The Follow Up Random Post

I feel like I'm lacking content to blog about these days, so I'm going to post a few minor things somewhat related to previous posts!!!

A couple weeks ago, I bought myself a rechargeable battery type tire inflator. It's a no name deal, and wasn't very expensive, but I'm quite pleased with it. You can set your desired pressure and it'll turn off when it hits the correct pressure. The tires on the Falcon tend to lose pressure while it's sitting, and with the Moon hub caps, it's more involved than most to top them off. This is when I took off one of the caps, you can see the levels of receding waters from the rains of January!!!

I'd gone down to sweep up some of the constantly falling pine needles a couple weeks ago, and there was a ticket envelope on the Falcon, and the tires had been chalked, so apparently we've got a bitchy neighbor. I moved it, then topped the tires. Last week we took it to the car wash, and it cleans up nice!!! There was quite a bit of silt under the hub caps, so it took some cleaning out.

I had completely forgotten back when I did my Literary Stack post about a couple of books I'd read. The first was an autobiography of Mark Thompson of the Mark and Brian show, which had been one of my long time favorites. It's entitled, “Don't Bump the Record, Kid”, and I learned of it from Woody of the Woody Show. He was listening to it as an audio book, and was enjoying it. Of course, I prefer an actual book, but this appears to have been a limited release. When I first went looking for it, there was only one available, for over $50. I wasn't going that high. I checked back around a month later, and someone was selling a copy for around $20, and it was signed!!! I'd heard a lot of the stories, and lived a good amount of them, and I enjoyed the book quite a lot!!!

Another book I found in a give away box probably a couple years ago was the Jack Kerouac classic, “On the Road”. It was “The Original Scroll” version, and it had a lot of the history and told of the edits that were made for various publications. It's one of those I'd heard of forever, so I had to pick it up and check it out. It wasn't a great book, but it was an enjoyable read, and now I can speak of it from having read it.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a pack of Mountain Dew Baja Blast, thinking it was just the classic Baja Blast, not realizing it was Tropical Lime. It tastes better to me than the canned classic Baja Blast, but not as good as the on tap that you get from Taco Bell.

I took the younger to a dentist appointment the other day. In the stairwell, they've got one wall that's painted a little reminiscent of my license plate frame!!!

Last week we went to the beach with a huge and shifting group of friends. Surrogate son and his brother were there, a couple of other families, and a couple of our other friends. In the afternoon, one friend left to get his girlfriend when she got off work, which took more than an hour. The younger fell asleep for a bit while this was going on.

A couple more friends showed up around when the sun went down, and a little after that, SpaceX did a launch from Vandenberg!!! I'm pretty sure it was dropping off Starlink satellites.

I took a couple of pictures of the younger and a friend in the dark with no flash, and they came out kind of fuzzy, and each picture had one looking good and the other not so much, so I did a merge of the two pictures!!! You can totally tell it was two different pictures, but it's plausible!!!

What I Got on My Vacation

Here's something of a throwback post, a few of the shirts I picked up on the last couple of vacations!!!

First up is a couple of shirts I got from last year, while we were in Tennessee. Pigeon Forge, in addition to all the arcades and mini golf and go carts, has several gift shops competing for your business. One we stopped into had 3 for $10 tee shirts advertised. Not all of them were, the better ones went for more.

I'd done an inventory of my shirts not long before we'd gone, and discovered I didn't have any red shirts. Found this one with the Smokies memorialized on it.

The rest of these are all from this year's trip to Texas. First up is also the highest price tag on this whole post from the Johnson Space Center.

The next three all came from our final stop in Galveston. One of the things we kind of look for while vacationing is restaurant chains we like that you just don't find here. One of these is Cici's Pizza buffet. Looking on the map, discovered one of those there, and just a bit over from it was a Goodwill. My wife had taken a little joke of a purse that kept spilling stuff out, so she wanted to go in to see if she could find anything. Shockingly, she did!!! I had the thought of looking for another shirt while we were there, but I ended up with three!!! First up has nothing to do with Texas, except for the fact that it is Sheldon's state of origin. It's a little small on me, but I couldn't resist!!!

The next couple are quite retro, but both in excellent condition. The one from 2009 is about as quintessential Texas as you can get, and also a color of shirt I don't have much of in my wardrobe!!!

The last one has two sides to it, and is also pretty Texas, with the longhorn skull on the front.

The back has what is now my only Harley Davidson branded shirt, along with Walker, Texas Lawyer, whatever that is!!!

