Carthay Circle Restaurant and World of Color

On my third night, I had reservations for dinner at the Carthay Circle restaurant in California Adventure.  This new upscale restaurant is actually in the theme park, housed in replica of the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles, the site of the December 21, 1937 premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. (I neglected to get a good exterior shot of the building, but there is a lovely one at the link above.) The restaurant appears at the end of Buena Vista Street, and caps off the themed entryway.  I figured I'd better go check it out, while it's still a serious restaurant and before Disney decides to convert it to a Princess dining opportunity, where you can meet characters and eat hot dogs with french fries.  (When California Adventure first opened, there was a lovely restaurant run by Wolfgang Puck.  It's now a chance for kids to eat with Ariel the mermaid instead. Also, one of my favorite restaurants in EPCOT, the Akershus in Norway, converted to princess dining a number of years ago.  As you can tell, this doesn't bother me a bit.)

Just behind my table:  There is a mural commemorating the movie
Snow White in the central cap on the second floor.

I headed in at six, waited a bit in a beautifully finished lounge, then was brought upstairs to my table. I got started in earnest, with a Hemingway Daiquiri and firecracker duck wings.  (The duck wings were really magnificent: hot, dark, sticky, and wonderful.  The chef had chosen to highlight various California ethnic influences, and these were inspired by Chinese cuisine, featuring soy and sriracha sauce.)  Then lamb for the main dish with a glass of wine (selected with the waiter's help), and of course dessert, which ended up being another wonderful chocolate and peanut butter creation.  (I do have a tendency here...)

Waiting for World of Color to begin from a prime viewing location.  Although Paradise Pier has never
been a favorite part of the park for me for rides, I do love the lights and colors at night.

Dinner at Carthay Circle also includes reserved prime viewing for the nightly World of Color light and water show at California Adventure (if you order at least two courses), so I headed down to the lagoon to watch the show after dinner.  It's a pretty cool show (I'd seen video online before, but it's pretty impressive in person).  It features a mixture of timed lights, music, fountains, fire, and animated scenes projected in high quality on huge water screens.  Very impressive. This show also added some holiday elements to the regular show, including an initial appearance of the Prep and Landing elves.  It made a beautiful end to the evening.  (Or at least it would have, if I didn't have plans to head across to Disneyland and see a few more things before I turned in for the night.)

As I headed out in the crowds, I looked out over the lagoon towards Paradise Pier on the right, Pacific Wharf on the left segueing into Cars Land (beautifully lit up at night), and thought that DCA really does finally feel like a full theme park now, a worthy mate to the park it sits next to.

Christmas, Cocoa, and Cookies (Disney Style)

After spending my second afternoon at Disneyland, I took the monorail back out to Downtown Disney and had dinner at Catal, a Mediterranean restaurant I'm rather fond of.  It's nice to be able to relax a bit and enjoy a nice meal and a drink while I'm out visiting the parks.  (And the next two nights were only going to be upping the ante on this.)  I let myself indulge in foods I don't normally eat anymore, including some lovely bread, sangria, and even a yummy chocolate/peanut-butter dessert.  But that wasn't going to be it; I had plans for the night.

I headed back into the park (which, with all the lights and holiday decor, is even more lovely after a glass of wine) and enjoyed sampling my way through a number of my favorite attractions.  (At one point, I also rode through the Snow White dark ride with a group of three other people who I think were about mid-twenties.  One woman in the group asked if she could sit with me, and I said "sure", so they piled in.  She said the two of us were up front, which "is obviously the best place."  I deadpanned, "Yeah, but the witch might get us."  Sometimes you can make weird connections with total strangers while on a Disney vacation.)

