_{This is going to be stupid long and image heavy and will contain some boring talk about my work.}

Our hotel, The Peabody Orlando.

View of Orlando from our hotel room on the 24th floor.

Our hotel room had a TV in the mirror. I need this in my house!

The Peabody ducks! They’re super awesome ducks that spend the day in this fountain in one of the lobbies. Every day at 11am the Duckmaster (a trademarked title, the Duckmaster at The Peabody Orlando is named Donald) brings the ducks from their super awesome duck palace in the hotel¹ and leads them along a red carpet from the elevators to the fountain, and at 5pm they’re lead back.

I went to Orlando to attend the DISH Team Summit. I used to work for DISH Corporate, but now I work for a small business that (among other ventures) is a DISH national retailer. For the Summit DISH gets all of us retailers together and plies us with free food and booze so we’ll walk around the trade show gathering freebies and then sit through training classes. Also, they want to thank us for not going full retailer on The Peabody and the Orange County Convention Center, so they give us more booze and desserts every night of the Summit. We weren’t there for the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert Wednesday, but we did go to the Summit After Dark thing on Thursday. It was decent, what with the booze and desserts and all, but we were tired so we ended up back in our hotel room by 9pm.

Sunrise over Orlando.

Y’all, this is the Tailgater. Get one. Really, whether I worked for DISH or not, I’d say you need to get one. This little baby is a portable, automated satellite system. Connect it to a DISH receiver and hot diggity, you’ve got satellite service, whether you’re tailgating or camping or anywhere you want to be. It’s fully automated so there’s no need to manually peak. Eff yes. This one is in a clear case so you can see the internal workings², usually it comes in a white case, but we did hear these clear cases will be up for distribution in a few months. Which is cool, because seriously, this looks awesome. I told the dude they need to make some colored transparent cases. If DISH made pink, sparkly transparent cases I’d already own like ten of them. This is something I think DISH needs to figure out, those little things can have a big impact. DISH/Echostar are kind of the nerdy bunch of the pay-TV industry, they have some amazing innovations but they focus a lot on function and not a lot on form. Seriously, I’ve talked to customers who pay more for DirecTV simply because they can get a remote with their favorite NFL team. Little stuff!

Views of Universal City Walk. DISH blocked off all of the restaurants (except the fast food ones) for us on Friday night, the last night of Summit. It was fun and the food was awesome and Fat Tuesday had some really good frozen drinks that had quite a bit of 151 in them.

Saturday we had to check out of our hotel by noon, but we didn’t have to be at the airport until 5ish. We rented a car and pondered going to one of the many amusement parks, but we were wiped from the Summit and really what’s the point of paying for a ticket when you only have a few hours? Instead we went to a little greenhouse called World of Orchids and took tons of pictures then had lunch in a park in Orlando³. We also checked out B52 Park by Orlando International before heading to the airport.

The trip back to DC was ridiculously turbulent. The fasten seat belt light was on pretty much the whole trip, which was fine with me because I napped the whole way. Unfortunately the planes we flew on didn’t have a business class, but they did have the “equivalent” Economy Plus, which just meant we were in economy seats in the exit aisles so there was more leg room. Also, first class straight sucked. Instead of three seats in a row there were two and the seats were leather instead of cloth. It’s been awhile since I’ve been on a short domestic flight so I suppose things have changed, but two hours of free alcohol isn’t enough for me to pay an extra $300 for that.

Mother’s Day was a quiet affair. Andrew and I took the kids down to Charlottesville to see his family, I talked to my mom and we had dinner at Guadalajara. Love me some Mexican! Monday I had to head down to school to turn in the textbooks I rented this semester and since Tuesday I’ve been pretty swamped with work. Here are my babies, napping on the couch together in their Thing 1 & Thing 2 shirts.

1. Wish I’d had time to see this!
2. Which I LOVED seeing.
3. There are many lakes and parks in Orlando, but it literally took us a half hour to find one that had any parking. This is ridiculous Orlando!

Now seriously people, I have some more work stuff to do so my workload is taken care of while I’m out of town and I still haven’t packed and I still have clothes that need to be washed. What the fuck have I been doing the last week? Not preparing for this trip, that’s what. But at least we’re flying business class so we won’t be wedged in between ten other people or something else awful. And we’re the row right behind first class so there will be plenty of leg room and the possibility of sneaking up to first class. Maybe? I’m probably going to get tasered by an Air Marshall. If you don’t hear from me in awhile assume the worst and know that I love you for bothering to read my blog.

Also, this.

Less easy answer: I went to church when I was younger. I learned about Jesus and the Bible in Sunday School. There were a few years I went to church regularly, but it wasn’t a major part of my upbringing. I can’t really pin point exactly when I stopped believing. For me there was no defining moment when I decided God didn’t exist. It was more of a gradual decline in faith starting from the time I was about 9 or 10. I had questions that the Bible couldn’t answer. Such as, “How do we know the Bible is true?” and “If God is so powerful, why doesn’t he just show up and let us know he’s here?”. When I couldn’t find the answers I sought in church, I turned to my local library and my own logical thinking. Honestly, the more information I uncovered and the more thinking I did, the further I grew from the church.

I’m not saying people who believe in God don’t think or have information. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few people who have studied their religion immensely and come away with more faith in their belief system, and that’s awesome. I have zero issue with people who believe in religion, but I do dislike when people with religion assume that those without are somehow lacking.

If you derive happiness and peace from your religion, that’s great. To me, that’s the most important part of religion. Not the bullshit about whose god is better or whose holy text is right. But you have to understand that there are people out there who don’t need religion to have a meaningful life. If you think the joy you get from God is the greatest joy there is, that’s probably true. For you. Doesn’t mean it’s true for me.

I know many religious people are respectful and considerate of others, but unfortunately many are not. To those who pity someone who doesn’t “know” God, or who thinks I’m facing eternal damnation because I don’t believe the same as you: I’m sorry, but I have zero fucks to give. The fact of the matter is that I would never look down on you for your choice of belief, and I simply ask for the same in return.