In other news, I really have far too many tee shirts...

Thirteen Shots from Texas

OK, here they are, a few more shots from this year's vacation trip.

I selected 20 of the best, and pared it down to 13. We flew into Houston. Our first day, we visited the aquarium. They have four white tigers there, seemed like an odd place to have tigers.

The second day we went to the Kemah Boardwalk. It was fun, but the roller coaster was shut down. Looking through the selected 20 I realized not one from there made the cut!!!

Day three we visited the Johnson space center. I have more shots from there, but only one made it here, the shot of some various mission logos.

Day four we drove over to Austin. Austin was far more photogenic than the places we were in Houston!!!

Unbeknownst to me, the lodging I'd selected in Austin were right next to a bridge that is home to the largest urban bat population in North America!!! Unfortunately, the first night we were out scouring the area for Texas Barbecue at dusk, and the next it was driving rain... and we were driving!!!

Part of the reason we'd headed to Austin was it's a lot closer from there to San Antonio, to visit the Alamo!!! Spoiler alert, there IS a basement in the Alamo!!!

The next day, the boy and I went stand up paddle boarding on Lady Bird Lake, then we were on our way again.

We also, as previously mentioned, we visited the Texas capitol building.

Another travel day, off to our final lodging for this vacation, Galveston on the Gulf Coast!!!

Doesn't seem like we actually DID much in Galveston, but we did finally get to go in the pool of one of the places we stayed.

The boy learned to do a full flip into the water there, more amazing because the water only hit 5 feet deep!!!

The water off the coast was incredibly choppy, due to a tropical storm that had blown through the week before. Also made for on and off rain and humidity the whole time we were there. When we were checking out, the rain was driving down hard again!!!

We hit another Texas Barbecue spot on the way out, and finally made it to the beach!!! Got my right foot soaked by the Gulf of Mexico!!!

Done The Impossible

It's been a while since I've done a completed bar code sculpture. Not for the reason that I haven't been doing anything in this vein, but because I'd undertaken what so far has been my most ambitious undertaking!!!

Another of those things where I wondered to myself if it could actually be done. I set out to make a spaceship (what I primarily told my co-workers when they'd ask what I was making this time).

More specifically, I set out to make a mid-bulk transport ship, classcode 03-K64 Firefly!!! Being as it was done almost entirely from memory, I think it came out pretty good!!!

I made it all in parts to be assembled at the completion. The part I started with was the main engine. I tried three times before I came up with a satisfactory result. The first two came out as cones instead of bulbous. Next I made the side engines, then cargo hold (in flat form, to be folded up at the end).

Next I did the front deck and finally the main deck. The final day, yesterday, I peeled the labels & stuck them down to wax paper to bring the whole rig home for assembly!!! It was coming out way too big to store in my locker. One of the failed main engine cones found a new home in the cargo hold, keeping the top from caving in!!!

I like the way the walls go out. Gives you an open feeling. Firefly’s a good design. People don’t appreciate the substance of things. Objects in space. People miss out on what’s solid.

They're having the design contest at my work again this year. I was considering seeing if I could put this and the dodecahedron in as non-judged entries, just to show them off!!! If I do, my son was saying I should get a couple dinosaurs to put in the cargo hold!!!

Out of this World Party!!!

As usual, this time of year gets busy busy!!! Last Thursday was gravy announcement day, and while the amount is less than last year, I'm going to end up with a tad more on account of the raise I got this year, so that's cool. Next Thursday is goodie day, and then actual gravy day. Monday will be extended family Christmas observed day, and then of course Christmas.

The subject of this post, though, is the company Christmas party!!!

Something totally different this year, they somehow managed to book the California Science Center, and the main event was in the Space Shuttle's hangar!!!

They've changed it up since last time we visited (when there was no shuttle there!!!) and now as you enter, you go through a clear tube in a huge aquarium!!!

First shot of the Shuttle shows what it would look like if hippies got hold of it and painted it up like an old VW microbus!!!

Endeavour, it's been a long time since I've seen you in the flesh!!!

It is a bit smaller place than we usually have, and seating was insufficient, but it was still pretty awesome!!! Instead of food being served, they had buffet type stations set up all around the place. I saw three with sea bass before I found anything different, "chicken like lasagna", and then beef short ribs. I partook of them all.

