Walking Down Main Street USA / Daylight Savings Time

Walking Down Main Street USA

At Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, everyone walks down Main Street USA at least twice: when they arrive at the park, and when they leave. Of course, you can get around that by taking the train from Main Street Station when you arrive, or by arriving at Main Street Station right before you leave.

But if you skip Main Street, in my opinion you would be missing one of the most interesting parts of the Magic Kingdom. There is lots of great detail and charm to be found on Main Street. And except for the castle at the end of the street and the modern-day parade floats that roll by at times, it is pretty easy to imagine that you are in some ideal turn-of-the-century town. That’s the turn of the 20th Century, by the way.

Photo location: Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Florida
A three exposure (-2, 0, +2) HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, edited in GIMP

Daylight Savings Time

Daylight Savings Time is once again upon us here in the United States. 9:00 is the new 8:00. Except for the states of Arizona and Hawaii, of course. They take the high road and leave things as they are.

Sometimes I think I am one of the few that does not enjoy Daylight Savings Time. Everyone gets so excited about having an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon/early evening. But to me, it isn’t that big of a deal. Without that extra daylight hour, I still find plenty to do inside the house once it gets dark. Although sometimes that “plenty to do” involves watching TV or reading a book.

And once the time changes, the mornings are awfully dark when we get up. This morning, it was still pretty dark at 7:00. Of course, the dark rain clouds contributed to that just a bit. But either way, it wouldn’t have been nearly as bright as it was last week at that time.

I think I don’t have that much trouble adjusting to the time change, except for my stomach. I get hungry at odd times. And we will be eating lunch an hour earlier today than we were last week. That isn’t as big of a problem as in the fall when we go back to standard time. Lunch will be an hour later then, except that my stomach doesn’t understand that. It wants food when it wants food, no matter what the clock says.

And the animals don’t seem to understand why we mess with God’s time, either. Just last night, as I went out to feed the animals, our dog Buddy looked at me and said, “Hey, why are you out here so early?”

I said, “Because today we started back to daylight savings time, where we set our clocks ahead one hour to have an extra hour of daylight in the evening.”

Buddy said, “Okay. But what’s a clock?”

I asked the horses if they liked it, and they said, “Nay.”

So there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth.