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Exploring Has Its Drawbacks
J:
Unfortunate news all around this week. Rich and Izolda's cat Thor, a big
lovely orange tabby, got hit and killed by some unknown car on Friday night.
Rich and Izolda were heartbroken. I fulfilled my duties as cat undertaker
that night, which included walking back into the woods with them, burying
Thor, and otherwise standing around and feeling awkward, which I guess
is normal behavior for some undertakers. I never have been very good at
handling death, I think. I distance myself from it, even if it's very close.
But I'm working on it... Izolda lives on a dead-end street, but many people
insist on driving very fast down it. This is the second cat I've buried
after a hit and run.
Then
Meg called me the next morning and told me about how the space shuttle
fell out of the sky. For some reason I got the shakes after thinking about
it, while making breakfast. Adventurers and explorers are some of my favorite
people. I can't say that extreme mountain climbers, divers, astronauts,
etc. aren't "asking for it" but I feel for them whenever tragedy strikes,
and I especially feel for their loved ones. I also can't say this was a
big surprise, just a sad surprise. I was reminded of this excerpt from
an article I happened to read last Thursday on Richard
Feynman and the Challenger Disaster:
He
learned many things from these people that would help him to discover the
cause of the explosion; and also information that helped him realize what
a risky business flying a shuttle really is. NASA officials said
that the chance of failure of the shuttle was about 1 in 100,000;
Feynman found that this number was actually closer to 1 in 100.
Since
this was the first science mission in twenty flights or so, the news hit
extra hard at Goddard Space Flight Center. Many people in my building are
involved with some of the experiments that bit the dust along with the
rest of the shuttle, so some spirits were low. I helped with calibrations
of one of the instrument packages, SOLSE/LORE,
that flew aboard this shuttle. I heard the project manager is hoping against
all odds that the hard disk survived the breakup. Otherwise, people are
pushing ahead to crunch whatever downlinked data is left from the mission.
On
Saturday night Jenny treated Kory, Gina, and me to a veggie chili dinner
and a movie. Her chili tasted as good as the New Deal's chili, which is
really good.
On
Sunday Gina and I played ping pong at the community center with Rich and
Izolda. Well, we sort of played ping pong. Really, we spent a good long
time batting, ducking, and chasing the balls all over the room in some
silly calvinballish manner. We often played with two balls going at once,
and at one point we pulled two tables together and played a wacky version
of four-square using "any table surface in the room." All in all, I laughed
a lot more than I played ping pong. Izolda is a phenomenal player; I think
she played a real game against Rich at some point and beat him. I saw her
challenge and play extremely well against some really fast guy there, right
before we all started clowning around.
G:
I haven't laughed as hard as I did during our goofy ping-ponging in a while
- once I was doubled over on the floor! Afterwards we went and purchased
a new futon mattress for our bed, and today it was delivered. I gave the
delivery guy an informative flyer on the cruelty of fur to give to the
owner of the store who we saw wearing a fur jacket when we were there.
Saturday
I attended the first half of a fused glass workshop at the Greenbelt Community
Center - I have yet to see how my pieces turned out but hopefully I'll
have some pretty glass jewerly to wear soon. Sunday was my brother Grant's
birthday. Happy birthday Grant!
Note:
We forgot about the hero of the month! The newest heroine was added on
Feb-8.
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