Disney Buys Marvel

The big news of the day today was Marvel being bought up by Disney. It's an odd marriage. I know there had been rumors of Marvel being available to be bought for months now, but I don't think a anyone had really put forward the idea of them being bought by Disney. In retrospect I guess it makes sense. I don't think we're going to be seeing all the crossovers that everyone seems to be dreading (I suppose it's possible we'll see a Mickey Mouse meets Spider-Man comic sometime in the future, I just can't imagine it being any good).

The other weird thing about the deal is that while Disney now has access to Marvel's inventory of characters, many of those characters are currently tied up in license deals with other companies and won't be available anytime in the near future. Sony has Spider-Man for who knows how long, but I've heard rumors of a Spider-Man 6 movie, so it doesn't sound like they're ready to let go of the property. FOX owns X-Men and Wolverine. In fact it sure seems like most of the marketable characters have already been snatched up by other companies. And then there's the Marvel characters at Universal Theme Parks, I can't imagine that's going to sit well with Disney (although the thought of seeing Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man at Disney World walking around with Cinderella and Seven Dwarfs seems like it would be an odd pairing also).

I guess it'll be interesting to see what happens. Disney is nothing if not a branding machine though. I mean look how firmly they've entrenched all the Princesses into the culture for little girls. And they don't only target little girls either as the plethora of High School Musical crap that's out there can attest. I think the only place where one might say Disney has a hole is with boys, and now that I think about it, that's a place where Marvel can actually help.

The worst part of all this was I had actually considered buying Marvel stock years ago when it was in the teens, but then it went into to twenties and I figured I had missed my chance. And now for the sale it's being valued at around forty-four. All of which tells me I have no business playing the stock market.

Back Home

Left Richmond today to return home. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to get the cats though since the vet they're being boarded at isn't open on Sunday.

Boring Day

Spent the day in Richmond. I did nothing really but managed to get some work done and catch up on a lot of stuff that went on while I was off on vacation. While I was working Ginger and the kids went out for lunch. Oh, and they went to Rita's for ice. In fact the kids got to go to Rita's twice today since they went after dinner also.

Last Day At The Beach

With today being our last day here we wanted to make sure we got as much in as we could, so we hit the community beach access this morning. The waves were pretty rough and there were still a fair number of jellyfish visible as you waded out, so we packed up and headed back to the community pool. We hung out there for a bit, but then Quinn started talking back and being generally rude and ended up having to leave early. So I escorted him back to the house via the shuttle (in retrospect making him miss out on swimming wasn't as much of a punishment as I would have liked since he had really wanted to take the shuttle at some point).








After lunch we headed back out, but this time we went to the sound side. The kids had new water shoes we had bought earlier in the week. That's because neither Ginger nor myself relished the idea of them walking around in the sound in bare feet. I was too afraid of broken glass or something. The water level was pretty low, so they were able to walk a good way out into the sound. I suspect they could have gone out even further had they wanted, but eventually I think they got tired of just walking around (as it wasn't really deep enough to swim in).












After that we decided to head back to the beach to get in one last beach visit before we had to leave. The jellyfish weren't as prevalent now, so Quinn got to out on the boogie board a bit. I also managed to convince Catherine to go out one last time and try the boogie board. She managed to catch a wave and ride it in, but after that she was done with wanting to be in the water. She much more enjoyed walking along the beach and chopping up any jellyfish she found (revenge is sweet apparently).




We eventually had to leave the beach though as it looked like Danny was approaching from the south. It's the first time I've ever seen storm clouds with noticeable bands like that. It looked pretty ominous.




Once we were back at the house the "fun" part of day began as we had to pack everything up. Then we said goodbye to the house and were on our way back to Richmond.

Just Another Day At The Beach

In an attempt to avoid the jellyfish that were in the area yesterday we revisited Coquina beach today. The water was a bit on the rough side (the swimming flags were orange / yellow), but I assume that's because of tropical storm / potential hurricane Danny that's coming up the coast. The beach still had tons of shells at the break point, so coupling that with the fact that the waves were a bit rougher than normal it meant Quinn wasn't able to go out on the boogie board.






The kids played in the sand. Catherine built sand structures while Quinn used the boogie board as a ferry moving his plastic trucks around the sand. At one point Catherine found a beached fish that looked dead, but we got some water and tossed it in and after a bit it seemed to recover. We eventually released it back into the ocean.


Catherine big idea of fun was basically digging a hole right where the water comes up and then standing in it and letting it fill up. I can't even begin to count the number of holes she had me digging while we were there.


For the evening we headed back to the go-karts since that's all Quinn has really wanted to do. Remember the other night when Quinn didn't do the junior race because he would have been the only one. Well, he was the only one again today, and since we weren't sure what tomorrow was going to be like we went ahead and let him do it since he really wanted to even if it was just him out there (because once again Catherine showed no interest in wanting to do it this time, despite Quinn's best efforts to try and convince her otherwise). I have some video of him driving, but since it's just him driving around the track by himself I'll spare everyone and not show it.






After the go-karts Catherine decided what she really wanted to do was the bumper cars again. Once again it was just us doing the bumper cars. I decided to forgo participating this time. Catherine's vehicle seemed a bit broken in that it didn't really seem to respond the controls unless she used a ton of force, so she was at a disadvantage and got bumped a fair amount (although I think Quinn realized she wasn't able to move as well and instead focused on bumping Ginger).






