An E-Ticket Ride

In the days before the all-access, all day pass, Disneyland used to charge admission and you got ticket books. Your ticket book had tickets from A to E, E being the best. So rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and the Matterhorn Bobsleds, etc. were E-Tickets. You could always buy more tickets at the little ticket booths, and the E-Tickets were always the ones that we ran out of first.

Back in the day, when someone had a fast car, or did something super cool/scary like jump off a bunch of rocks, nearly missing another bunch of rocks to land in the water (don't ask), etc., the experience was described as an E-Ticket Ride. It applied to crazy stuff that happens in life too. This past week or two has felt like an E-Ticket ride. So much going on, some of it fun, and some of it not so fun. For example, one of the fun things: we bought a Sleep Number bed with our tax return this year and we have been playing around with the settings and customizing our respective sides. They call it right and left, but I call it driver side and passenger side. Left and right is subjective, but no matter what direction your bed is set or where you're standing, driver's side and passenger's side is clear. Anyhoo...all of that hectic activity of being there for the delivery and set up, etc., and then not-so-fun happens: Bobby's computer has problems following an update so, I end up only getting 5 hours of sleep in my new bed after spending hours working on his computer and then scrubbing it all and starting fresh (a less-than-technical term for reformatting and reinstalling the OS and backed up files). Needless to say, my Sleep IQ score sucked. Work has been crazy busy, I'm helping Hubby with his final (Praise God!!) math class, every day stuff, and then throw in the odd getting pulled over by one of Hubby's fellow officers for some crazy never-before-heard-of tag status. So, the tag office has made a mistake on our registration by entering the wrong tag number, which does not match the license plate on our truck and now we get to get that fixed. Nothing quite like getting pulled over on the main drag through town on my way to work and being gawked at. Nothing to see, but they don't know that - I might be DUI or something better like a smuggler. ('Cause you know, that's what smugglers do - they come to some podunk town in Kansas to set up shop, right? 'Cause that's where all the big money is...) It was another glass-half-full moment because now we know there is a problem. What if we had been somewhere out of state when it got run? Of course, the first question out of everyone's mouths was "What did you do?" Hubby wanted to know why the officer was running my tag in the first place. Wow! I'm really feeling the love...okay, so I although the question is valid, I have NEVER gotten a legitimate ticket. Back home the parking guys would ticket me all the time for overtime parking at the day spa where I worked. Why? Because they wore those cataract-surgery shades and couldn't see my parking permit through the back tinted glass, that's why. Every last one of them written off! Yep ;)

Thinking about all of the fun I had at Disneyland, Pirate's of the Caribbean was always my favorite. I guess that's why the movies are some of my favorite's too. It's so much fun to catch all of the little throw-backs to the ride in them. Of course I haven't been back for years, so I really miss it. It was always my mom's favorite part of the park, too and we would spend a lot of time there in the "French Quarter" where Pirate's was and the Haunted Mansion were located. and of course the Blue Bayou Restaurant - so many great memories! I always wanted to work there. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I always said I wanted to work at Disneyland and be the riverboat captain for the Mark Twain....What? It could still happen!...