BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01450 Today we went to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. This was part of our Christmas gift from Dan and Marcia along with our stay at All- Star Music last night. Because we were staying on property we were able to get into the park early. After taking a photo by the giant Animal Kingdom Christmas tree Allison, Eva, andy and I went to the Avatar Flight of Passage ride. This is our favorite ride and it is super popular so waiting in line for it is a very long thing. I think we only waited for about 45 minutes though. We had gotten there close to when the rope drops for the park and because we were on property we got in a little earlier. However, the rope drop happened and all those people were sprinting to the line. It was obnoxious but we were able to get on the ride and I was able to book us a Lightning pass for the Safari when we were done with Flight of Passage. The Animal Kingdom Christmas tree was huge. We asked someone passing by to take our photo so we could all b...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01449 This morning we got up and headed to the airport at 4:00am for our 6am flight to Florida. We’re headed there to celebrate with Allison’s parents in their new house. We’ve never been to Florida for Christmas before and our Christmases with Allison’s parents have always been virtual. They send us a big box of gifts and we open them on Facetime or a Zoom meeting or something like that. This year we decided that we’d go down for a week and spend the holiday with them in person. Our flight down was very smooth. Andy had some trouble with the pressure in his ears on the descent but luckily that wasn’t too long for him to go through. He can’t seem to pop his ears properly to get relief. He had some shows to watch on the flight so he kept busy. When we landed we were greeted by Dan and Marcia. They picked us up and we headed to breakfast at Cracker Barrel before heading to Disney Springs to walk around. When we got to Disney Springs we saw all the beautiful Christm...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01268 Today we drove to Newport to spend the day with Mimi and Dano and walk around the area. When we got there Allison, Eva, Andy and I decided to walk the Cliff Walk. Andy really wanted to do this and he is all about having maps for places that we visit now. Allison printed him a map but it didn’t work out that well so she let him use her phone for a map app. Our walk to the Cliff Walk was over a mile and once we got there we walked very little of the Cliff Walk before we spent some time on the beach and decided to walk back. When we walked back to the downtown area we met up with Mimi and Dano and went into a few shops and then had lunch. We had lunch at Gary’s Diner a no frills place that had great prices and good solid comfort food. I enjoyed a Tuna Melt and had not had one of those in forever. While we walked back to the car we stopped to get some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and I stopped at a popcorn store and picked up Mexican Chocolate popcorn. It was so g...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00978 This morning we headed down to Foxwoods Casino for a couple of days to celebrate our 15th/16th wedding anniversary. Today was our day to spend at G Spa. This is a spa inside the Fox Tower. By getting services at the spa we had use of the pool and sauna and other amenities. We got there a bit ahead of our couple’s massage and so we used the hot tub and the pool to relax after the drive. The spa also had outside balconies if we wanted to hang out there as well. Our couple’s massage was an 80 minute massage and it was very relaxing. Afterwards we received champagne and chocolate covered strawberries. We enjoyed those and then Allison had a manicure and a pedicure to go to while I was free to use the amenities of the spa. There is a men’s section and a women’s section. Locker rooms that had things like whirlpools, saunas, showers, a television and seating area and more. They also had shaving cream and disposable razors. I had the time, so I meticulously shaved my fac...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00913 We’re headed to Cape Cod for a few days and I had to get all packed up with lots and lots of stuff. Lots of gadgets that I hope to use while I am there and more. I will probably not need half of the things and I probably should pack some clothes, too. You can see in the video from today.

Photo-A-Day #685 Today I flew down to Pittsburgh for a demo tomorrow. My flight was very easy and uneventful. I listened to the official Lost podcasts that I had on my iPod and read more of Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen. The demo tomorrow will be all day and there are about 13 of us here. Some folks are having very bad travel today. One had to take a bus from Indianapolis to Chicago O’Hare and she ended up missing her connection flight and is still at O’Hare. But I don’t think anyone had a worse day than these Costa Rican Thugs. This story from Gadling is about a really bad day for Costa Rican Thugs. Tonight as a group we went to a place called Linguini’s for dinner. It was a pretty decent place. I had a swordfish steak, it was okay, nothing too special. The ambiance of the restaurant was very nice. They had the brick oven for the pizza and in the middle of the floor was a fountain. Drew and Ryan volunteered to by photo of the day. Can you say Abercrombie and Fitch? These guys were good s...

Photo-A-Day #672 I arrived home from St. Louis today. I have to say that the beds at the Marriott by the airport are so comfortable. There are a bunch of fluffy pillows that I basically place all around myself to lock myself into the bed. The bed itself is very comfortable too. This room has some very nice features. The alarm clock could wake you up with ocean sounds or put you to sleep with ocean sounds. I wasn’t too sure about waking up to the ocean. I didn’t think that it would do the trick for me. I got my customary wake up call, set the alarm and now I set the iPod alarm as well. So there was no way I was going to oversleep and miss a flight. You just don’t want to start your day in that fashion. The flights were very uneventful. I shouldn’t do first class that often because I have come to really enjoy the room. It was a sad reality sitting in the back of the plane getting my knees jammed and having the person in front of me reclining their seat practically in my lap. Yep that was...

