Saturday, July 09, 2011

Random thoughts

The rain clings to the outside of the sleeve to my arm and it is damp and clammy.

I went to an exhibit last night at a local gallery. The artist loved to work with architecture and we had a chance to play with several of his blocks with patterns on them. I got to make my own designs in which the lines matched. And sometimes, they did not match at all.

It can be rather fun to match the designs up. There are not as many combinations as the rain which falls from the sky. Those raindrops may or may not match at all. Yet, they form a constant dampness upon ones arm. Yet, they dry off fairly well.

The shuttle took off last morning and I got to see the lift off live just as I did on the original lift off on April 12, 1981. The first one was on Easter Sunday morning. On the last launch, I was at my potential new employer who has a big screen television in his office and it was good seeing all of the smoke and thrust going up into space. Last night on CSPAN television, there was a lot of discussion on the effectiveness of the program and the next steps that NASA is going to take.

It seems a hard challenge to build a spacecraft that will go to an asteroid, the planet Mars or the Moon. Doable maybe. I really enjoyed watching and following the shuttle era. I am going to miss it. Yet, I did not always walk around watch each launch and landing as they happened. They became almost commonplace for me.

I was there and present when they relaunched after the Challenger accident since I was in the job market looking for work after being let go from my first job. And I was there to see on television several other key launches.

But I guess it is time for a change and maybe change for the better.