Photo-A-Day #1637

IZEAFest kicks off with the opening party at Busch Gardens and Howl-O-Scream. Allison and I hung out with the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Entourage. It kills me that people were saying that there was an entourage and all. I just walk faster and act as a tour guide so that is how I get in the front. We had a very fun day today and night tonight.

We decided to skip going to Aquatica so we just hung out at the hotel pool all morning and into the afternoon. Eva wasn’t too into the water because it was a little cool, nothing like the ocean on Cape Cod cold, but she must have been spoiled by the bath water temps at Mimi and Grandpa Dano’s. Eventually we jumped out of the pool and had ourselves from snacks to hold us over for lunch until we went out with people for lunch.

Hanging at the pool we caught up with Heather in Bc, Lisa, Steven Sanders and his family. Later Cat Purry arrived with her son and while we were eating Aaron Brazell came over and said “Hello Ben”, to me, that was very cool. I am looking forward to his keynote on Saturday.

Allison went on upstairs and I spent more time with Eva in the pool. She didn’t quite want to get in at first but eventually we both were in the pool swimming. She liked playing with the depth markers on the side of the pool. She likes the letter “M”.

Around 1:30 Eva and I went upstairs to the room. Allison went downstairs to do some work. I gave Eva tubby time and then put her down in the crib and made a tent (w/ towels and blankets) on the crib. That totally works to get her down to sleep. I took a quick shower and then started reading The Lost Symbol on my iPod Touch and passed out after 2 pages so don’t tell me that Kindle for the iPhone isn’t like reading a book. I woke up around 3:30 and pulled together a group of people to go out for an early dinner at B.B. Kings off International Drive.

Lunch at B.B. Kings was really fun. Our friend Maureen arrived. Maureen is taking care of Eva for the next few days and nights starting tonight. I also ran into my friend Timothy Jones. Tim joined, Dina Riccobono, MommaDJane, her friend Allen and us for lunch. We drove on over to the Point Orlando and met up with Buck Daddy and David from Raging Tech. We grabbed a table and had a delicious lunch. Thank you Dina and MarketLeverage!

At Lunch Buck gave Eva a beautiful book with 100 Children’s stories. He knows that I love to read to Eva and Eva loves reading and being read to. David handed out bags of cookies that he made with “RT” in white icing. A great way to promote Raging Tech! We had fun conversation and Eva entertained as usual. We got a few nice photos of the group, the hostess took a few for us.

In the Restaurant.

Outside the restaurant.

As we were leaving we saw a guy pull up right next to our car in a Lamborghini. He didn’t park so well so I had to pull out for everyone to get in. After I pulled the car out Tim and I both took photos in front of the car doing our own version of the “Make Money With..” sites.

We got back to the hotel and then met up with a ton of great bloggers and got on the buses to head to Busch Gardens for Howl-O-Scream. #HOS is when Busch Gardens gets transformed into a giant haunted house. There are actual haunted houses set up as well as scare zones. Overall I wasn’t scared. I did jump as we were walking through a dark area and suddenly an ice cream cart was on and chugging along loudly. I jumped a bit at that. However I didn’t have to jump much in the Haunted Houses or in the Scare zones because we had Courtney Benefiel with us. The actors were all over her because she screamed like crazy over and over. So by the time we got to them they had to reset for the next people. She was our early detection. We did ride one of the roller coasters, an old wooden one that banged me around like crazy. I was all set for coasters after that. I think a few of us were.

We took bus #1 home to the hotel because we were beat. Right off the bat some guy clearly drunk comes up the aisle and vomits in the bus bathroom. He had trouble turning on the light because he made a complete mess of the bathroom. Later he came back again. So like a bunch of 12 year old boys we tweeted the whole scene over and over and included photos. We had fun giggling and tweeting with Buck Daddy, Tim Jones and PegLegPug. I love my friends and “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew members. Well it is now 1:00am and I’m getting up in 5 hours. Gotta help with registration in the morning. Here are the photos from my IZEAFest 2009 set.