Tag: easter

Birthdays and Books

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Welcome to the shiny and new looking blog. A lick of paint and a shifting around of the furniture was overdue so here we are, looking all different.

From time to time, I do wonder what I’m doing with this blog. When I look around the internet at the Disney “blogging community” I seem to be doing pretty much everything wrong. It would appear that I should be an early thirties Mum of at least three kids with names like Gunner and Zeke and my profile should proclaim that I am a social media strategist, which I think means you use Instagram and have more than 100 followers.

Anyway, I do what I do, writing the same stuff for the same loyal folks and it’s all good. It seems I am missing the opportunity to “monetize” my blog and allow it to fund my lavish lifestyle, but all of that sounds like a load of work that I don’t have time for.

I clearly shouldn’t go looking at what other folks are up to with their blogs, it’s just a distraction. I’ve never really considered myself a Disney blogger in the sense that most seem to, as they don’t drone on about everyday stuff in the glorious way in which I can and do!

Speaking of funding my lavish lifestyle, Facebook memories reminded this week that it is now five years since I self-published my first lot of trip reports.

Book Image
Mkingdon’s Tales of Family, Food and Florida

It launched in a blaze of typos and spelling mistakes but God bless you, many of you bought it, promoted it and gave lovely feedback. Though some members of the Disney forum community may never believe it, the intention was not to make money from that exercise. You will notice that I have not retired to a beach front Florida location yet.

The idea at the time was to do a few things…

  1. Save my trip reports somewhere a little more permanent than a forum site on the internet that I had no control over
  2. Learn how to self-publish a book as I had been toying with the idea of writing a novel and I needed to know how hard/easy it would be to get that self-published. I did eventually write that novel, All This and More, so you should buy it immediately.
  3. Be discovered by someone willing to fund my permanent residence in WDW and write about it for loads of money.

As Meatloaf once said, two out of three ain’t bad.

Anyway, if you bought it, thank you. The fact that is has nearly eighty reviews, almost all of which are five stars, is both incredible and very much appreciated.

Elsewhere in my Facebook memories, it showed what I already knew. I have always been slimmer and younger than I am right at this moment, but also that this time of year is a cavalcade of family birthdays. My nephew George, my niece Sarah and of course Louise all have a birthday over the course of two days in late March.

We went out for a lovely meal on Wednesday to celebrate Louise’s. It was our first meal out with Freddie and he was great. He enthralled the waiting staff, played and laughed his way through the entire thing. This augers well for the many dining experiences planned for Florida later in the year.

I have been off work this week and it’s been glorious. I have done very little indeed and therefore it qualifies as glorious. I took the very deliberate decision to do as little as possible and force myself to relax. I do find that hard to be honest. My type A, get stuff done mentality is my enemy. I constantly battle my brain’s need to feel as if I have “done stuff” before I am allowed to do nothing. Doing nothing of course has included a tip run, some tidying, some admin tasks I’ve been putting off and walking the dogs, but beyond that I have been using the couch and streaming services in equal measure.

I have watched all of The Looming Towers on Amazon Prime, which was excellent and much better than I was expecting, and having had my “Whitehouse drama” taste buds whetted, I sought out the original in the form of The West Wing and I devoured Season 1 in a few days. Season 2 is going much the same way.

With Easter upon us, and Happy Chocolate Day to you all by the way, you never know, the weather may be turning , the nights getting lighter, and in terms of what is most important, we are entering the home straight in the run up to our holiday. It’s roughly twelve months since our last trip so by the time we go in August it will be exactly far too long between trips and I think we are all feeling it. Rebecca, having not been with us last time, is suffering more than most as I think this is the longest period in her life that she hasn’t set foot on WDW property.

Right, I’m waffling now, a symptom of me not planning out my blog posts, which is something else I’m not getting right. Next week, there will be a “haul post” where I walk you through everything I got from Asda in the big shop. This will be linked to my Pinterest, YouTube channel and Friends Reunited account. Please, click, share, follow, subscribe etc etc.

Oh, that reminds me. During last week I saw a news article telling of some waste of oxygen YouTube “star” who was arrested at WDW. Sigh, this intentionally provocative, self promoting, desperate for views and clicks shite is everything that is wrong with social media and YouTube specifically. There’s some belting content to be watched on there, but these types need to be stripped of their smartphones, broadband and human rights until they learn their lesson.

