The Winter 2013 Hollywood Show and Another Evening at Disneyland
Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
Although there are great many reasons that I like to take short excursions to California, the dates on which I take them always correlate to one of the Hollywood Shows. This gives me the opportunity to continue to build on my ever-increasing number of celebrity encounters, which has become my equivalent of collecting baseball cards. Naturally, the more celebrities in attendance, the greater the value in making the effort to get there. Of course I enjoy these shows for the most part, but like any hobby, they take money and effort – which can sometimes be exhausting. So once the show is over, what I really look forward is the time I get to spend with my California friends doing a variety of activities, the most common being an excursion to Disneyland. So if the title didn’t tip you off, that is mostly what you’ll be getting in this posting… Read the rest of this entry »
It was my 41st birthday on October 2, 2012, but so far the morning had been spent in the rather bleak location of the concentration camp of Dachau, Germany. Things began to look up a bit as we left there around noon and headed north along the so-called Romantic Road that weaves through 220 miles of the Bavarian region of southern Germany. We picked up the road near its most southern point and followed in nearly 3/4 of the way, stopping about two and a half hour later, arriving in Rothenburg ob der Tauber (which translates as “red fortress above the Tauber”). Bryan & Erine had been here before so staying in this cool Medieval city for the evening had been their recommendation. 
After the vodka exposure from the night before, it was nothing short of a miracle that I was able to get up, get ready, and make my way downstairs to the lobby at 9:30am to meet up with The Wileys and David for the breakfast buffet at the Cafe in the Park restaurant in the hotel. But somehow I did… and with that, kicked off the final full day of the Sons of the Desert International Convention in Manchester, New Hampshire on Saturday, July 21, 2012. 
I have loved the movie Groundhog Day since I first saw it after its release in 1993, at which time it got lukewarm to generally positive reviews. But since then, the film has begun to find favor even more and more among fans and critics and has been elevated to the status of an all-time classic, even being selected for Preservation by the National Film Preservation Board. I don’t think I really need to sell anyone on the film; it’s one of my all-time favorites and that’s good enough. But it’s because I love it so much that I was hellbent on making a detour to scout the filming locations of the film during my weekend excursion with Dean to Chicago.