The Terrible Catsafterme

I came back to the land of the living at an early hour after a restless night of sleep in an uncomortable bed next to another man on the morning of Monday, July 14, 2008. But other than that, life was good. And how could it not be when I had a day at Paris Disneyland and a visit to the city of Paris ahead of me that day? After getting ready, we dragged ourselves to the Cape Cod room in the our Newport Bay Club hotel for a nice breakfast buffet. Just like the Avifauna, Disney had a huge complimentary European breakfast buffet prepared for us  – full of lunchmeats, cheeses, croissants (both regular and chocolate), fruit, and yogurt. It was an outstanding way to start the day. Read the rest of this entry »

When I first began to plan my October 2008 trip to California nearly a year before it took place, there were four goals that I had in mind which I hoped to accomplish while there – and I had no idea if any of the four would even be possible to arrange. Soon things began to really take shape and not long before I left, I had made arrangements to make three of them actually happen – and these all will be covered in this series of postings. I will go ahead and tell you the fourth since it didn’t happen: an old high school friend is employed by NBC in the publicity department and I had hoped to set up a private tour of the facility and sets. She didn’t seem to think that there was anything of interest that she could show me (or perhaps she just didn’t want to), so that prospect was quickly nixed. Turns out her job took her to New York before I even arrived in California, so it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

The Sons of the Desert convention was now over on the morning of Sunday, July 13, 2008 –  but there were even bigger fish to fry in Europe. We had spent a wonderful week in Holland, preceded by a day in Germany, and stops in Belgium and Luxembourg – all of which were fabulous (with the sole sore spot being that I never found a magnet in Belgium). We had arranged for a cab to pick us up at 11am that Sunday morning from the Hotel Avifauna. Originally we were going to leave from the train station in Alphen ann den Rijn, but due to some maintenance going on, the station was closed that morning. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday morning, August 2, 2008, Bob and I departed Denise and Aaron’s house in Westerville for the final leg (or rather legs) of our road trip journey around Ohio. This was a day trip I had long planned as part of my “website-driven re-visits of places I’ve already been but have to see again because I was too stupid to take photos of myself by the landmarks when I was there the first time” tour. I was mostly interested in the Presidential stops, but Bob added a couple of additional places to visit to round out the full day. Aaron recommended an interesting restaurant at which to dine for lunch…and off we went. Read the rest of this entry »

I guess you could blame a tomato for my introduction to Bob Satterfield the man, not to be confused with Bob Satterfield the fish (as introduced here). And not just any tomato. I’m talking a 1928 tomato. Because it was Thomas Benton Roberts, who had been hit in the face with a tomato in the 1928 Laurel and Hardy silent comedy Two Tars who referred me to Bob (again, the man) to purchase a scene photo of himself covered in said tomato, which I could get autographed. How appropriate that Bob and I both hate tomatoes. Read the rest of this entry »