Category: Generic

Launch Day

I’m sitting at my desk at work and the lights just went out. It wasn’t a power failure, it was just that none of us moved enough to trip the motion sensors that turn on the lights.

Sigh.

Hey, we’re going to the moon! The Artemis II mission is about an hour away from its launch window. I’ve been putzing around social media for the last 25 minutes or so and I think I just saw that the crew was loaded into the Orion Capsule. Assuming we don’t abort, they won’t leave the capsule for 10 days or so. They will fly into Earth orbit, circle the globe a couple of times, then head off to the moon. They aren’t landing (that will be Artemis III), they are just circling around once and then heading back.

This is just a test mission. It’s basically the same mission as Artemis I. The main difference is episode I had manikins for crew while episode II has humans. Four of them. Three Americans and a Canadian.

The launch window opens at 6:24pm Eastern time. It is currently 5:32pm Eastern time. The weather forecast is mostly sunny and warm. Things are looking good right now, but there is still plenty of time for issues to pop up.

Fingers crossed they launch tonight, circle the moon, and come home safely.

They’re Back, Babie!

Last night was the Juno Awards ceremony. That’s the Canadian version of the Grammy’s. The show included this one ditty from this little Toronto based rock and roll combo…

They are back! For really reals, Rush is back!

Maybe an odd choice of song, but it was the first song on their first album so it was sort of fitting that the first public appearance with their two new people, Anika Nilles on drums and Loren Gold on keyboards, was that same first song… though if they were going to go with literal first songs they should have gone with their cover of Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away, which was their first single. But I digress. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson on stage again. We’re going to see them in New York in a couple of months and I CAN’T FUCKING WAIT!

Out Running Errands

I went out to run some errands today in Andover and Methuen, MA. I took my camera for some stop light theater pics.

Route 28 in Andover.

Same building from the opposite direction.

Downtown Methuen. Still route 28 but with the clock that I can’t ever stop taking pics of every time I am near it. It’s a compulsion. I should probably talk to a therapist about it or something.

The clock through the sunroof. Epic.

Longest Week Ever

Man… I sure do bitch about work a lot, don’t I?

This has been the longest work week ever and it’s only 1:00pm on Wednesday. Why is that? Why am I so stressed? There’s nothing going on that requires my stress level to elevate out of control. It’s just been a reasonably normal week. Sure, my dining room did flood yesterday…

Did I mention that? We have an office water cooler in our dining room. It is exactly the thing you picture in your head when you hear people talking about being at work and talking around the water cooler. A great big five gallon jug of water sitting upside down and draining into a tall cooler. Yup, exactly what you think. Yesterday it seemed to spring a leak and we had a small lake forming on our dining room floor.

I unplugged the unit and pulled the full bottle off of the top. I had put a new bottle on that morning. There had never been any leaks before. Was it the cooler or was it the new bottle? I betcha you can guess. Once the bottle was out of the equation the leaking stopped. Yup, there was something wrong with the bottle. I put a new bottle on to see what happened and it’s been leak free for about 24 hours now. Problem solved, I think.

Anyway, outside of that and the ugly fact that it snowed twice this week, it’s been a normal few days. Why am I stressin’? Why am I bitchin’? Who knows.

I do know that we’re planning to go to a No Kings rally this weekend, so maybe it’s not so much work stress but it is actually excitement over the coming event. Maybe.

Until then… 2.5 days left in this already long, long, long work week. Crud.

More Spring Snow

Adding insult to injury, am I right?

I wrote yesterday about how we got a little snow on the third day of Spring. Wouldn’t you know it, today, the fourth day of Spring, we got more. I had brush snow and scrape ice off of the car when I left for work this morning. It was more than yesterday, but still basically just a dusting. That’s not the issue though. The issue is that snow in Springtime sucks the mighty ass.

I’m going to seriously be afraid to look out the window when I get out of bed tomorrow morning. We’re probably going to get a blizzard overnight tonight.

Cold

The weather forecast is calling for an ass kicking snow storm tomorrow. Somewhere between one and 1.5 feet of snow. Yippee.

I’m trying to get things ready for the storm. I went grocery shopping last night so we have what we need for French Toast. (That’s a New England joke, FYI) A few minutes ago I took out the trash and the recycling, to make sure it won’t get too full at a time when it’s not easy to do.

We didn’t get any snow today, but we did see the temperature drop very low. It was three degrees Fahrenheit when I woke up this morning. By the time I finished my morning routine it was down to zero. It’s a smidge warmer than that now. I think it’s seven degrees. My point here is that when I stepped outside with my bag of trash it was so cold I started coughing. Yes, that’s right. It was so cold it was hard to breath.

I. Hate. Winter.

Not that it matters. The US government has declared open season on the citizens of the United States. A second American was slaughtered by government gestapo in Minnesota today. They are gunning us down.