shortly after they hosted brian's surprise birthday party, our friends chris and trudy moved to florida so that chris could take a job with disney's internet group. we figured we needed to pay them a visit before it got too much more "summery" down there in the land of 200% humidity. so we hopped on a plane (playing myst III on the way), and went to see how walt and mickey were treating our friends. there are more pictures here, and don't miss our excursion to the kennedy space center.

as an employee of the mouse, chris has connections. here he is with brian, where we all rode in the *front* of the monorail with the driver and a birdseye view of the ride. our visits to the parks were free, while meals and merchandise were discounted. that's a serious hookup.

here we are hanging out in epcot, somewhere between AT&T's communications of tomorrow sphere and ExxonMobil's world of energy theatre.

we didn't plan it, but our visit happened to coincide with gay days at disney, an unsponsored gay invasion of disney theme parks. everyone who is family is supposed to wear a red shirt. as you can see, there was a good turnout - probably 50%. sadly a lot of it was pretty tragic, and brian and I both ended up wishing we had donned a different color that day :-). actually it was kinda fun and reassuring. the after-hours parties elsewhere were more fun, though.

after a proper german buffet, we emerged from eating to a bright, erie yellow glow in the doorway. if you had told me the apocalypse was beginning, I would have believed you. what we saw was the most amazing dusktime thunderstorm i've ever seen. the 80-degree rain felt great, and the lightshow was something else. This was followed by the daily epcot fireworks display which was augmented by continuing lightning in the distance. together it was one of the most incredible things we've ever seen.

after leaving epcot's motorola pavilion of nexteryear, we wandered over to german area for a little dinner. their re-creation of a beerhall was good enough to bring me to tears thinking of our time at oktoberfest in munich. the live band and german-speaking host, but not the domestic beer, helped make the experience memorable.

here we are with me wearing my newest wacky hat and brian tolerating it. we stayed for the electric light parade and fireworks. while they were nice, it was nothing compared to the show the next night at epcot which had giant globe-shaped video screens, scores of lasers, million-btu fireballs, and sun-bright bursts of fireworks.