But as it came up towards the nightly fireworks display, it was time to start rolling out my plans for celebrating Christmas right.  I hadn't indulged too much in holiday treats before I'd come, but I knew that Christmas celebrations would still be in full swing at the resort, and I planned to enjoy some cookies, gingerbread, hot chocolate, and eggnog while I was there, if I could find them.  The last time I visited, I also discovered a wonderful idea:  It may be worth standing out on Main Street to watch the fireworks display one night so you can get a good view (like I did the previous night), but it's not very comfortable to stand there and watch.  If you go back on a later night and sit yourself somewhere out of the main line of sight, you can see and hear most of the show, while parked at table at a closed cafe or someplace similar, and munch on some lovely dessert at the same time.  So this time it was going to be Christmas treats, and particularly gingerbread, which I knew they had.  I headed out to a bakery on Main Street about 45 minutes before the fireworks, and eventually ordered a gingerbread cookie, an iced snowman shortbread cookie (on a whim), and a cup of hot cocoa.  Everything was eventually wrapped up and passed to me, and worked my way out into Frontierland (feeling a bit like a salmon as I fought my way through a heavy crowd moving the other direction) and eventually found myself a table just as the Christmas-themed fireworks were starting.  I was just thinking, "How perfect is this?" as I unwrapped my cookies, and discovered the bakery gave me a Mickey Mouse cookie instead of a gingerbread cookie.  (Or maybe it was gingerbread also.  I did see online that someone was claiming there was a Mickey Mouse gingerbread cookie which was coated in chocolate, and that the chocolate helped offset the strong taste of the gingerbread.  But the point was I wanted the cookie to taste like gingerbread and not have the taste "offset.")  I tried the impostor cookie, but it didn't taste like anything I cared for, so I abandoned it and ate the shortbread cookie, drank the cocoa, and watched the fireworks.  (Which left plenty of time for some additional attraction visits before the park closed at midnight, but that's another story.)

But at the end of all this, I still didn't have my gingerbread.  I tried going back around to the various bakeries on Main Street the next night, and none of them seemed to have any.  And I thought, "Dammit, I am getting gingerbread!", so I tried once more two days later, earlier in the day, and finally found some.  And when I ordered it, I actually got it!  Hurray!  So I still had my Disney Christmas, although a bit more spaced out.  (Although I never could find anyplace that had eggnog, weirdly enough.  I figured they must have that too, but no such luck.)

Cookies!

I'm glad the coordinator of the research seminar is such a health conscious individual. If I were running a seminar and brought cookies, I'd take the left over cookies home and eat them. I might even place the cookies over a wild hyena during the seminar talk to discourage people from eating too many of them. Our fearless research leader on the other hand leaves the extras in the office for other people to eat. So I go into the office after everyone else goes home and say, "Hey, look--cookies!" (I wait for other people to leave so that at least I might look like I am also health conscious. In reality, I channel Homer Simpson every time I see cookies.)

So right now I'm eating cookies while I prepare a quiz for my calc students and grade a quiz from my precalc. And I'm trying not to laugh too hard at the answers on the precalc quiz.

*munch* *munch*... mmmm.... cookies...

Better

I found out last week that we're getting an Indian restaurant in Erie. It's not open yet, but it has a web address on the sign, and it seems to be a chain which has been well-received in other places. This would be very good news.

And we finally had some good weather this weekend, particularly Sunday. I decided this Sunday must have been my Easter. (I celebrate the return of the sun, not son.) Forecasts call for getting into the 60s several times this week, so I'm happy. I'm sick to death of all the snow.

Which means I actually had some motivation to do a few things. (Not lots, but some.) This is good, since I'm going to a regional MAA meeting in Pittsburgh this coming weekend and I put in to talk. There's a good Indian restaurant near the meeting, so it will be a good trip no matter what. Maybe I'll even learn something mathematical. (Stranger things have happened.)

And I guess it's only about a month or so to the end of the semester and summer, which I'm really looking forward to.

Winter Break

So why has it taken me so long to catch up here? Because it's been taking me this long to start catching up with my life again. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to start the semester, and it started five weeks ago. Why don't I feel fully caught up yet? Let me tell you about my winter break, which is mostly good, but way too busy.

Once finals and grades were done (along with all the other stuff I had to do, like visit the dentist), I set off for a week to visit my folks back in Texas, which is always good. I got back on December 28, and was leaving again on January 1 to go to San Diego for the Joint Meetings of the AMS/MAA, where I was actually accepted to present. (Don't get too excited; it was just a ten minute talk.)

I left on the first as a snow storm was blowing into Erie, and feel glad that my flight got out. I actually had the miraculous good fortune on the flight from Detroit to San Diego to be sitting in an aisle seat with no one in the middle seat. And when I arrived in San Diego at close to ten at night, it was 75 degrees. (Hallelujah!) Picked up my rental car (they gave me a Prius, which I had thought about buying this summer), found my hotel and crashed. Of course, I was in San Diego about five days early, because what's the point of flying to a conference on the other side of the country if you're not going to take some time to enjoy it?

So on the next morning I took a couple hours to drive north and visit a little known tourist attraction for a couple of days:

(Yes! Score...) I had a hotel about a ten minute walk from the parks, which was great. My hotel was beautiful (and a bargain), and it even had an Indian restaurant with a buffet for lunch.

To my delight, all of the holiday decorations, events, and attractions were still running when I got there. The decorations were magnificent, and ubiquitous. (I must admit 'though that it's slightly weird to be walking into the park on a warm sunny day in January with "Sleigh Ride" welling up around you from the hidden speakers.)


I've always wanted to see some of the holiday attractions, like the overlay for "it's a small world" (one of my favorite rides anyway), seen below at night. (Occasionally, the whole thing would light up with projected images and play holiday themed music along with a light show. It was really cool.) It was good timing in another way, too; the ride is now shut down for about nine months of refurbishment.


I also got to see the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay at the Haunted Mansion.
(Which is amazing by the way. The Haunted Mansion was practically worth the price of admission itself.)

On my second night, I made a reservation for the Napa Rose, which is an amazing restaurant at the Grand Californian resort hotel at Disneyland. (This restaurant is even well respected by the Los Angeles food critics.) I had an extraordinary meal, which was essentially a four course chef's special, with each course paired with its own wine.

(Yes, I take pictures of exquisite meals. One of my colleagues found this amusing later in San Diego. On the other hand, I also realized that I was willing to spend more on this meal than I was willing to spend on a hotel room for the night, so you can see that food is a high priority for me.) I should also mention after four or five glasses of wine, all the lights and decorations in the parks are even more amazing. I highly recommend seeing Disneyland decorated for the holidays at night while slightly sloshed.

So I was a little sad to come to the third day, and after a morning at the parks, headed out to go back down to San Diego for the conference. On the way down, it started to rain. When I checked in at my hotel, they sprang an extra 20 dollar per day charge for having a car, and the hotel room was not as nice as the one I'd checked out of in Anaheim (but cost more). I was an unhappy camper. Why did I leave Disneyland anyway? (It probably didn't help that my feet were hurting from this point from walking so much the last few days, and I had to do a lot of walking to get around in San Diego too.) The rain sort of interrupted touring plans a colleague and I were talking about on the day before the conference started, too.

But by the end of the week, the sun came out and San Diego was at least pretty, as this shot of the convention center attests:

And with the aid of a Frommers, I found more exquisite food for myself and a colleague to enjoy:
(Actually, I had to sneak out for the sushi on my own. So few people seem to go for this.)

Oh, and the conference? It went fine. Saw some reasonable talks (and some not so reasonable), gave my talk without any real problems, went to my colleagues talk, and ran into several people I wasn't expecting to. (Most were from grad school, but I ran into one math major from college I hadn't seen in ages.) Then I finally flew back to Erie, got home around 11 pm on Thursday night, and realized: Oh crud. Classes start Monday.

So this is why, although I had a pretty great break for the most part, I'm still a little dazed and confused and not sure I'm ready to start the semester.

I also learned an important lesson from all of this: Disneyland is more fun than a math conference.

Traveling

I went down to Pittsburgh for a meeting this past weekend on using technology in math teaching. I didn't really find anything that impressed me much, 'though. We did have a demonstration of "clickers" that I was interested in, but it mostly killed my interest in them. (For those not in the know, clickers are small remote control devices that students can use to respond to short in-class questions, usually multiple choice format. The results are collected and tabulated by computer and can be displayed. They've been used a lot in physics classes.) I've thought clickers looked intriguing, but I'm not sure I'd bother for anything other than a large class now, and maybe not then. It seems like a great deal of trouble for not so much gain. We also got to play with fancy calculators, which are kind of cool, but a complete pain to try to enter anything into. I don't see using anything like this until/unless the input is better. I'd just go with notebook computers if you want portability, personally.

On the other hand, I got to meet a few people and we did get to go out to eat Indian food. (I think I may have introduced some of my colleagues to the joys of it; I'm not sure.) Indian is one thing I have a hard time finding around Erie, so I'm glad I got to do that. But it all pretty much ate up my weekend, so I'm glad I've got another one coming up. It will give me a chance to finish grading my latest round of tests. Oh joy.