different ones. He was having a blast in the mountains and wasn't missing us one bit either. We are all growing up and I find that it actually feels good. We had a great time as a couple, just us two, and it was perfect that way. I guess it's nice to have it pointed out so clearly that we haven't turned into one of those marriages that stays together for the kids' sake. We'll be OK, more than OK, for a long long, long time, and that feels great.

All it needed was a monorail running through it

So on with our little couple's excursion. Our show was on Sunday night, but since we were without kid from Friday morning to Monday afternoon, we decided to make a weekend out of it. We didn't go nuts and get up early on Saturday or anything, we just left about lunchtime and headed North toward our one bedroom suite just outside Durham. Lisa found that deal as well, a huge suite with a king bed and kitchen for about $85 a night. The girl is good. It was a fun drive through a very rare North Carolina snowstorm. We arrived without incident and found that our hotel looked like the Contemporary Resort in Disney World, without the monorail. Strange, but it amused the Hell out of us. The room turned out to be great, the hotel very nice and situated near a rather large mall/outdoor shopping complex. Off we went in search of dinner and amusement. We found both and spent the night laughing and talking and exploring.

Our show wasn't until 6:30 Sunday evening, so we had plenty of time to explore that day, too. We started the day with a morning bubble in the hot tub, and decided once again that we REALLY need to get one for the house, then headed out to see what we could see. We ended up on the Duke University campus and took in the cathedral (beautiful), some geocaching (unsuccessful), and the gardens. We even tried to find a spot in the gardens to play Pooh Sticks, but there was a sad lack of water in the creek beds. Oh well. Then we headed "into town" for an early dinner.

Oh my. Let me just say that if you go to Durham and are anywhere near the DPAC and don't stop into Bull City Burger and Brewery you must simply hate yourself. The place is awesome. It's a brewpub and they have taken the "sustainable restaurant" thing to new heights. These folks make their own bacon out of pigs fed on the leftover barley mash used to brew the beer. Their website explains it well, and despite it all being very "hipster," I was pretty impressed. And the food is not only delicious, but creative. I had a "bowl of pickled stuff" as an appetizer. Yep. It was like they knew I was coming and designed a menu just for me. We also tried their Bull Nuts, peanuts cooked up with bacon and sugar and rosemary and who knows what else. If you invite us to a party and ask us to bring a munchy, we are going to try making this, just so you know. The burgers were great, using beef from cows raised on a farm just outside the city and served on homemade buns. They probably grew the wheat on the roof or something. The condiments were even homemade. And the beer. Wow. I love beer and this place made me a very happy Jeffrey. We tried barley wine, which is a highly alcoholic, very slowly crafted brew served in a snifter so you feel all fancy-like drinking it. Let me just say that Youngen Horny Barley Wine is one of God's great gifts to humanity.

Nosebleeds, baby! :)

After dinner we were in fine spirits and walked the few short blocks to the beautiful Durham Performing Arts Center. This place was really cool and run very well. It was a sold out show, but the number of people never intruded on our experience. That may just as well be because we were having such a great time with each other that nothing was going to intrude, but the place was run with great precision. Our seats were in the back, the second to the last row of the very top balcony to be exact. We could have had better seats, honestly, but we could have had worse. I didn't mind at all, as being so high gave me a great look at the technical aspects of the show. A bird's eye view, I guess. I helped move sets on and off stage during our production of Wizard of Oz and wondered if I would see little dudes dressed all in black running on and off stage. Lisa said, no, she thought not. But we did, once! And we were very happy.

Mary Poppins was simply breathtaking. The music is terrific and the sets are incredible and the actors sang and danced and acted their hearts out (see, I told you I was not qualified to write a theater review). The Banks house slid onto the stage and opened up like a dollhouse. It was amazing. We were convinced this touring company wouldn't do the Bert walking upside down thing because we didn't see the framework they used in the show we saw on the dvd. Boy, were we wrong. They didn't need a frame, this Bert just walked up the side of the stage and across the top, dancing and singing all the way. We were speechless. Lisa and I are still singing songs from this show all day long, they are that good. All around a lovely experience.

We had taken off work on Monday after the show which turned out to be a good idea as we'd have gotten home really very late. As it was, we just rolled back to the hotel a few miles away, slept a nice night away and headed home at our leisure Monday morning.

Perfect weekend :)

A (Almost) Teen In The Kingdom

Tomorrow my son John becomes a teen. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one, though he has been counting down for weeks now. Thanks, John, that helps :)  John is our only child so I imagine we feel the sense of him changing forever each and every day more acutely than we would if he had a younger sibling. Tomorrow, there will no longer be a pre-teen in this house. He's "Moving Forward" as Walt liked to say. He is truly opening new doors all the time, he is exploring new things because he is truly and wonderfully curious.I know intellectually that tomorrow he will only be one day older than he is today, that 13 is only a number and an arbitrary milestone at best. But it serves emotionally and very practically to put a sort of time stamp on the changes that have been coming to John faster and faster the last few years and especially the last six months or so. I've watched him becoming less a subset of Lisa and I and more an individual with his own opinions and goals and interests. I thoroughly enjoyed John's childhood up to this point and I suppose there's a part of me that will always miss him as a child, but the person he is growing into is so absolutely and incredibly wonderful that he tips the bitter/sweet nostalgia scales almost all the way to the sweet side.