Photo-A-Day #671 Today I was in Springfield, IL in the morning and then we drove to Clinton, IL in the afternoon. I demonstrated for less than an hour and then we began our 3 hour journey back to St. Louis, MO. On the drive back we stopped at this Route 66 roadside antique store that had some giant statues. One is of a pink elephant and the other is of a giant boy who looks like he should be holding a bottle or something. I like getting a chance to see different interesting things on the road and the giant statues were pretty interesting. We made it back to the hotel by the airport and checked in. I then went and dropped off the car at the rental return and caught up with Mike at the concierge lounge. We went to the hotel Restaurant for dinner and had a delicious Lobster Macaroni and Cheese and some Gooey Butter Shortcake for dessert. Very tasty. It’ll be an early night tonight as I have a 6:10am flight. I have the best room tonight. There is a 37″ flat screen TV and I can connect my...

Photo-A-Day #670 I was searching through some Posties websites and I came across a project called the toss a camera. What you do is set your camera's timer and toss it in the air and let it go off. All I seemed to do was toss the camera across the room after setting the 2 second timer and have it go off as it hit the bed, across the room, then it went off. On this one the camera bounced off the bed and then went off capturing my suitcase and a tie, I have no idea where the lights came from in the picture. The one thing that seemed to help when I tossed the camera was that it now focuses a lot faster than it had been lately. That is weird. The poor thing is on its last legs. Today I crossed the mighty Mississippi River on my way from Missouri to Illinois. It was the first time I had even gotten close to the river. Unfortunately I was on a bridge and could not stop to take any pictures. I was only in Lubbock Texas for less than 24 hours so I could not get to the Buddy Holly Museum. T...

12:38am. Yep, The travel saga continued well into the wee hours of Tuesday morning. I’ve added an update below. I’m going to bed. I have to get up tomorrow for my flight in the AM. Travel Saga 2/5-2/6 9:30am CST – I am now in Lubbock Texas. After getting 3 1/2 hours of sleep I got up and went to the airport. I hung around and waited for my flight. I charged up my cell phone as I had made many calls in the past day and I listened to the 60 Second Science Podcasts. The flight was uneventful. I landed safely.  I had to go to Hertz to get a car. I double checked the credit card that was used to reserve the rental and Found out that it was not the one I usually use so I asked the guy if he would change it. He said I could change it when I returned the car. I said, “And you can do it right now, thanks.” I’m returning my car tomorrow morning around 5:00am. No one will be at the counter to get that returned key let alone be there to change my credit card information. I am getting sick and ...

  Photo-A-Day #669 I arrived in Lubbock, TX today. I’ll be back on a plane in less then 12 hours too. My demonstration went well and after the demo I came back to the hotel and did a few posts on the blog. I also read some more of Final Target. Tonight we went as a group to Orlando’s. Orlando’s is an Italian restaurant with Tex Mex flair. We had Mafia Queso, which was awesome. I also ordered wings but got the wrong ones because they were not that good. The pizza I ordered was doughy and I only ate two pieces because of the Mafia Queso. All around the top of the wall of the building there are empty wine bottles. It is a really interesting display. They also had some great wine quotes like “Wine is the thinker’s health drink” and some other ones I cannot remember. The place was pretty cool. Here is a photo from yesterday. A water pipe burst in the airport and the weather was so cold that it turned to a thick freezing fog. I have video from my camera phone and my Sanyo Xacti C4. I rea...

Photo-A-Day #668 I am stuck in the Chicago O’Hare Airport. The flights to Dallas either have planes with mechanical problems or they are totally full. I have a seat on the 5:40 flight and am expected to get in at 10:00pm. That is a pretty long day. It has probably been the worst travel day so far in my five years of traveling. You can read the whole sorted saga on an earlier post. I will not be able to take any cool photos from Texas today because it will be dark when I arrive. So I took this picture of me in my most pleasant mood I could muster. I’ve got my internet connection and I’ve got some blogging to do so things aren’t all bad. I even made $15 through PPP today too.

Oh I am traveling today and there are many people I’d like to thank. I’d like to thank the gate agent. Your ineptitude at doing your job is legendary. Thanks for screwing up the paperwork. Thanks to the FAA and their ridiculously ineffective rules. Why is there paperwork anyway. We are in a computer age, shouldn’t the flight manifest go to the cockpit electronically? Why are we still using paper from dot matrix printers. Thank you to the airline industry for your utter contempt for your customers. You work really hard on it and it shows. Thank you to the loud talking jackass in seat 6B. Learn to read you self entitled pompous idiot. Thank you to the big guy sitting next to me who is picking his teeth and hogging the whole armrest. Stop reading over my shoulder. So this morning I get to PVD around 5:45am. I head over to the security line and wait for Old Jack to shout, “Form 2 Lines, there are 2 lines people.” Old Jack must say that about 250 times an hour. I don’t know what his real ...