Later, they rolled out desert stations. Coolest thing, they had these CO2 frozen puffs. They instruct you to eat 'em within 20 seconds, and exhale as you do so. As you do, the CO2 makes it's smoke come out of your mouth. I happened to have my mouth closed on one, and breathed it out from my nostrils. I was a dragon!!!

Took me a bit before I realized, they had plaques around the wall in chronological order of all the missions. I had to find the one for STS-118, the one we saw launch!!!

Last shot is how one of the thrusters looks with a disco light behind it!!!

Something Completely Different

The third and fourth day of our Florida Vacation were a distinct and welcome departure from the first Disney-saturated days.

Well, it actually started out with some quite literal Disney saturation. I set the alarm in the room and the older boy and I got up early and went to Typhoon Lagoon again, for the extra morning hour. Now, this was actually pretty nice!!! We got to go on several slides with relatively short lines.

The coolest, something I've not seen the likes of before, was a set of slides called "The Crushin' Gusher", which instead of being fully dependant on gravity and downward flowing water, has several places where it has high volume water jets that propel you upwards for a portion of the slide. We went on it three times. Many of the other slides were practically walk ons. Cool.

They also have a shark encounter attraction there that we went on. We had gone through the wrecked submarine that has port holes through which you can view the inside of this tank. One of the props in the line was an anti-shark cage, which prompted me to recite the dialogue from Jaws about the shark cage to the boy:

Quint: What you got here? A portable shower or a monkey cage?

Hooper: Anti-shark cage.

Quint: Anti-shark cage... You go inside the cage? [Hooper nods] Cage goes in the water? [Hooper nods] You go in the water? [Hooper nods] Shark's in the water? [Hooper nods] Our shark. [Hooper nods]

Quint: [he sarcastically sings] Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again....

We did that several times the rest of the trip (because, what else is there to do while you're standing in line, anyway???) and now he's pretty much got it memorized. He'll have to see that movie someday.

We had to leave fairly early from there, though, because Enterprise was coming to pick me up for a car rental!!! I had purchased tickets to see the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour's STS-118 mission. This is one of those things that worked out very cool, I'd requested the time off at the end of last year, and it just so happened to be when there was going to be a launch, I found out many months later. The fact that we were planning to vacation in Hawaii kept me from even thinking of this, and even after we'd changed to Florida it was weeks before I even thought of the Kennedy Space Center being there. For the launch day the visitor center is closed, but the tickets include a day pass for another day within seven days, so we went to the visitor center this very day.

Having a rental, we were able to buy a few meals away from Disney parks or resorts, so the cost of the rental was near offset by the savings of being able to do that!!! However, there was another new experience awaiting. They have these things they call "toll roads" in Florida. They actually stop the cars and you have to pay to drive on their roads!!! Strange and stranger.

They had many cool displays and attractions. The boys got to have their picture taken with Artoo Detoo, and they had a stage presentation, "Mad Mission to Mars", which was nice, geared to kids, and the older got to play the part of the astronaut. There was an IMAX theatre there with a Tom Hanks movie about space (I think it was called "Space") playing. Very well done.

We left from there that evening and stopped at a Waffle House franchise we had seen on the way in. Good eating, and they had a juke box with more songs than I would have imagined about waffles and waffle houses on it. After that we stopped at a Wal Mart to pick up some sodas and snacks, as well as another bag to bring back all the extra swag we were acquiring on our trip. After that we did quite a bit of searching for a place to buy some rum to mix in with all the soda we'd bought.

It was well into night by the time we got back to our room, but the boys wanted to go swimming. OK, some drinks for mom and dad, and some swimming for the boys!!! A good time was had by all.

The next morning we went to the other Disney water park, Blizzard Beach, which does interesting things with the themeing. It is a winter wonderland water park, where you can hear the music of The Beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett segue into Frosty the Snowman.

We didn't stay there very late, either. The launch was on this day, and Marge from the Waffle House (I don't know if her name was Marge or not, but it would be a perfect fit if it were) had warned us that the traffic can get pretty bad on launch days. She was right. The drive out and back that day were hellish. There was quite a lot of waiting for something to launch while we were there, too. We had to be there by 3 at the latest, and the launch was at 6:25. Fortunately, there was an elaborate play apparatus and a run-through-me type water fountain there, as well as a big screen carrying the launch, as well as having Alfred M. Worden, who was one of the crew on the Apollo 15 talking about the differences in space travel in the 36 years (nearly to the day) between these flights.

However, the launch itself more than made up for all the traffic and waiting!!!