morrowlife

Here’s the model boat on my current condo’s television cabinet. I like it. Not much of a picture, though. Some of these “reality” shots are hard on my reputation as a photographic artiste.

Long day today. In fact, I’m still in the office, although I stopped working almost half an hour ago. I’m kind of waiting around for a couple of the guys to finish what they’re doing so we can go out to dinner together.

Oops – dinner just got postponed again. Those guys may not be going out anywhere tonight. But I am. I’m giving them a few more minutes before I just take off.

Nothing much to blog about tonight. The weekend was fine. I worked a few hours both days and spent a lot of time at home in the condo otherwise. My new condo has a George Foreman barbecue, which I’ve already taken advantage of by cooking a few steaks and hamburgers. Both the living room and the master bedroom face the ocean, giving me a double-wide balcony. There’s a new refrigerator and dishwasher and everything else is in very good shape. And then there’s the nice sailboat model pictured above. The only thing it was missing was a DVD player, so I spent forty-five bucks at WalMart and bought one. I’ll take it home and use it in our bedroom when the campaign is over. I was looking for a good price on a DVD recorder, but the ‘Mart didn’t have any.

The weather was terrible yesterday. It only got up to about 75 degrees, it was cloudy, and the wind was blowing to beat the band. They really need some rain here, but we got about two drops. The good thing was that I kept my sliding glass doors open all day and the condo felt quite comfortable. The wind kept blowing doors shut, but that wasn’t a problem. Saturday was warm and sunny, if a little bit windy. There were plenty of people on the beach Saturday; it was deserted yesterday. Not even the tourists went out there. It was nice again today – not too warm and mostly cloudy, but comfortable. Can’t complain.

Well, that’s about it for today. I’m going to pack up and go get some dinner, friends or no friends. See you tomorrow.

This is another detail from Ron Jon’s. They certainly use interesting colors there.

Had a better day today – no lousy meals at all. The culinary highlight was the barbecued beef brisket for lunch.

I only worked six hours today but that was enough, considering that today was my off Friday. I’m not planning to go to the office on Saturday or Sunday either. My orders are to minimize overtime and I plan to obey my orders. I don’t have any plans for the weekend other than moving to the ocean-facing condo on Saturday and going to church on Sunday. Since tomorrow’s move has to take place between 2:00 and 3:00, I can’t really make any Saturday plans. Maybe I’ll have time to go to the alligator farm.

On the other hand, maybe I’ve seen enough alligators for now. I drove to the base twice yesterday and saw a grand total of eight of the little critters in the various waterways around there. However, I didn’t see a giant non-organic ‘gator. So there’s something to look forward to.

No other news today. I’m watching Forbidden Planet on TCM right now. It’s a sci-fi movie from 1956 and is incredibly entertaining in its goofy 1950’s way. The young Leslie Nielsen is especially entertaining (great ducktail haircut!), as is the predecessor to the Lost in Space Robot (“You bumbling booby!”). Definitely recommended.

Speaking of recommended, I’m continuing to enjoy Psmith in the City (see the book club over there on the right). I’m about three quarters of the way through it. It’s not laughing-out-load funny like Wodehouse’s Jeeves books, but it’s definitely an amusing tale. I still recommend it to my discerning Readers.

Oops, Forbidden Planet just ended, so it must be time for bed. See you on Monday!

As promised yesterday, here’s Tiki guy 2! He’s right next to Number One. (Not Reader Number One, of course; see yesterday’s picture. This guy only vaguely resembles Reader Number One.)

What a lousy dinner tonight! I went to my formerly favorite Japanese restaurant. Got there at about seven, got a table, and ordered some sushi. It turns out I was right behind a party of about ten people, all of whom ordered sushi too. I got my soup and salad, ate them, and waited for my sushi. And waited, and waited, and waited. About fifty minutes later, my food arrived. I ate one piece of shrimp, which tasted like two-day-old fish. Yuck! Called the waitress over and asked if we could just call the whole thing off. She offered to replace the food, of course, but I just didn’t feel like waiting any longer and I certainly didn’t feel like eating any more sushi. I stopped on the way home and picked up a TV dinner, which I just finished. Not my best meal ever. And you can be sure I’m never going back to that restaurant. That wasn’t their first strike with me.

