Well, it’s the week before Christmas and all through the house… I don’t actually have a rhyme to go with that… Bottom line, I’m spending the weekend in sunny (or cloudy and rainy but still distinctly warmer and nicer) Florida. Heck, there’s a winter storm warning in effect at home for tomorrow night. Suckers.

Why do they even pretend to celebrate Christmas down here?

At home, they’re predicting a white Christmas. Down here they’re putting lights on palm trees.

Anyway, I took a break from the Operations Management final that I’ve been working on unsuccessfully for the last six days to join my wife for a trip to Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure today. Since Pete is such a huge Marvel fan, I spent the day harassing him with photos from the park’s Marvel Island. Pete suggested that I should be posting the photos here as well to share them with the world. So since I’ve been too buried with school work the last few months to post much, I figured that sounded like as good of a way to jump back into it as any.

So we’ll start with the scene when we arrived at Islands of Adventure this morning.

The lack of people suggested to us that we had slept through the Apocalypse overnight and luckily survived.

While uncertain about the fate of the rest of the world, we headed over to the Spider-man 3D ride where the line was unbearably long.

Actually, it was just us and Doctor Octopus.

We rode the Spider-man ride that seats 12 or 18 people alone. Just the two of us. It was so romantic until the fires and spinning started.

That was the highlight of the Marvel section of the park until I reached the gift shop and saw this.

Psycho is right.

I have no interest in the Punisher. None. But that bobble head might be the greatest piece of Marvel merchandising I’ve ever seen. It’s better than all three of his movies combined… (and I’ve only seen two of them.)

I soon realized that there was a whole line of Marvel products in this awesomely cute style. Here are some highlights.

Amazing.

Spirited.

Unpredicatable.

All American.

Seeing the Hulk pin made me sad as they didn’t have a larger Hulk bobble head to go with the line, but they at least did design work on him. As it is, I may end up picking up a Captain America for me and Spider-man for Pete but I wish I was coming home with a Hulk as well.

The final couple of photos I’ll share with you tonight are below. While I’m not a huge fan of the Harry Potter movies, I know some people freak out for them. Well, you may have seen ads lately for Universal’s upcoming Harry Potter attraction as they have been airing incessantly on television. Here’s a sneak peak at the still under construction Hogwarts school. I believe it’s set to open in the Spring.

That’s it for today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll share photos of manatees and gators.

I’m not sure what I can really say about this. I took the picture because I was fascinated that they needed to cover something. What could they POSSIBLY be covering with that “Finest Food”? And how bad could it have been that they think this looks better and more enticing? And China Too? Too?…..hmmmmmm…

One of my many distractions over the years has been photography.   And not just in a professional manner, but before that.  I liked to take pictures.  Didn’t matter what the camera was, or how the image actually turned out, I liked to take pictures.  A few years ago I purchased my first Digital SLR camera.  The most exciting thing to me about this was the idea of being able to use different lenses.  For the first year I owned it, I had the two lenses that came with it.  Then I bought a used 50mm.  Meaningless to many of you I am sure.  But anyway….

Last Winter, while at a photography convention for work, I discovered the coolest toy on earth for my camera.  The LENSBABY.  No, seriously, this little contraption it great!  There was previously a fad in photography of Tilt-Shift Lenses.  That is not what a Lensbaby is.  And thank goodness, because that sounds complicated and hard to use.  The Lensbaby is more of just a tilt lens.  What the best part was, not only could I make images have an entirely different look, it had swappable optics and accessories to transform a standard lens into a macro, a wide angle, a zoom, a holga (plastic lens), or a pinhole.  The pinhole was one of the most fascinating to me since I had loved making my own pinhole cameras out of oatmeal containers and making prints in my photography class in college.  I had looked up how to make a pinhole cover for my camera at one point but chickened out.  The Lensbaby was truly my all in one solution for my new photography toy.  It was able to give me everything I wanted…..for the time being.

Over the past 9 months, the company introduced new toys to go along with my Lensbaby.  I had known a few of them were a possibility, so I was excited on each launch day, but waited patiently.  Today, a Lensbaby package came in the mail.  My awesome husband purchased all of the new toys for me as a birthday gift.  There are 4 new accessories for my Lensbaby and we have 4 days until we leave for San Diego.  So we will experiment with one new toy a day.

Tonight, the first, and the biggest…..the fisheye lens.  This is an optic for the Lensbaby that is really the entire lens itself and then clicks into the shell that attaches to the camera.  I have wanted a fisheye for a long time, and what better way to have one than to pair it with my Lensbaby.  Not only is it WAY more affordable, it is smaller, and I can do a bit more with it.  The only downside is that everything with the Lensbaby is manual focus, and since I can’t focus anything….my whole life is a blur 🙂  But alas, I love it!  And now, when we get the focus right, we can take arms-length shots of us with the Lensbaby!  Cannot wait to explore San Diego with my new toy.

Tomorrow night…Super wide angle adapter.

Zombieland is the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater this year since Star Trek.

It doesn’t aim particularly high. What it does do is aim to be funny, gross, and charming. And it succeeds time and again.

The movie stars Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus. A huge nerd who has outlined rules for himself for life in a Post-Apolcalyptic America populated predominantly by zombies. Following those rules has kept him alive. Eisenberg is fine in the part and probably has cemented for himself a role as the guy directors go to when Michael Cera turns them down.

Woody Harrelson hasn’t been this fun in forever. He plays Tallahassee, a guy who’s good at killing zombies and enjoys being creative about it.

Emma Stone picked another winning project after Superbad and Lucky Louie. Ok so maybe Lucky Louie didn’t turn out to be a winner, but I loved it. I can’t make any excuses for her for doing The Rocker though.

And the other guy steals the show.

If you’re interested, the zombies in this film are basically the result of a mutated case of Mad Cow disease and they sprint fast. Really fast.

Every web site in the world seems to have something special going on for 9/9/9 so the least we could do is write an update.  I’m really excited about the movie 9 that premieres today, and who wouldn’t want to see sock puppets fight with scissors.  However, my attention has been suddenly and unexpectedly drawn to the movie Whiteout that comes out this Friday.

I’ve seen two very different commercials for it.  In one, the movie is presented as something very creepy and intriguing set in the hostile landscape of Antarctica, only briefly mentioning the presence of Kate Beckinsale (which is in no way negative).  The other has her make-up face running all over the place, falling into ice caves, and seemingly unfazed by the unfriendly environment as she stares off across the ice.  I want to see the movie the first ad presents, and almost wish I hadn’t seen the second.  I’m just a sucker for anything set in Antarctica:  The Thing, Alien Versus Predator, Happy Feet.

None of this even begins to address the fact that convincing chicken-pants Angie to see this is going to be next to impossible.  She’s even claiming that her attendance at next week’s screening of Zombieland will be under duress, and that’s clearly a comedy.  It’s not like I’m asking her to see the terrible looking Jennifer’s Body.  I’ve seen enough of Megan Fox lately with Transformers 2 and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, and I only saw commercials for Transformers 2.

I thought a nice compromise would be to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but apparently this deviates from the children’s book too much for Angie’s tastes.  Just can’t win sometimes.

I want to go to there.