Perseverance

Last week NASA & JPL landed the Perseverance rover on Mars. I don't know why, but it seemed like there was a lot more attention paid to it than previous landings. Of course, like all the others, it's going to find evidence of life on Mars.

The landing went off without a hitch. While it was supposed to be live webcast, all they showed was computer generated graphics, and frankly, I've seen better on video games!!! Several minutes after the landing (which was, of course, several minutes behind already, because of the signal lag) Perseverance sent back it's first picture from the surface. In black & white. What is this, the 70's??? Cool that they pulled it off, and it's supposed to do some neat tricks while it's there, but the whole event was rather underwhelming.

Anyway, we all know Mars is the red planet, so I took it on myself to colorize the first picture!!! Fixed it for ya, NASA!!! Your welcome!!!

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...

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!!!