The Wonderful World of Disney...
My aunt works for Disney, and for the past 7 years she has been nominated for the prestigious Partners in Excellence Award, an award only about 500 employees a year worldwide recieve. This year, she won! Winners each get a cool little statue of Mickey and Walt, get to wear a pin recognizing their award on their name tag, and get to go to a cool awards ceremony. This year, the ceremony was at the Contemporary Resort, and I was her "date".
It was such an amazingly cool evening. We arrived at the hotel on Tuesday evening, and helped ourselved to the open bar, where I got to partake, being of age. It's still sort of strange drinking around relatives though. I met some of her coworkers. The dining hall was HUGE, and each table was decorated with elaborate centerpieces, and the statues of the winners.
I think this is the first honest to goodness dinner I've been to where there have been separate plates, forks and knives for each course, as well as a full compliment of drinking glasses and a glass of champaign for a teast at each place setting. The courses were DELICIOUS and works of art. The salad consisted of one large and decorative leaf of each kind of green you could imagine, a single tomatoe and olive, and a slice of cheese. Bread was then passed around, with butter palets in the shape of flowers. Main course: A tender, yummy cut of beef, 2 jumbo shrimp, and carrots and green beans draped artistically into the mix. Dessert was the best. A chocolate mousse mold on a plate swirled with a chocolate shell that hardened, with berries to garnish AND a white chocolate cut-out of the Mickey-Walt statue on each mousse. Yum!
But the BEST part of the evening (OTHER than being there to support my aunt and mingle with some of Disney's finest...), was getting to see Sidney Poitier speak!!! The man is a legend, with some amazing stories to tell, and he's a DAMN good public speaker. When he got to the part of his "snapshots" of his life when he described holding his breath and playing dead to avoid getting shot in a police riot in New York, I swear that entire audience was holding its breath with him. He spent the time working his way through "snapshots" of his early childhood and adult years. He had some pretty cool, sometimes funny, sometimes shocking or emotional stories to tell. Basically, he wanted to prove that you can't judge a person by what you see in front of you. They are the sum total of their entire existence; the good, bad and ugly. And no matter where life takes you, you have to stop and examine whether you are being true to the roots and fundamental truths you were raised on.
Overall, an amazing evening.
It was such an amazingly cool evening. We arrived at the hotel on Tuesday evening, and helped ourselved to the open bar, where I got to partake, being of age. It's still sort of strange drinking around relatives though. I met some of her coworkers. The dining hall was HUGE, and each table was decorated with elaborate centerpieces, and the statues of the winners.
I think this is the first honest to goodness dinner I've been to where there have been separate plates, forks and knives for each course, as well as a full compliment of drinking glasses and a glass of champaign for a teast at each place setting. The courses were DELICIOUS and works of art. The salad consisted of one large and decorative leaf of each kind of green you could imagine, a single tomatoe and olive, and a slice of cheese. Bread was then passed around, with butter palets in the shape of flowers. Main course: A tender, yummy cut of beef, 2 jumbo shrimp, and carrots and green beans draped artistically into the mix. Dessert was the best. A chocolate mousse mold on a plate swirled with a chocolate shell that hardened, with berries to garnish AND a white chocolate cut-out of the Mickey-Walt statue on each mousse. Yum!
But the BEST part of the evening (OTHER than being there to support my aunt and mingle with some of Disney's finest...), was getting to see Sidney Poitier speak!!! The man is a legend, with some amazing stories to tell, and he's a DAMN good public speaker. When he got to the part of his "snapshots" of his life when he described holding his breath and playing dead to avoid getting shot in a police riot in New York, I swear that entire audience was holding its breath with him. He spent the time working his way through "snapshots" of his early childhood and adult years. He had some pretty cool, sometimes funny, sometimes shocking or emotional stories to tell. Basically, he wanted to prove that you can't judge a person by what you see in front of you. They are the sum total of their entire existence; the good, bad and ugly. And no matter where life takes you, you have to stop and examine whether you are being true to the roots and fundamental truths you were raised on.
Overall, an amazing evening.