On a brighter note, our campaign is moving along right on schedule. I got over to the Cape this morning, finished my training, and got my safety badge. Some meetings tomorrow and then we transport on Saturday. Keep crossing those fingers!

Nothing else of note today, so I’m done.

As today’s title suggests, watch for Tiki guy 2 tomorrow! The Tiki guys are out in front of Ron Jon’s. Pretty cool.

It was nice to hear from Reader Number Seven in yesterday’s comments. Those ‘gators were pretty big, but I heard about somewhere I can find some bigger ones. Apparently, there’s an alligator farm (link warning – talking alligator) not far from here (it’s near Christmas, Florida – home of the world’s largest non-organic alligator) where they grow ’em really big. However, I’m not sure that really counts since they’re in captivity. Still, if I get another free day, I’ll probably go over there and take a look. And a picture or two.

Had dinner at Roberto’s again tonight, with Bill and his wife once again. Also, we had Steve and Bridget – old friends who live here in town and have been very kind to me in the past – and Craig and a guy named Bill who I hadn’t met before yesterday. It was another great meal at a wonderful restaurant with delightful company. Let’s just say I’m not exactly losing weight on this campaign.

Operations are still on schedule today. Keep your fingers, toes, and eyes crossed. I want to go home on time! We don’t have much joint work tomorrow. The Atlas folks will prepare for transport to the launch pad and we’ll do other things. I’m going over to the pad for my familiarization walkdown. It’s the last step I have to take to renew my Cape safety badge. After that, I’ll probably spend the rest of the day working on charts for yet another management pre-launch review. Oh joy.

Nothing else to report today, so I won’t. After all, I got up, got dressed, went to work, worked, went straight to dinner, came home, talked to Reader Number Four for a long while, blogged, had a nice glass of smoothie, and went to bed (still to come, of course, but I can pretty safely predict in this area), so there’s not a lot of news. I’ll be back tomorrow. Until then, try to survive without me.

As promised yesterday, here’s a picture of the biggest alligator I saw on Saturday. Do you think that was worth sixteen bucks?

Saw another gator for free this afternoon, on the NASA causeway. There are a bunch of runoff ponds on either side of the road. On the way back to Astrotech from the ASOC, I noticed about a four-footer floating in one of them. Note to self: if my car breaks down on the base, don’t walk home. Call somebody.

I have to agree with Loyal Reader Number One’s comments on the obtuseness of the OCC website. Ironically, the subtext of last night’s American Chopper episode was Mikey’s new job as chief web architect for the company. They had a professional web designer do the coding, but Mikey did the redesign. I guess it just didn’t work out. As my Loyal Readers may or may not know, Mikey is widely thought to be the family member who’s a little bit short on know-how. Bluntly put, he’s an idiot. At least that’s how they treat him. Maybe it’s not really true, but it’s interesting how he acts when everybody else is giving him the usual grief. Hey – he might make an interesting case study. Maybe he acts stupid because of his environment. Maybe he would turn out to be a super-genius if only they would treat him like one. Maybe I could get together with some of my wealthy, snobbish friends and offer to take Mikey in and teach him to be a true gentleman. We could make a movie and call it “My Fair Biker.”

Or maybe he’s just stupid.

I just polished off another bottle of Smoothie. Yum. Luckily, there’s another one in the fridge.

The campaign went well today. We’re right on track for tomorrow’s operation, which is about the best we can hope for at this stage of the game. Keep watching for a launch on the twentieth!

Had dinner at Roberto’s Cuban Restaurant tonight. I got out of the office pretty late, picked up my laundry, went home and dropped it off, and then went directly to the restaurant. Still, I didn’t get out of there until just before 9:00. The food was outstanding – I had a Cuban tamale, garlic-and-lemon-encrusted shrimp, and flan – and the company turned out to be very nice. My old friend Bill Raynor and his wife were there when I arrived, just finishing up their meal. They came over and chatted with me for my entire meal, which was really nice of them. I had dinner with them last night too. Now I need to find out where they’re eating tomorrow.

See you tomorrow.