(Okay, finally am getting around to Photoshopping my Disneyland pics, which I'm putting up with the entries. The other days at Disney will be posted later, whenever I get those photos done.) For now, pretend this was actually posted on January 24.)

The burial went fine. 15 minutes long.

Mom got a light green sparkly(?!) casket that looked great in the sun, next to the dark green velvet cover they had on the ah, burial apparatus. Not to mention the Astroturf they had decorating the site. They had two rows of chairs set up on the site. I did NOT want to be sitting in the front row, that close to the casket, but obviously I had to.

I was flabbergasted at my aunt Susie (who can't stand Auntie D) actually hugging Auntie D. Good behavior all around.

Pastor Chuck did a little service, which was shorter than I'd thought it was going to be. The PITAS brought roses and handed them out to everyone to put on the coffin.

Basically, that was about it. Aunt Susie and Uncle Brad wandered off to let Mulan (guide dog puppy) go to the bathroom and put flowers on other graves. PITA-crew took off to go set up lunch. Mom talked to the pastor.

And lunch afterwards was a very well-behaved affair. Everyone dealt well with Mauricio being there, didn't seem to suspect anything was funny. A few comments were made sniping at Laurie (sigh), but that was about it, and par for the course, unfortunately. All things considered, that was super-mega-polite behavior.

After that, Mauricio said he "had to go back to work", so we were out of there and on the road to Disneyland by noon. Surprise, surprise. Even more surprise, surprise, was that we actually hit Anaheim by 5-ish p.m.

Oh, how nice it was to get off the long-ass freeway of brown and boring and to see palm trees. And the temperature was in the seventies! SEVENTIES!!! I'd been wearing a frigging heavy winter coat through the whole burial, and here it was in the seventies!

And OMFG, nobody told me that Disney now has a whole freaking district of its own now or something. Two theme parks, three hotels, their own streets, and a frigging shopping area? And all of this was the old parking lot?!

*boggle* does not even begin to describe that.

We were at the Paradise Pier. Let me just say that while yeah, it's more expensive, it is definitely WORTH IT IN SO MANY WAYS to stay at a Disney hotel.

Reasons why:
(a) No parking issues, easy walk down to the parks.
(b) If you're too lazy to walk all the 5 minutes there, there's the monorail, which now goes from Downtown Disney (the shopping) to Tomorrowland and back.
(c) Did I mention that whole shopping within 5 minutes thing?
(d) Various bonuses given to the hotel residents, such as getting your own private entrance into California Adventure through the back of the Grand Californian Hotel. (Which reminds me of the hotel in Yosemite, I think.)
(e) And early entry by an hour on certain days into Disneyland (see the entry for the next day).
(f) And the best part...YOU CAN HAVE YOUR PARK PURCHASES SHIPPED OVER TO THE HOTEL. No carrying bags all day, you can buy as much crap as you want without having to figure out how you're going to stash it below the seats on rides. And the next morning, you can pick it up at the bellhop's desk.

THAT IS SO TOTALLY AWESOME.

Anyway, we got there, there was a lot of stuff going on about trying to pick up our package of tickets, etc. We got told that if we wanted to go to the Rainforest Cafe (one of the places EVERYONE plugged to go), we should make one ASAP, because it can take ten days to get one. So we went over to the aforementioned bellhop's desk and...got one for 5:15 the next day. SWEET!

And by the time we got out of there it was a little after six. And since our Disneyland deal was for three days of park admission and we were supposedly only in town Wednesday through Friday...hey, who wants to go into the park now? It closes at 8...

And thus is how within the same day, we buried my dad AND went to Disneyland, in full funeral wear.

We didn't do a whole LOT within an hour-and-change, mind you, just wandered around Main Street for the first time in ten years and picked out stuff to buy and watched a parade. But it was still fun and exciting to be BACK there again.

Plus, after the park closed, there were ah, more stores to go to. Huzzah!

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