Day 3910 - Labor Day

It didn't seem like a holiday today. The park wasn't crowded at all. There were a few families having picnics, but I saw a few yesterday as well. Maybe Labor Day seems irrelevant if you aren't working. They say that more people are returning to work in Dallas than in most cities, but you couldn't prove it by me. I still see a lot more people wandering around in the park than I did at this time last year.

We got a reminder that today actually was a holiday when we discovered that the Dalmatian kennel was closed. We weren't able to visit the dogs today, but maybe we'll go later in the week. I'd still like to see Hank and Luckie before they make the journey to their new home in Austin.

Without our regular visit to the kennel, today seemed even more uneventful than usual. We had a nice morning walk, but we should have started a little earlier. By the time we returned home we were all pretty hot. Dawn went back to bed and I felt like joining her. Doing nothing can be very tiring.

I watched SN6 travel down Highway 4 back to the Space X shipyard and then later in the day watched the 7.1 pressure vessel travel back down the same road to replace it on the launch pad. The 7.1 tank won't fly anywhere. It will just be pumped full of liquid nitrogen until it explodes. These pressure tests seem to be common in the space world. NASA tested an Artemis liquid oxygen tank to destruction at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama earlier this Summer. I'm still waiting until the real Starship makes it's debut. An early version may take off from Boca Chica before the end of the year. I only mention these live feed videos to illustrate how little is going on at the moment. Who would have thought that I could spend an hour watching what looked like a shiny grain silo travel slowly down a country road.

I've noticed that the people who go to the park in the morning are very different than the people who go in the afternoon. The morning people seem very industrious. They are jogging, cycling, and walking dogs. The afternoon people are mostly sitting in hammocks looking at their phones. I identify more with the morning people. Why would you want to sit in a hammock on a 100 degree afternoon anyway? It makes a lot more sense to take a nice walk on a 75 degree pre-dawn morning.

We saw a lost chicken in the park this morning. The bird seemed bewildered to be wandering around in a world full of ducks. A lot of people have backyard chickens in the neighborhood, so this one probably just escaped. We thought about taking the chicken to a nearby rescue that takes almost any type of animal, but how do you catch a chicken when you've got a dog with you? We'll probably never see the little rooster again. It will make a tasty meal for the coyotes who live nearby.

I wish I'd hear something definitive from Sky and Telescope. I always worry that there will be changes at the magazine and my story won't get published after all. I try to be patient with these magazines, but I really need some good news to get me motivated. It's a lot easier to start a new story when I see one of the older ones in print.

Bailey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day