Lily got her ears pierced yesterday at Claire's. Emily got her ears re-pierced. We tried to talk Uncle David into getting an ear pierced. No luck. Lily got some saphire studs to leave in her ears for the next 6 weeks. She's supposed to clean them 3 times a day.

The earings look great. She's growing up!

We left Disney on Friday. We got up around 8:00 and left for Epcot some time around 9:30. When we got to Epcot, we went to the Test Track. It was a 40 minute wait when we got there. We waited in line for a while and I checked my IPhone for flight information. It wasn't long before our AirTran flight from Orlando to Atlanta was delayed by 30 minutes - props to AirTran for having great mobile support for their website.

With the pressure off, we took one more ride on the Test Track. It had started to rain by the time we got to the outside portion of the track, so we got a little wet. But overall, this might be my favorite ride at Disney.

We got a couple of FastPass's for the Test Track before leaving. On our way out of the park we like to pick a family to hand the FastPass's to so they don't have to tie up their tickets. I'm not sure how we started doing this, but we now do it as a standard part of leaving the park.

We got back to the hotel and packed up and drove out to the airport. By the time we got there, our plane had been delayed an hour. So we ate lunch and went to the gate. It was packed. The reason for the crowding was all the snow in Atlanta. Flights were delayed left and right. We boarded the plane finally but it wasn't long before they announced another delay. This put the pilot over the limit of his service hours so then we had to wait longer while they found a pilot to replace our pilot. (There was also a rumor that our original pilot wasn't allowed to fly into Atlanta because the ceiling was too low and that we had to wait for a pilot who was qualified at that ceiling height. There was also the rumor that the CEO of AirTran was sitting in A2, so everyone should feel pretty safe.)

In any event, with this added delay, people who wanted to connect in Atlanta started deboarding the plane because they weren't going to be able to make their connections. It was going to be better if they tried to fly directly from Orlando. We paitiently waited it out and left Orlando about 3 hours after we were scheduled.

Flyting to Atlanta was fine except for one brief, pretty violent bit of turbulence. When we landed in Atlanta, the ground was already covered with snow. We took our time getting to the baggage claim and saw there were about 4 bags left on the carousel. I went over to pick our two bags up. When I got the second one, Emily said, "That's not our bag." It was a bag which looked just like ours but it wasn't. We figured the person who owned this bag had picked our bag up by mistake.

After another two hours of getting the baggage claim in, we went to the rental car facility. Atlanta now has this awesomely big rental car facility with its own train service from the terminal. We got the rental car and drove up 85 to the hotel. The drive wasn't to bad. The highway was slightly covered.

AirTran has found our bag and it is with their courrier service. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday but wasn't. They said they would deliver it today.

I thought I should have an example of Helvetica here in the blog. By default, I use Georgia  for blog entries. This is Bold Helvetica.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Here is the normal font I use.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

I watched the movie Helvetica yesterday on the plane and finished it this morning before we went to breakfast. It was an interesting movie about the font face Helvetica and various designers who either love it or hate it. The movie itself was a little like the font in that it told the story through both the foreground and the white space between the letters (you have to see to movie to understand it).

I never realized the ubiquitousness of the font until they started showing all the brands which use it. On the way to my mother's house today I started looking for samples of Helvetica and found them all over the place.

The movie was particularly interesting because of all the interviews they had with various designers, all of whom felt strongly one way or the other about the typeface. It was also interesting because it traced the arc of design from the 50's until modern day. Early designers who used Helvetica felt they had found the perfect font that was readable but didn't get in the way. Later designers hated the rigid structure imposed by the typeface and rebelled against it. Now designers are finding new and interesting ways to use Helvetica to convey meaning and emotions.

Today we got up pretty early and went to Epcot. For the first time since we've been here, I didn't feel nauseated. We rode the Test Track first and had a ball despite being held in line for "technical dificulties". We really liked it - they put you in a six seater convertable and put you through a series of tests - ABS, Hill Climb, Acceleration, etc. We got up a speed of 70mph which was pretty awesome. Next we went to Soarin - which was a second generation simulator ride. This ride had you simulating a hang-glider over various scenes in California. They use changes in momentum, wind currents, smells, inside a dome-like movie screen. Pretty cool. Tonight we had tickets to Cirque du Soleil. It was great. We got back to the hotel room at 10:30 and we're ready for lights out!