After that we went next door and did the prehistoric mini golf course. It was just Catherine and Quinn playing again. And once again it was a total time sink in that we were behind several groups that were all playing at a snail's pace.



And there was nothing but overcast tonight, so no sunset pictures. Instead I'll just toss in some random shots I took throughout the day.

Catherine: Jellyfish Hunter

Today we mixed things up a bit. Instead of hitting the beach early and then heading out the pool we went to the pool first, then had lunch and went back out to the beach. I think we might have missed a good opportunity in the morning though. While Ginger and the kids were in the pool I walked out to the beach. The water was the warmest I've felt this year (and this is including when we were here a month ago). Also the water was shallow for a good ways out.




So when we went out this afternoon Quinn was ecstatic since he could take his boogie board out into the waves. And it was a great afternoon. Right up until I got stung by a jellyfish. At least I think I was stung. Suddenly the back of my knee started feeling like I had briar thorns stuck in it. I glanced around and saw we were in the middle of a small school of jellies. I say small school because I only spotted about 3 jellies before the next wave came over.


I started getting Quinn to head back into land. Once there the pain intensified a bit, but it still felt like I had something stuck in the back of my leg even though clearly there wasn't anything there that I could see. When we made it all the way back onto the beach we learned that Catherine had also been stung (on the top of her foot). She had been working her way out in the water to get my attention and ask if she could use the boogie board when she got stung, and unfortunately that pretty much ended her desire to back out in the water. Evidently there must have been a large school of these jellies moving up the coast. Luckily the jellyfish were only the clear ones, so while it hurt for a while, it wasn't as painful as I've heard the stings from the red ones can be.


Once the pain subsided a bit for Catherine she took her revenge by going up and down the beach with the shovel and cutting any beached jellies she found into pieces. Quinn remained somewhat undaunted by the prospects of the jellyfish (possibly because he hadn't been stung) and continued to go back out ever so often.


And tonight I managed to get back out at sunset and the results were pretty good this time (at least I like to think so). So because of that there's a few more sunset pictures here than on previous days.

Back To Coquina

Went to the Bee Beach (Coquina) today. Ginger had the idea that we would get there and build a sand castle / city and watch as high tide came in and tore it apart. Two things went wrong with this plan. One was me not getting up and ready that quickly. Two was the slope of the beach at coquina makes it so that there's not a lot of difference in the last couple of hours of high tide. So the city we build was safe for the most part with the levies only being breached once or twice, and the buffers we had in place prevented any breaches from being significant.




Unfortunately the waves were incredibly rough, and as I've mentioned before Coquina has tons and tons of shells, so much so that at the wave breaking point you're not walking on sand, but walking on lots of little shells (and the occasional large one). Which when the waves are smashing down at the break point pretty hard is actually is a lot more painful on your feet than you might think.




Oh, I also bought one of those wave skimmers since Quinn had seen people using them for the past couple of days. We didn't buy the cheapest one, nor did we purchase the most expensive one. But I will say it was basically wasted money. Quinn almost lost it in the waves a couple of times and he never really was able to balance on it. And there are so many shells at Coquina that it just never really worked well at all. And since we bought one of the smaller ones when I tried to use it (which I never did do very well) I was never able to get it to move far and it would almost immediately sink into the sand.


While we were at the beach it became obvious (Catherine at least was lying down on the blanket she was so tired) the kids were missing out on some sleep by getting up so early each day. So once we got home we forced the kids to take a nap (which as a by product gave us the chance to take one too). Unfortunately I spent most of the nap time logged in to work trying to locate a bug in my code. I eventually found the problem. What's embarrassing is the place causing the problem had a big comment that said "FIXME" and the described exactly what needed to be added and what you would see if it wasn't there (which is exactly the problem I was seeing). So basically I knew beforehand this was going to be a problem, but had backburnered it to fix more pressing issues at the time and then promptly forgot about it.


After we all got up from our nap we headed out to the racetrack. Quinn was going to drive the junior cars, but Catherine didn't want to do it and they didn't have any other junior drivers. And I thought it would be quite silly to just have him driving around out on the track alone. So instead we all did the bumper cars. We were the only ones doing it, so it was just the four of us out there. I had the point and shoot camera out and tried to do bumper car cam. The results of which are dubious to say the least (hope no one gets motion sickness from the video).




We then headed over the Adventureland Mini Gold. The whole reason we went there was because we had that free coupon from last time. But after getting stuck behind another group of incredibly slow people I've decided I never want to go there again (besides, this time they had the water cut off and the "train" was broken, so some of the more interesting aspects to the kids weren't even there).


We tried to get some seafood for dinner, only to realize all the markets close at 6 (by this time it was already past 7). So instead we stopped by Rita's for some ice drinks and grabbed fast food for dinner (which I know, it's terrible to eat fast food on vacation, but it prevented us from having to wait for a table somewhere and it kept Ginger or myself from having to cook). And because golfing took so long there was no way we could make it back in any type of reasonable time in order to try and take some sunset pictures tonight. It was still a bit cloudy, so I'm unsure it would have been any better than the previous couple of nights, but I was still disappointed I didn't get to make it out.