Margaret & Ian's life together, including Ian's MINIs!
Living in Winter Garden gives us lots of chances to enjoy the town, and today was another – walking into town in beautiful weather to watch the annual Christmas Parade (and then have delicious coffee and dessert at Way Chocolate!)
Like last year, I took lots of photos – and here they are …
There’s a business in downtown Winter Garden called Birket Engineering; they promote that they’ve done work for Disney, and other things … they are located in a building that long ago was a vehicle / tractor garage, and they do have a photo on display from those times. I took a photo now where it’s clearly the same building:
The display window front right has a model rail track, along with photos of their business; children (and adults!) can “play” with the trains by triggering them to start running – so long as the setup is working (for an engineering company, they’re not so great at keeping it running!):
Also neat, in the windows above and near the entrance are two “old world style” etched panels for Birket Engineering, and Frank Mifkovic:
A document on their website describes Frank: “1988. Frank begins work as the fifth employee at a newly formed company with the task of creating an electrical assembly and installation facility from the ground up. In a shop with no employees, no equip- ment, and 5,000 sq.ft. of empty space, the ride control installation of Epcot’s Norway Pavilion would begin
in six months. Frank was immediately cast to wear all the production hats of hiring, procurement, assembly, quality control, installation supervision, and field test & adjust. Norway opened as scheduled, as have the follow- ing 100+ Birket projects with Frank’s production leadership.
Prior to Birket Engineering, Frank worked for eleven years with then Walt Disney Production’s MAPO in California.”
I returned to Disney Springs last night, and the Christmas Tree Trail was back (seen last year too); different this year since it was dark so everything looks better!
Today was interesting for staring at the sky! First, in a rare event (next time isn’t till 2032!) the tiny planet Mercury was between Earth and the Sun so we could “see” it – though it’s just a really really tiny dot on the Sun! I took a few photos with my high zoom camera and using my eclipse lens filter (from 2017); you can see the tiny dot has moved between the two photos – I made copies and added an arrow, to help!
Later in the morning Space X had another launch and with clear skies we could watch that too (some 50-60 miles away, looking East!):
This past weekend an Alfa-Romeo club (and a few Fiats) displayed in downtown Celebration – it’s further from our home now so we don’t visit as often, but this seemed like a good bonus! Here’s some photos:
Once again Margaret and I enjoyed Halloween downtown, with so many people dressed up in costumes – and we did too! We chose a Downton Abbey theme, with Margaret getting lots of compliments 🙂
Pictures from sunset time (about 7pm); this time of year the “rainy season” in Florida is coming to an end, with less humid days and (slightly) cooler evenings. That means less clouds, so sunset was pretty quick with the sun simply disappearing and not giving much color to the sky. A few nice pictures anyway …
