Castaway Cay – Friday
Today would be a bit unique in terms of my Disney Cruising experience. The ship would be docked at Castaway Cay, and I had no plans to get off the ship.
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Mini Trip Report – Disney Fantasy June 2023 (Wednesday-Thursday)
(all the pictures will be in a gallery in the last post. Whenever that comes.)
St Thomas – Wednesday
Breakfast today was, once again, at the Cabana’s buffet. We didn’t have any planned excursions, but we wanted to take the kids on the “Skyride to Paradise Point” gondola, because there were some nice views up at the top, and we thought they’d enjoy the ride.
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Mini Trip Report – Disney Fantasy June 2023 (Monday-Tuesday)
(all the pictures will be in a gallery in the last post. Whenever that comes.)
2nd Sea Day – Monday
Breakfast this morning was at Cabanas. One thing we noticed throughout the cruise was the muffins. Although they had chocolate chips or blueberries on top, there were almost none in the actual muffin. My blueberry muffin this morning had 1 blueberry (other than the ones on top). Tommy’s chocolate chip muffin had 2 chocolate chips. The muffins were good otherwise (maybe a little dry, but that is probably due to the lack of toppings.)
Later in the trip, Tracy and I were planning on doing a ziplining excursion, and my mom would be doing a land and sea tour of Tortola. My dad wanted to stay on the ship and relax, so we booked time for the kids in the nursery for the time we’d be off. But, we thought it would probably be a good idea to give them some practice time there first to get used to it. So we made a reservation for today.
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Mini Trip Report – Disney Fantasy June 2023 (Saturday/Sunday)
Look! New content on my blog! It’s been a while … I think 3 years since the last post? Anyways, a lot has happened since then. 2 kids have joined the family … ok I guess that’s about it, but I feel like that’s a lot.
We recently took a cruise on the Disney Fantasy. This was my 11th Disney Cruise, Tracy’s 9th, Tommy’s 4th, and Lily’s 1st. Also joining us were my parents (2nd Disney Cruise for both of them). We decided on a 7 night Eastern Caribbean itinerary, with stops at Tortola, St Thomas, and Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay. This is not going to be a complete trip report – I tend to ramble, and why should I punish you with that? (But, for the 2 of you that are actually reading, let me know if you have any questions)
Edit: Ok, change in plans. As I started writing everything out, I realized it was getting pretty long (remember how I said I tend to ramble? Yeah, still true.) and so I decided to make this into multiple posts. I’ll put all the photos in a gallery in the last post.
Also on the same sailing were one of my coworkers and her family – we didn’t hang out with them a lot, but we bumped into them a few times.
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Quarantine Journals – Refinishing a table (final)
And It’s Done!
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Quarantine Journals – Refinishing a Table (part 2)
Now that I have the garage cleaned out, it’s time to start working on the table! First, though, I had to take the table apart. It wasn’t that difficult – it only involved about 10 minutes lying on the floor trying to figure out how to take the top off. Then about 5 minutes with a manual screwdriver, before I figured that it would be much faster with power tools, so I got out the drill, popped a flat-head bit in, and 5 minutes later, the top of the table was off, and I carried both pieces out to the garage.
Time to start sanding! I plugged in the orbital sander (that’s what the orange cord is for), put on a dust mask*, turned on the sander, and started sanding. And quickly noticed that although I was making a fair amount of dust, I wasn’t doing much to get through the original stain on the wood. Turned off the sander, looked at the sanding pad – and realized that I was using a 180 grit sandpaper.
*Well, an improvised dust mask (aka bandana). Although I do have a few N95 masks that I bought several years ago (long enough that they may actually be expired) after an excursion into my crawl space left me wheezing for days, given the current situation, I figured it was probably better to save those.
With sandpaper, higher number = smaller pieces of grit. So a high grit sandpaper, like a 180, is really good for the finish sanding right before staining/painting, but not good for getting rid of old stain. So, I dug through the drawers of my work bench, and found that I didn’t have any low-grit sandpaper.
Time for a trip to a (surprisingly busy) Home Depot. I was able to find some 100 grit sandpaper. Once I got home, the 100 grit sandpaper worked much faster, and a few hours later, I was able to get the sanding done for both the top and bottom, and most of the old stain has been removed.
Next up: Touch up sanding, hand sanding some of the detail spots (the groove on the posts, edges, and the drawer. Then I’ll switch back to the high grit sandpaper and do a final sanding, and clean everything to get it ready to stain.
Permanent link to this article: https://eric-abrams.net/2020/05/quarantine-journals-refinishing-a-table-part-2/
Quarantine Journals – Refinishing a Table (part 1)
So, normally I use this space to write trip reports for various trips (usually Disney-related) that I take. However, with COVID-19, I haven’t been able to travel lately. Instead, I’m going to chronicle the steps and progress towards refinishing a coffee table.
In our family room, we have a nice coffee table. It’s in pretty good condition, considering it’s over 30 years old. That being said, there’s a few scuffs and stains, and my wife and I have talked for a while about getting it refinished. Somehow, that discussion changed from “Let’s find a good furniture restoration company in the area” to “Eric, why don’t you try to do it yourself?” (I think this was after she had a conversation with one of her sisters about something that the sister was doing to their house.)
So, we decided that I’d try to handle the job myself.
First step? Clean up the garage. I had to do this in order to have enough free space to set up the sawhorses and put the table on them. It took most of an afternoon, but I was able to get pretty much everything off the floor, buy a new hose reel cart (the hose was one of the things on the floor), straighten the shelves, and also clear off some space on the workbench.
Here’s the finished result. Not too bad!
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Farewell old content, I knew you well
Sadly, due to a snafu with my web host, I lost all the content that was on my site before.
At this point, I don’t think I’ll be re-writing everything, but if there was a picture you liked, let me know, and I can send you a copy of it.
Stay tuned for possible future trip reports.
Permanent link to this article: https://eric-abrams.net/2019/09/farewell-old-content-i-knew-you-well/
Disney Fantasy – Western Caribbean – Sept 2013 – Day 7
Day 7 – Castaway Cay
Today was our day at Castaway Cay (pronounced Key … no, I don’t know why either). We chose to sleep in a bit, and then go ashore after breakfast. Some people got off the boat much earlier. For the runners, there’s an event called the Castaway Cay 5K, which is free (a free disney race? unheard of!), and started sometime around 8am, if I remember correctly. Not being a runner, I did not participate. (With that said, 5K is only about 3 miles, which is less than a typical day in the parks, so I may actually try to complete this next time).
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Disney Fantasy – Western Caribbean – Sept 2013 – Day 6
Day 6 – Thursday – Day at Sea
Nothing really happened in the morning. (Translation: Something probably happened, but I don’t remember it … or we slept in)
At 12:45, they were showing Planes in the Buena Vista Theater. Due to showtimes that didn’t work with our schedules, and generally mixed reviews, this was the first movie that they showed that we hadn’t actually seen in theaters. Before we went in to the movie, we stopped by the quick service place on the pool deck and got some food to take in with us. Chicken tenders, Mickey soft pretzels, and ice cream. (They say you can bring food into the theater, they don’t really want you bringing in ice cream, but we put it in a drink cup with a lid, and nobody knew the difference). By the way, if I haven’t already mentioned it, their chicken tenders are great.
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