Lessons from Space

Lyle directing us to Rotisserie Chicken

By the way, last night was Gabby Gifford's first public appearance.  We feel so privileged to have been there.  It was really quite touching.

This morning, those of us who secretly believe that they can still grow up to be astronauts went out training again.  The first riser is Joe who stomps around upstairs to awaken Monica, the trainer, whose room is directly below the stomper.  Funny, it doesn't awaken me.  This process occurs at the hour of 4:50 a.m. They dawn (that is a purposeful pun, people) their gay apparel (except Lyle who evidently wears an All Saints' shirt and shorts from 1970). Joe puts on his super-duper cooling socks with his new running clothes.  (Did we mention the new clothes, Laura?) And off they go. They return right around 6, and awaken the two sane members of this team; I am not mentioning any names.  Then we must endure the two fanatical time-keeper members who INSIST that we be every where 30 minutes ahead of time, even if it means sitting in a hot car.  (Once again, no names, but Gee COLIN, how do you take it?  And Laura, you know who one of them is.)

Today we learned of the amazing resources NASA Education has for us.  Unbelievable.  Although the direction of the "organization is changing," they are more determined than ever to get kids interested in science and math.  Hence, the reason we get to go on a rather expensive joy ride!  They gave us toys, such as jump ropes, soccer balls, lacrosse, pecking hens, catch the ball thingie, and yo-yos. We got the yo-yo and guess what?  Engineer Joe comes through again.  He is a yo-yo!  No, wait, he can handle a yo-yo like the best of them.  We were to determine how these toys would act in space.  Then they showed us videos of the toys being played with by astronauts on the space station.  FUN!

Peggy is a sucker for the strong, silent type, right Steve?

In the afternoon, a precious engineer who designs spacesuits, took us through the evolution of their design, from Mercury until now.  She kept mentioning, "the new direction..." Poor kid. Maybe out of
a job, soon.

Monica has taken over galley duty, and seems amazingly devoted to a certain chicken salad recipe. Four days running (there's that word again) rotisserie chicken has been ripped apart and has provided a picnic lunch for us, together with fruit borrowed from breakfast.  She is making it again, as I write this, so you can see how helpful it is for me to be sitting here with this laptop.

Today was rather relaxing in a rather hectic sort of way.  (Is there such a thing as a relaxing day
with Monica, Colin?) By the way, Joe has driven Marsha's Suburban all over Clear Lake, Texas.  I say Joe has driven, but it is actually Marsha from the back seat.  It is a darn good thing we see the humor in all of this and can't stop laughing.