It's 6:45 a.m. Bob's alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., and he got dressed and left sometime around 5:30, I think. I laid in bed for awhile, but when I didn't go right back to sleep, I went ahead and got up and wrote postcards and checked email. I got plenty of sleep--I think I went to sleep around 10:30 or so. I wasn't really sleepy, but Bob was trying to sleep and although I had turned off the light and was working on the computer in the dark, I figured the typing noise probably bothered him. He said it didn't, but I was self-conscious about it, so I shut things down and went to sleep.

I brought the camera, of course, but I tend not to carry it around with me every day. It's a little heavy and kind of large, and since it's expensive I always try to keep it in the camera bag, which, of course, makes it even larger and heavier. So while I'd love to have lots of pictures, I generally opt for not taking it with me. And, honestly,. we've been here so many times that I would probably take pictures of the same things anyway.

But when I was in the gift shop at the hotel yesterday buying postcards, I glanced at the camera rack and saw a small plastic digital camera--a toy, really--marked down to $45 (original price $65.00). It was hard to tell through the clear plastic packaging whether it would be worthwhile or not, but I figured for $45, I could give it a try.

The first drawback was that it required a screwdriver to open the battery compartment, something that I don't routinely carry with me on vacation. Well, that's not entirely true--I do have a small Swiss Army knife that I always carry in my purse, but I leave all extraneous stuff like that in the room and just carry my wallet.

Fortunately, Bob had his knife with him, or I would have gone into a camera shop and asked for help.

I got the camera open and put the batteries in, and read the instructions, and started taking pictures. It was a little like flying blind, though, because for that price, the camera didn't have a window to see what you'd taken, and it didn't even have a counter showing how many pictures had been taken or how many were left (you can take a total of 20).

A picture was accompanied by a little beep, but we kept laughing that we had no idea whether we were actually taking pictures or not--we finally figured out that the camera didn't have a flash, which was what we were expecting to see.

When we got back to the room last night, I hooked the camera up to the laptop, installed the software, and downloaded what I had. Not bad. It did a pretty good job outdoors with plenty of light. Indoors, although it's supposed to have "infrared" technology, most of the pictures were pretty fuzzy (some of the ones outside were, too).

It's basically a toy (the package says "8 and up"), but I'm satisfied with it. It's light, it fits in my pocket, it was inexpensive, and it takes acceptable pictures.

Yesterday I slept in really late--something like 10:30. It had been a late night the night before. We got in around 4:00 on Saturday, checked in, went out to dinner, then went to the Magic Kingdom. Bob's parents wanted to see the Electrical Parade, which didn't start until 10:00, but I wasn't excited about getting in the middle of the crowd, so I said I'd just shop for a bit, then go back to the hotel and see them there.

Well, even though the parade hadn't started yet, the crowds had, and it was almost impossible to even get down the sidewalks, so I thought I'd just go back to the hotel and relax.

Bob had said something earlier about me having to go to the Transportation and Ticket center to catch a bus if I didn't want to ride back with them in the car, and although I actually knew better, I just did that without thinking--got on the Monorail to the Transportation and Ticket Center.

However, the hotel buses aren't at the Transportation and Ticket Center, they're at the park, which I realized once I got to the Center. By that time, it was nearly time for the parade to be over, and if I had turned around and gone back to the park, I would have had to wait for a bus with thousands of other people, and who knows how long it would have taken me to get back to the hotel.

So I got back on the monorail and went to The Floridian, where Bob had parked the car, and waited for them there. I took up a post in an upholstered chair near the door that opens from the monorail station, and only had to wait about half an hour before they showed up. Later I found out they could have taken a launch to the hotel instead, and if they had done that, I'm not sure what I would have done. Called a taxi, I guess, or maybe just called the hotel and asked Bob to come back and get me.

I had the cell phone with me, mostly in case he got back to the hotel without me seeing him, hoping he would call me if he got there and I wasn't there. It all turned out okay anyway, but then we took his parents back to the hotel, and he and I went to the grocery store for snacks, and by the time we got to sleep it was nearly 1:00. And since I'm on vacation, I figured I deserved a late morning.

It's unseasonably cool here this week. Everyone is walking around bundled up, and Bob said he wished he'd brought his long underwear to play golf in on these cold mornings. From the Weather Channel web site:

I think that's colder than where we left. Oh well. I told a friend in email this morning that it was cold, and he said, "couldn't you jump on a plane and go down to the Bahamas or something?" Well, no, but nice thought. I did buy a heavy sweatshirt yesterday--I'd brought one, but nothing really up to these temperatures--and I have a pair of sweatpants that I wore on the plane coming down, and one pair of jeans. Everything else is shorts and t-shirts.

I guess I'll survive. We'll just have to spend more time inside shopping or something.