  Photo-A-Day #662 First I would like to say that today is my Mom’s birthday so Happy Birthday Mom! I’m looking forward to going out to dinner with Mom Dad and Allison on Thursday night to celebrate. Also please keep a dear friend of our family in your prayers. I just found out from Allison last night that my sister’s good friend Jack is in a coma. Jack as you may remember ran the Cape Cod Marathon this past year in his best time ever. Please keep Jack in your prayers. Tonight I am still in Maryland and the demonstrations went well. We had a bit of a connection glitch but it worked out well. The day was long and I was pretty tired but I was able to do all my demonstrations. I got a lot of practice on the new scripts too. When the demo day was over I went back to the hotel and caught up on Best Week Ever Videos on my iPod. I also realized that I can start another month of PPP blogging and try to get as close to $500 without going over. I end up front loading on posts the beginning o...

  Photo-A-Day #661 Today’s photo is of Ryan and Susanne. They are here in Maryland demonstrating too. We went out tonight, along with Kate, for dinner at a place in downtown Annapolis. The restaurant was a nice little Italian place called Maria’s. The food was excellent. They had fantastic bread and oil for dipping. It was a very nice place. While there I found out that Kate’s relatives are my neighbors. Small world keeps getting smaller. I told Ryan about taking a photo a day and while we were at the font desk of the hotel their was this plate of cookies. I took a picture of the cookies and he said, “Why don’t you take a picture of us instead. I don’t want the cookies to win over us.” Well most of the time people aren’t thrilled with me taking their picture and having it be the photo of the day. My friend who have been putting up with me for the past two years have come to expect it but most of the time it is too much to explain the project. So I thank Ryan and Susanne for steppin...

Photo-A-Day #660 Today I was up at 4:45am and headed down to Maryland. I have two days of demos ahead of me down here. The same demo 4 times in two days plus two hours of lab demos each day as well. Travel was fine today. I was put in First class on the flight from PVD to PHL. So I guess going into PHL wasn’t that bad. On my flight from PHL to BWI the landing was a little strange and now that I think about it rather scary. We were on target to land and what seemed like the last minute we were diverted to another runway. We basically turned and landed at the same time, as we turned I could see another plane on the runway that we were supposed to land on. I know that we were supposed to land there because there was a pilot and his friend sitting in front of me and the pilot said something to his friend and his friend crossed himself. Just another day in the air. Tonight I went with the sales person and another Marketing person to Buddy’s Crabs & Ribs for dinner. They had the hugest p...

Photo-A-Day #641 Peter would be proud of me. I saw a sign for the Iowa’s Largest Frying Pan on my way back from Waverly, IA. I had to stop. I got off the highway and made my way up to the Frying Pan. I was wondering if it was in a building and how I would see it. Well, no problem finding it. Sign said Frying Pan straight ahead and yes, it was straight ahead. It was cold so I took this picture from the car. Then I decided to take my trusty tiny tripod and rig it up to get a picture of me with the frying pan. It was windy if you couldn’t tell from ym tie. I’m 5’9 and the round part of the pan is 9′ to the handle is 14′. You can learn more about Iowa’s Largest Frying Pan. It is a fairly new thing too, only constructed in 2004. I got back to the hotel, changed and headed to Buffalo Wild Wings to get some lunch. Got some medium wings (not going for fire today going for a nice taste.), had a Mello Yellow (I love Mello Yellow) and some popcorn shrimp. Then headed to find the local target and ...

Photo-A-Day #640 This is my new traveling companion. And I must tell you that I am in no way ungrateful that my parents' gave me this to take with me on my trips. You see they saw this story on the news and I got a Carbon Monoxide Detector to take with me on my trips. It is important to have carbon monoxide detectors in your home. The issue I have with this thing is that it is huge, I have to remember to take the batteries out when I leave my hotel room and before I go to the airport. This thing makes the most ungodly loud noise, which of course is what it is supposed to do. I would hate to be going through security with my suitcase and have this thing go off. I’d get the full body search for sure. But I appreciate that they gave this to me. I may need to check on something more travel friendly. And now my airport rant. You know how those things end up happening. Why don't airports have FREE Internet access? I am so frustrated today. I have been participating in a contest spons...

And some days you are the bug. Today Allison flew to BWI to attend a baby shower for her friend Elise. The day started with a quick trip back to the house to pick up a forgotten phone (to her credit she is not a morning person and I have done that many times myself.) Then the airline loses her bag, the one with the shower gifts in it. They were nice enough to give her a voucher for future travel and will Fed Ex the bag to her destination IF it arrives tonight. Otherwise they are going to send it back home. Fun stuff. Then I had rented Allison a car with my Hertz miles/points/scam of a crappy program. I made the reservation on the phone and talked to a live person and explained that I was renting the car for my wife. The confirmation says. Comments: ADV NO GOLD SERVICE SPOUSE PICKUP ALLISON ******* So me being a dope figures that everything is fine and dandy for Allison to pick up the rental car. Nope. When she gets to the counter the person behind the counter tells her that I cannot ...

The other day I ranted and raved about men’s room etiquette. I have since found a video that illustrates the points I was trying to make. It is done by using the SIMS. The video is hilarious and of course very informative and important. The rule of never ever talking is very important, it can certainly cause the wanton destruction that is described in this dramatization. It also explains all of the Rules of the men’s room.