J.P.

Today we went to Epcot. As you enter Epcot, you’ll notice walls and walls made of granite with metal plates attached. On these plates you’ll find thumbnail shots of various Disney visitors who chose to contribute to “Leave A Legacy”. I believe the program ran from Fall 1999 to June 2007.

Here’s a blurb about it:

The Leave A Legacy program, first launched at Epcot in Fall 1999, has been discontinued as of June 16, 2007. The current display of more than 550,000 tiles at the main entrance of Epcot will remain for the time being. The Leave A Legacy Locator station will be relocated to the Camera Center underneath Spaceship Earth. If you need to get information about your Leave A Legacy tile from home, contact the following email address: WDW.EC.legacy@disney.com

Introduced for the Millennium Celebration! Granite and steel sculptures are being covered with engraved images of Guests from all over the world. Here’s how it works: Photo Capture Stations will take your photo digitally. It will then be etched onto a steel tile. Within approximately four days, the tile will become part of the stone sculptures.Leave A Legacy The cost is $35 for one image per tile, $38 for two images per tile, plus tax.

There are computers at the site to show you where your tile is located. Certificates will also be mailed to you so you can come back on a future trip to see your Millennium image. Also within about 2 weeks, your image will be posted on the Internet at Disney’s Leaving a Legacy page.

“The Leave a Legacy plaza was designed by veteran Imagineer John Hench, along with a team of Walt Disney Imagineering interns. Hench started as an artist with The Walt Disney Company in 1939, and went on to help design and build Disneyland. He was the original art director for Epcot, and chief designer of Spaceship Earth. The megaliths range from 3 to 19 feet high, and the heaviest weighs more than 50,000 pounds.” (Disney’s Press Release)

Earl, Jamie and I took the opportunity to find our two photos, from 2000 and 2007, amongst the thousands that are displayed. Should you go to Epcot, here’s where you can find us:

2000: East-2-F-14-11-33
2007: West-6-H-31-10-28

I think it’s important to Leave-A-Legacy. So we are going to do this for a while. If you send or e-mail us a picture of you pointing to either one of our photos on the Leave-A-Legacy walls, we will donate $25.00 to your favorite charity.

Since the program was discontinued, Disney is no longer able to print our pictures out but I did snap a photo off the screen when the cast member was looking up our information. Look who had the red beard back in 2000!

Earl, Jamie and I have situated ourselves for the evening in the lovely town called Pine Grove, Pa. I don’t really know much about this place except that there is a nice Hampton Inn, we are close to an older McDonalds and we are at milepost 100 on Interstate 81 in Pennsylvania.

We are on our way to Florida for a week with our first night at the House of the Mouse being Sunday night.

This is how everyone should start a new job: work two weeks and then get a week off for vacation. My new company has been quite understanding about my existing plans. Speaking of which, the job is going along fabulously and I am LOVING it.

Earl has kindly done the driving tonight. I hopped in the backseat after dinner and promptly fell asleep; I woke up in Scranton, Pa. That’s quite the place to wake up.

Tomorrow we continue our trek south. I’ve heard that there may be wild weather between here and there. This could be quite exciting.

We picked up a carton of orange juice at the local convenience store. It’s your usual (in the states) half gallon sized orange juice and it comes in a waxed cardboard carton. We usually use the returnable glass bottles but we were lazy this time around. The carton has a plastic spout drilled into the side of it.

I am curious about this.

For decades there was a marking on one end of the carton that had two little circles and it said “press here to form spout”. The task was as simple as implied; push in the correct spot with your fingers and the cleverly folded waxed cardboard will pop out into a convenient spout that allows you to accurately pour into the vessel in which the liquid is going to be contained. (How’s that for fancy writing!)

I fail to understand why we have gone from this cardboard spout setup and have decided to include a piece of plastic in this formerly easily recycled container. Has the dumbing down of the American public resulted in the failure to comprehend the instructions of “press here to form spout”, complete with two little pictures? Were people trying to do this on the wrong side of the carton? Will some lack of plastic throw of the delicate chemistry involved in the unnatural preservatives contained within, thereby nullifying the impossibly long expiration period? Was the simplicity of the carton not sexy enough? I miss that simplicity.

I’m going to remember the glass bottles next time.

One of the things that I didn’t expect to happen so quickly with my change in work schedule is my becoming a morning person so quickly. Did you know that every morning the sun rises in the east like a big ball of, well, sunshine and bathes the landscape in glorious light bringing the, well, light of a new day to all that are fortunate enough to behold it?

Wow!

My commute involves driving east in the morning and west in the evening so I get to do this whole ‘bathed in light’ thing in both directions of the commute. When augmented with my lunch break I have to say that I feel quite nice.

I have never been a morning person. I think it’s because I have always subscribed to the fact and insisted that I was a night person. My friend Dave from old work says it’s all in your head and I never bought into that, but I think he may be on to something. I now get up each morning at 5:30. I used to get up at 7:00. Now, I set my alarm each morning for 5:30 in an effort to make sure I get to work on time. But here’s the thing. Starting on Wednesday, I awoke before the alarm. Yes, I woke up at 5:24. Now, I don’t know if there is a plane flying over at that time or if Tom is ramming around the house or if it’s my own circadian rhythm getting in sync with my desires but ’tis true, I am now waking up my own at 5:24.

It is Saturday as of this writing. I went to bed last night around midnight.

I woke up at 5:24 this morning. I tried to nap and I did for a little bit but I couldn’t sleep past 7:00. As a result of this two thoughts come to mind: I have either officially become a morning person or I am getting older. I have always equated getting up early with older people because that’s what they do.

Whatever the reason, I think it’s pretty nifty seeing the sunrise each morning.