Sharing Cheetos with Squirrels

There is a big bridge at work that joins two areas of the park.  The bridge is open for tourists during busy times but otherwise is closed and only employees are allowed to use it. 

Anyway, squirrels hang out around this bridge and are constantly fed by the tourists so they have no fear of human interaction at all.  If anything, when the bridge is closed they crave human interaction. 

Today I was walking over the bridge and decided to share my Cheetos with a squirrel that, as soon as he saw me, walked right up to me.  Little by little more squirrels appeared and soon I was trying to divide my Cheetos between four squirrels.  They take the food right out of your hand (with their paws of course not their mouth).  

Listening to all the crunching as they nibbled away was pretty cute.  
I really am that close to them too...I did not crop these photos.

Moving On

Gators 4-0!!!

We have survived the Muschamp era and are clearly moving on

Now it's Auburn's turn.

Add This to the List of Things I Don't Understand

 Why a person feels the need to tell everyone else how to do their job...and why everything you try to do is wrong!

Yep...everyone I work with (and for) is very nice and fun to be around - except one.

And although this person works behind the line as a "cook" she must possess a level of intelligence that the rest of us are missing because she has no problem telling the servers how to this, how to do that, where to put this, where to put that, etc... and basically she is just not a pleasant person to be around.

Examples:
- A few weeks ago, when we were at the height of tourist season, I noticed that the two girls at the station next to me were struggling to fill their orders.  A quick tutorial on how the system works: the customer orders at the cashier stand. After they pay they get a receipt and their food order comes out of a machine on a piece of paper so that we can grab it and fill the order. Anyway, they had an unusually high number of tickets waiting so, when I had a down time, I went over to help them. I grabbed one of the tickets which was for a cheeseburger.  I went over to this person (I will call her KIA for Know it All) and asked for a cheeseburger...here is the conversation:
Me:"Could I please get a cheeseburger."
KIA: "I already made that." We only had about 3000 cheeseburger orders at the time so I don't know how she knows she made it already for the ticket in my hand...but whatever.
Me: "Well I have a ticket in my hand that says cheeseburger so could you please make another one?"
KIA: Ranting while making a cheeseburger for me "You guys are SO SLOW!" I already made that cheeseburger like 15 minutes ago. You guys need to get your act together and communicate with each other."

Next situation:
This time she was working the Asian food section.  Again a little tutorial of the way things work.  The food order is electronically sent and it appears on a screen in the kitchen.

I had an order for Asian food so I walked over by her.

KIA:" What you want?" She said it exactly like that. 
Me: "I have an order for sweet and sour chicken"
KIA: "My screen aint  workin so don't just stand there - you gotta tell me what you want."  

20 minutes later

Me: "I need a sweet and sour chicken please."
KIA: "I know"
Me: "Oh OK. Is your screen working now?"
KIA: "It been workin" 

Next Situation:
Working burgers again and the screen is not working again so she tells us we need to verbally notify her when we need something.  Eventually she gets overwhelmed with everyone shouting orders at her so she tells us to put the tickets on the counter in front of her and she will look at the order and make the appropriate food.

30 minutes later I had an order for 3 cheeseburgers so  I place my ticket on the counter.
KIA:" don't put your ticket there. I aint even looking at those. You need to tell me what you want." Said in a snotty tone.  

Ugh! Seriously...how do you get along with a person like this?

Next situation:
We had run out of trays so someone went to the kitchen and brought some out. They were wet because they had just gone through the dishwasher.  This is nothing new...it happens all the time.
KIA:" you guys need to dry those off.  Go get a rag and dry those off."
As if we have time to stop serving food and make the customers wait so we can  dry off 100 food trays.  

And this one takes a lot of nerve!!!
One of our managers came out to chit chat with us and decided to help me out by grabbing a chili dog for me.  Only the customer didn't want the chili on it (on the receipt it will print as 'chili dog -  no chili).  

So he returned the chili dog, apologized, and asked her to make another hot dog.

She- freaked- out!!!
"why you doing that...that not even your job. You didn't even look at the ticket to see what it said did you?  You need to get out of here and let these girls do their job."

Oh Yes She DID!  

I really try to get along with everyone but with this gal it's going to be tough.

Night Two

We were back for night two of HHN. I guess I may be a little too old to keep up this pace because I woke this morning , checked the time (10:00), and the next thing I knew it was 11:30!

Anyway, it was another gorgeous weather night.

Upon entering the park I had issues.  Friday night I was going to put on some insect repellent but forgot to so when I got home that evening, I immediately put the can in my backpack so I would have it for last night. My plan was to spray some on in the parking lot and leave the can in the car...only I completely forgot that it was even in there.  So guess what got confiscated as I went through security?  It was oh so embarrassing as the security guards were passing the can back and forth to each other and (I'm sure) thinking, "what kind of idiot would attempt to bring this into the park?"  And then looked at me with suspicion as if I was going to use it as a weapon to perhaps spray in someone's face or something.  Luckily the can was nearly empty so, after spraying some on myself, I told them to just throw it away.  

We went through the icons scare zone and found the Caretaker this time...

We went through four new houses - Assylum in Wonderland, the Walking Dead, Freddy vs Jason, and one a collection of houses past. 
We also went to Bill and Ted's show again and went through the three we did on Friday night.  

The lines were "longish" but because we have the express pass we were able to bypass the lengthy wait times

Before leaving, I decided to try a twitsty tator 

Am I the only one this happens to - all.the.time!?
When I got in line there were 10 people in front of me...one of them ordered 7!!!  
Then, by the time I got around to ordering there were approximately 0 people behind me!  

the large looming line behind me

Misc pictures

My First HHN Experience

*Picture overload*

In a nutshell
- The house were amazing
- The shows were great
- The scare zones were fun (and a couple times scary)

It is always nice to spend an evening with my boys. I spend a lot of time with CJ and Zack but Jon is rarely with us so I was very happy he came along last night.  And while this isn't his thing and he didn't go through any houses with us, he met us for the shows and we squeezed in a ride on the Simpsons.  

This picture sums up the moods: C.J. equates this day to Christmas morning and couldn't smile big enough while Jon - well, Jon is just there.

Who is ready for HHN?  Any guesses?  

The weather was gorgeous for opening night - in the 80's and no rain at all

We got there early so we walked through the first scare zone when it was still light out.  

The "Chain Gang"

Our inaugural activity was the Jack Show at 7:45.  

By this time it was dark out so we went back through the icons scare zone...
The Director

The Usher

The Storyteller

but, curiously, the Caretaker was nowhere to be found???

Our initial house was American Werewolf in London and is my favorite so far.  I was just happy that no one or nothing jumped out at me. The whole atmosphere was overwhelming at first and that may have put me over the edge.  There are no pictures or videos allowed inside the houses.

Also no pictures or videos are allowed in Bill and Ted's show but I got a quick picture of the set before the show started. 

And they are pretty diligent about recognizing who is taking pictures and videos. The guy next to me had his cell phone out like he was recording and they were on him almost immediately!

25 years of HHN

We did three houses tonight - American Werewolf in London, The Purge, and Run - all the scare zones, and the two shows.  

The rest of the pictures are of past HHN props located in the gift shop. Of course C.J. knew where every single one of them was from and told me all the stories to go along with them.

I just happened to get C.J. in the shot as he was walking past

Back at it tomorrow night...stay tuned.