Beautiful Moon

I love my balcony! Tonight, I took a break from working on the class I'm giving tomorrow and went out to the balcony to breathe the evening breeze and look at the full moon over the water.

Wow! What a sight. Full and beautiful, with just a touch of red tint from the atmosphere, she laid a beam of moonlight across the width of the Indian River Lagoon. The bar of moonlight seemed to want to connect my building to the Kennedy Space Center which was fully visible across the water on this unusually clear night.

Insert satisfied and misty eyed sigh here.

Well, I've done all I can do on my class for tonight anyway, so I'll just ramble for a little bit about my adventures with my brother and his family yesterday. They're here from Virginia, staying in Orlando for the week. Yesterday I joined them for a trip to Animal Kingdom. What can I say; I love the wild critters...and the animals too.

I got up as if I intended to go to work so I'd have plenty of time to get ready. I was meeting them by 9 a.m. so we could do the African Safari before it got too hot for all the animals. A safari isn't much fun if all the animals are hiding from the sun. We managed to get there in time for an 11:00 tour. Lots of animals were still out, especially the ones that don't mind hanging out in the water. One lion was out, dozing under a tree on a hill. Better than no lions at all.

I wanted the lion to eat the silly tourist who saw the African town setting and said, “This area needs some serious restoration.” Her companion was kinder than I would have been. I don’t think I could have stuck with saying, “It’s on purpose, honey.” I would have had to say something more like, “Go to Africa and redecorate the entire countryside, then come back here and make this match.”

We saw some of the shows, and a big parade, and rode some of the rides. The only other thing I had in mind that I wanted to do was to visit the Asia section where they have a wonderful setting of Asian ruins and a bazaar, etc., and you walk through this setting and see animals, birds, and reptiles as you go. Here, I saw more large cats--tigers. Four were in one area, two of them lounging in a large pool of water and the other two in the shade watching the silly snacks—I mean tourists. The other was in a different section, but I think there were more that weren't where we could see them. They were all beautiful anyway.

The kids were normal kids, swinging constantly back and forth between excited and energetic, and tired and cranky. Can't blame them really. I think the “comfort level” (read DIS-comfort level) was somewhere around 1,000. I think the weather man put it at a measly 105, though. What do they know anyway? (A heck of a lot more than I do!)

As the day wound down, and the grown-ups were showing signs of surpassing the kids in crankiness, we decided to have a bite to eat at the Rainforest Cafe. My sister-in-law now thinks I'm a complete and utter freak (my brother already knew it) because of comments I had made waiting in line for a ride. The ride was indoors and the walls in the queue were decorated with imprints from leaves and ferns and such; I had commented that I wanted walls like that in my house. Then at dinner I noted the jungle vines decorating the ceiling and the giant mushroom motif over the bar; I stated that I needed giant mushrooms and jungle vines in my bedroom. My brother and his wife both laughed at me. The kids laughed too, but I think that had a different reason for it.

I came home exhausted and with a pounding headache, but overall I was very glad to have gone. It was great seeing them all again, and it was a lot of fun going to the park again. And driving home I had a wonderful view of the moon as she got closer to full. When I reached the apartment, I tossed food down for the cats and rushed out to the balcony to see her over the water. Last night, there was the cloud effect going on, too, which made her look mysterious and aloof. I just can't enough of this sky.