Birthdays – Sara Mazariegos

Titanic: The Immersive Experience: Review. On Saturday, Luis and I went to Baltimore to check out the Titanic experience I’ve seen advertised so often. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I used to have nightmares about the Titanic, when I was around ten years old. Waking up screaming that my bedroom was sinking, that kind of thing. Normal kid fears. I blame National Geographic. Anyway, despite this, I’ve always been fascinated by the Titanic, mainly how it happened and what it looked like. That doesn’t mean I’d ever want to try going down in a submersible to see it, though. I’m not insane.

The immersive exhibit is cool, with lots of screens that make you feel like you’re in the action. There’s a crow’s nest you can stand in and watch as the giant iceberg suddenly appears out of the darkness, and then you can ring the bell to alert the crew, but of course it’s too late. There’s also a hallway filling up with water. And then, the saddest part, you can sit in a lifeboat and watch as the ship sinks and the projected water around you fills up with people crying for help and dying around you.

I came away from it more sad than scared. And it’s not like a “woo, that was fun!” experience. I’m glad we did it though. Luis even got Mr. Andrews’ ticket as his passenger to ride along with, so we brought it home as a souvenir. Mr. Andrews did not survive, of course. And he was my age. Of course we came home and watched videos about different Titanic stories. Because we’re nerds.

Luis’s birthday funtimes! 🥳 For Luis’s birthday on Sunday, we went to a few places in our area for him to get his birthday rewards. He got a free burger, taco, and strawberry shortcake. Then, later in the evening, some of our friends came over and we played an escape room in a box game and got some fancy Tex Mex delivered. It was a chill, relaxing day for him, but he seemed to enjoy it.

I also took off on Tuesday and Wednesday this week to book our Disney dining reservations, so it gives us even more time together for some extra birthday stuff. Mainly getting more fun food and spending more time together. We’re probably going to see Spider-Man again this weekend and he’ll get a free popcorn and soda for it. He loves deals.

There’s no place like home for the Disney reservation days. We woke up early on Tuesday and this morning to book our dining reservations at Disney World. A perk of staying at their resorts is that you can book your dining 60 days out from your trip. I’m not a morning person, but excitement about Disney stuff is like caffeine for me… Plus we went back to sleep once we made our reservations.

I was nervous we wouldn’t be able to book the super popular restaurants like Be Our Guest and Space 220, but we got them fairly easily! I think being in the know about how to do the reservation process and planning ahead really helps, so you’re not left with whatever’s still available. All of the Disney restaurants are great, of course, but it’ll be fun to have some of these experiences we’ve been wanting to try. Plus Be Our Guest, which we’ve done before but it’s really nice.

All this nostalgia is making me nostalgic. My current novel is inspired by some of my experiences in college, so I’ve been a bit wistful for my friends I made back then. I looked through my old email to try to find context for some things, to try to get the details as accurate as possible, and then I was sitting there, staring into space as I tried to remember some of these events that had been tucked away in the back of my mind for decades.

Some themes of my next novel are memory and keeping in touch with people, and the evaporation of some social websites on which we used to rely to keep in touch. It’s also set a little in the future, so it’s going to be interesting to see how much has changed in the social media landscape by then. It is sad to go through my Facebook and see all the people who are no longer there. It’s not like I have everyone’s phone number.

Like I said: wistful.

I thought of this entry’s title from a song by the Sherman Brothers that always makes me teary, so working on this post has been an experience. I see the lyrics every time I write/edit this. I may not have thought this through.

Colbert and The Last Show. We downloaded a free trial of DirectTV to watch the last episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Really, it was the last episode of The Late Show ever, unless CBS tries to reboot it when the dumb replacement doesn’t work out for them. It was a lovely finale, with many bizarre and silly twists and turns. I didn’t cry as much as I thought I might, but when I saw the staff all come onstage to dance while Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste, Louis Cato, and Stephen Colbert sang “Hello, Goodbye”…man, oh man. I hope everyone will be okay and have new jobs and not have to worry about what they’re doing next.

And I really hope Stephen will be in front of audiences and cameras again soon. He seems so genuinely happy in front of an audience. I’m sure working on the next Lord of the Rings project will be so much fun for him, but I hope we see his face again really soon, too. And not only on one episode of Only In Monroe.

Belated Mother’s Days and Birthdays. My parents returned from their trip to Washington state, so we finally celebrated Mother’s Day with my mom on Saturday. It was nice to get together with my family, and see my sister’s new puppy. All of her cats even came out and were friendly. My dad gave me some of my grandma’s solar-controlled dashboard dancing ornaments. I realized when we brought them home that we don’t even have window sills in our house! So they’ll probably just live on a shelf as decorations.

My best friend Kat postponed her birthday festivities because she was busy with school and moving, so we spent time celebrating her on Sunday. One thing that’s nice about Sundays before holidays is that you can stay out later without worrying about going to bed on time. This proved true this time for sure, because we stayed at her place until around eleven, playing games and having a fun time. We also got tasty ramen and pizza, and saw…

The Mandalorian & Grogu. I thought it was really cute. I mostly cared about Grogu, the little mechanic guys, and Rotta the Hutt. The guys in armor shooting at each other is less compelling to me, though I do love the way the Mandalorian takes care of Grogu. They take care of each other, which is sweet. This is a good movie if you like all the weird-cute little space critters. There are certainly a lot of those. There’s even a cool “dragon snake” that reminded us of our cat Boo.

Wrapping up my rewrite. It struck me last week that I only have about 2,000 more words left to write, because once I hit 80K, I can just plunk in my already-written epilogue chapter. I’ll read it and edit it so it makes sense with the new draft, but otherwise I won’t have to write this story past Friday. I’m looking forward to taking a break before writing something completely new!

The Boys finale [SPOILERS]. Luis and I have been fans of The Boys since the first season. The edgy, cynical superhero comedy was a big hit and all over the internet when it first came out, and for the first several seasons. This final season, however, didn’t have great buzz. In fact, there were a lot of complaints. We have several as well. We like the show and characters, but the ending felt anticlimactic in several ways.

Spoilers within

Tag: Birthdays

How very special are we to have on our family tree Mother Earth and Father Time.