Till the next time…..

Cut, Thrust, Stab.

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

It has been a week of offers, counter offers, industrial espionage and daring do, of the likes not seen since Gordon Gekko bought a new pair of braces.  Yes, that’s right, we have been embroiled in the cut and thrust of property sales and purchases this week.

gordon gekko
Not a penny under the asking price, and the lounge curtains are non negotiable!

Following our viewing last Sunday, the working week began with an offer, the obligatory derisory sneer from us at such an offer, and from there a spiral of further offers, poker faces and letting folk sweat, until at some time on Wednesday we received an asking price offer.  This is not the glorious victory it may sound like as we had reduced said asking price by a chunk in previous weeks, however, a win is a win as they say.

We were glad our viewers were able to get there financially as they were lovely, and we will be delighted, should the next couple of rocky months deliver us closure, to see them live in “our house”.

For our part, we have had our house picked out for, well, a couple of decades really.  The house we want has been in Louise’s family for nearly thirty years, and my Mum and Dad have lived next door to it since 1984, so we are quite familiar with it.  We offered, and it was accepted.  All very painless really, mainly as we’d agreed the price with Louise’s family member up front, but again, I’ll take a win where it comes.

Following the abject horror of discovering the full extent of the legal costs in simply buying some bricks and roof, I recovered enough to instruct someone to handle it.  For the prices involved, I expect him to rebuild it brick by boring brick to ensure it is fit for purpose.  The bank have agreed the mortgage in principle, that principle being that I will continue to be their bitch until I am close to death, and so we have the wheels in motion.

So with all that admin and faff complete literally by 5.30pm on Thursday, we could no more as Easter arrived to shut everyone down.  Whether we now wait six weeks or twenty-six, is now in the hands of a lawyer I found on the internet and some call centre mortgage clerk just outside of Birmingham.

To celebrate spending large amounts of money, Louise and I went out on Friday night to, quite aptly, TGI Fridays.  It is the closest dining experience to the US we have in the UK, whilst at the same time being so far away from it, as to remind you why you want to go back so much!  Upon arrival, it was busy, and we were handed a vibrator and told to go to the bar.  I’ve heard about these types of drinking establishment, but haven’t yet visited one.

A tenner’s worth of wine and diet coke later, and we are soon seated.  The food is good, there is no denying, although the waiters all seem a little forced, rather than the natural good moods and charm of their US brethren.  However, as I drove home on the receiving end of Cheesy Nachos, a Chicken Fajita Salad and Cookie Dough Cheesecake, I certainly felt full enough to imagine I had just eaten US style.  The only difference being that on holiday in the US, I would be doing all that again within a matter of hours.

The long weekend is doing us nicely, with not a lot going on beyond planning stuff for the (hopefully) new house, with even the girls getting quite excited about the prospect of their new rooms, and the sheer volume of expensive tat that they can procure to, as Louis Walsh might say, make it their own.

Every year, pre Easter, our house echoes with the cries of “Girls, you’re not going to get as many eggs this year as you are too old now”.  This is all in vain, as now, there is so much chocolate in the house, I’ve had to hire a couple of oompa loompas to stock pile it.  We usually find a couple of Emily’s eggs down the back of her wardrobe just before Christmas, whereas if Rebecca’s make it to Tuesday that will be a new record!  Dad might just have to help out a little I suppose!

Before I get back to my restful long weekend, I need to express my thanks for everyone who has taken the time to “Like Me”.  This is not an outward expression of my neediness,  no, I keep that to myself mostly, but more a recognition of all those who gave a toss enough to get over to Facebook and like my new Mkingdon page.  I still don’t know really what will happen there, but we seem to have had fun this week??

mkingdon fb
122 Likes!!

Finally, we’ve had a make over here at mkingdon.com.  I don’t mean that I have parted my hair on a different side, although I might!  Instead, I have changed the look and feel of this here blog, as it had been the same for ages.  I hope you like it, but if it gets the same sort of reaction that a change to Facebook gets I expect to receive the parcels of dog poo through the letter box shortly.  The internet is odd like that.

I hope you all enjoy the break and love eggs.  Wait, no, love eggs is something altogether different and in no way related to Jesus.  Still, whatever floats your boat.

Till the next time……