The early teen years are a big transition time, and this trip to Disney put the very best of that transition on vibrant display. John was able to enjoy the parks as a child who thrilled at driving his own go cart around the Tomorrowland Speedway, but he also started looking at Disney World with an adult's appreciation for what went into creating the Magic. For me, it was one of the best Dad experiences of my life. I got to have the best of both worlds, playing with my kid and teaching my son about one of the things I really love. John made me so incredibly proud because he gets it, he understands on a basic level that Disney is special for a reason and he was actively trying to understand it.

John and the snowman

I wasn't surprised that John was interested in what went into the Magic, the kid loves watching "How It's Made" on the Science Channel after all and even as a toddler, he was watching the ride mechanism while going around on the little firetrucks or cars or motorcycles at the fair. He completely ate up my stories of what the Imagineers had done and how and why. I was truly impressed and a bit surprised with the way he went about internalizing what I told him and actively seeking out examples himself. Before our trip, I read a lot of books about all the detail the Imagineers put into the building of everything they do. John and I had a ball looking for examples ourselves and I think John spotted one of the greatest in Hollywood Studios. Right next to Mama Melrose's restaurant, there is a little Christmas shop on the corner. Naturally, being Disney, it's winter all year round on that corner. There are Christmas decorations like you'd find on a city street and there is snow on the ground, drifted up against the corner of the building. Someone has even built a snowman. All this is cool, but after so many years of Disney parks, it's not all that uncommon to find some pretty consistent "themeing" at parks outside of Walt's world. But John discovered how the Imagineers went the extra mile, and why they are still the best. Outside the window of the Christmas shop were some footprints in the snow drift. If you followed them by putting your own feet in the outlines, you saw that they were "left" by a person walking up to the store to do a little window shopping. I was impressed by that little touch, but John found one even better. Around the corner the shop ends and before the next building begins there is a little transition. It's a set of wooden garage doors with the name of the local fire department written on them. It was "Engine Co. #"something, but I can't remember what exactly. The snow drift starts to peter out here, it's not very deep, but it does extend in front of one of these garage doors for the fire company. And right there in the snow, just where a fire truck would be leaving the garage, is a set of tire tracks in the snow. John and I wondered to each other what kind of mind thinks of that. I explained that it came from basing everything around a story, much more like the play we worked on than normal architecture where you build for a purpose. We were walking in a giant set. All of Walt Disney World is a show, one you actively participate in, but a show all the same. John totally got it, because he'd seen a show come to life from start to finish, he could totally relate to the Imagineers. The doors he opened this summer helped him open more doors, and my hope is that will continue to be a pattern throughout his life. I think he's on the right track.

Firetruck tracks

John noticed other things, such as the smell of cookies always coming from the Main Street bakery. I explained that they did that on purpose, they actually pumped out the smell of cookies all day and night to draw people into the shop. John noticed it again this time with coffee at the Starring Rolls Cafe in Hollywood Studios and couldn't wait to tell his Mom how the smell was blown out of the store as an Imagineering trick.We also amused ourselves looking for and pointing out "weineies" to each other. A "weinie" was what Walt called the big set pieces that caught a guest's eye and drove them to come towards a new area. The Cinderella Castle is a huge example, but there are weinies large and small all over the parks. I love the story of how the term came into being, and John did as well. Seems Walt loved hot dogs, weinies, and was attracted to the smell of them without fail. So he equated anything that attracted a person, that drew them in, with the smell of wienies in his own experience. Walt was a genius, pure and simple, but he was a normal everyday guy as well. That's why he was, and is, so successful. I tried to impress upon John that it was great to be the smartest guy in the room, but if you didn't know people and know how to relate to them, your genius could be completely wasted.

Walt Disney was inspired to build his first theme park, Disneyland, because he wasn't satisfied with the playgrounds and amusement parks he had seen. He found plenty of places to take his young daughters and watch them play, and he did often, but he wanted a place where parents and children could have fun together, explore together and learn together. Well, Walt, you did it. Thank you. Thank you for dreaming big and making it real, thank you for a place I can watch my son grow and learn and laugh and discover as he moves from childhood to teenager.

I dream too. I dream that these lessons never stop, that John keeps being curious and that it leads him to open knew doors for the rest of his life. No, I'm not sad that John's Moving Forward, I celebrate it. Keep moving, John. Keep moving.