I was trying to think of a good intro for this little, um... diary/log/event description/article/story/whatever it is I'm writing here, but all of them were pretty corny, so I'm just gonna write whatever.  This is what happened on our Grad Nite trip.  Um, enjoy and stuff.  BTW, like the pic of the Epcot above?  I thought it turned out pretty cool. :)

Ok, after that wonderful introduction, I'll get on to what happened.  After we got through this little baggage check and stuff (couldn't bring cell phones, drugs, etc - silly rule about the cell phones tho, whatever), in which the guy checking my bag looked rather suspiciously at my contact solution and smelled it to make sure it wasn't anything... bad (yeah, I think I'll fill the thing with alcohol - it'd take like half an hour to squirt all of it out into your mouth... and besides, I don't drink alcohol - I told him I was sorry to disappoint him), we sat on the bus and waited.  Woo - long sentence - prolly not grammatically correct either, oh well.  Apparently our principal, Mr. Harner, had to go home and change, yet nobody else could leave... hmm.  Anyway, we got started over an hour late - left at 4:13 (whoa, that's exactly 12 hours after I went to bed the night before).

It's always good to get off at a good start, right? :)  Wait... it gets better.  After many road hours, we stopped for dinner (7:45pm).  The restaurant we stopped at was too small for everyone, so at least half of the people went across the street to Denny's, including Griff and myself.  After waiting around we joked about not getting our food until everyone else was gone.  Heh, I need to stop joking about worst-case scenarios, 'cuz whenever I do, it seems they happen.  I think that's called foreshadowing or something.  I think we create our own "movies," then live them. :)  So, as the last group leaves, looking back with one of those "um, we would wait for you, but we kind of need to leave" kind of expressions, we're still sitting there.  The janitor came by a few times and kind of snickered.  I think he was trying hard not to burst out laughing.  That sort of "Haha! sucks to be you!" kind of laugh.  I just kind of snickered back with that "Haha! sucks to be us!" kind of laugh.  Anyway, to sum it all up, we got our food... just in time to leave, too! "Uhh, can we get that to go?"  We made it back to the bus right at the 9:15 limit, and to top it all off, they got our orders wrong.

Well, that was a long paragraph.  I'll try and make this one a little shorter.  The mission: finding the correct Howard Johnson hotel - you know, the one the reservations were made at would be nice.  Sound simple?  Only for the simple minded.  For the more complex people, it takes about two hours.  So we ended up going to bed at, hmm, I think it was after 3:00, which makes us all so happy that Brandon decided to get us up at 6:30!  Yeah, we were all bright and shiny!  Especially after all that floor polish (heh, just kidding).

Anyway, continuing on.  It's always best to start the day off with a good breakfast.  Too bad they didn't have one there.  I thought it might have just been me, but after hearing one of the administrator's comments along the lines of "I wouldn't feed this to my worst enemy's dog," I knew it wasn't.  The queasy feeling was almost gone when we loaded up and headed to Disney.  The hotel was fortunately conveniently located!  Less than a one hour drive to Disney World!  That is, if you drive really fast... unfortunately, busses don't go that fast, especially when one blows a tire and we have to overload the remaining busses... but that doesn't happen until the next day - don't wanna mess up the chronological order I had so nicely constructed up until this point.  Hmm, since I've already kinda messed it up, Griff and I bought disposable cameras at the gas station across the street from the hotel sometime before we left.  We both forgot cameras.

...then we got there... At last, our adventurous trek to Disney World was over, and I got to see it for the first time! W00t.  Epcot was the first park we went to (got a nice, classic pic - scroll up).  The weather was great.  I don't know that it could have been any better.  One of the first things Griff and I did was grab Mickey and Grumpy hats, and we got this pic at the IBM thing later:

Hmm, I was kind of hoping there would be more ride rides there (like roller coasters and that kind of thing), but I guess that's not really what Disney's like - not Epcot, at least.  It was still fun, though.  This next picture is of Griff sticking his head through, um... one of those things:

Blah blah... can't think of anything specific that stood out at Epcot.  Anyway, during the many trips between the hotel and Disney, I found myself being entertained - even mesmerized - by the way the windows reflect what's in the other window:

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Not everyone that went to Grad Nite was cool.  I mean, there was an entire busload of lamers:

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At one time during my trip there, Griff and I took the tour through the animation studio thing.  This guy showed us how they draw the characters and stuff.  Using the knowledge gained from that experience, I drew a giant Mickey head on my desk in AP Bio and wrote "EVIL RODENT" next to it.  Then I tried drawing a little devil Mickey, but it ended up looking like a farmer... hrm... not the effect I was looking for.

Back to Grad Nite.  On the actual night, err "nite," they closed off Magic Kingdom to everyone but the seniors... all night.  Here's a picture taken by one of the corny Grad Nite cardboard computer thingies.  Hmm, I wish I had a monitor that big:

After it was over we headed back home.  Had to get in those bus hours asap! ;)  I wish the bus seats were designed better for sleeping in.  I tried sprawling out across the tops of 3 or 4 bus seats, but that tended to bother some people.  Someone has a picture of it somewhere - I need to get it from him.

At last, we arrive at home... err, school, ick, can't believe I called that place home.  Anyway, in the picture above, Kylee is the victim of me trying to see what kind of miserable, grumpy faces I could catch on film as people got off the bus.  I'm not exactly sure what she did when she got off, but it involved throwing her arms in the air and making this picture look really funny.  She said it's the worst picture taken of her ever.  I feel like I've accomplished something in life! :)

Ok, so as not to be entirely cruel ending this story or whatever like that, I took a picture of myself after being up like two days and a night.  Mmm, wide eyes, hat hair, all that exciting stuff: