Thursday, April 20, 2023

Day 4865

After our early walk with Dawn this morning, I turned on the computer and watched the Starship explode. A lot of people expected this would happen, but it was still disappointing. At least the massive rocket made it off the launch pad. It looked like a lot of photographer's remote cameras were destroyed though. Hopefully things will go a lot smoother for the Viasat-3 launch next week. My accreditation request was approved today, so I will be going to the launch. I just finished making my reservations. Last minute airfares were predictably expensive and my favorite Airbnb was already booked, but the trip is scheduled.

It looked like it was going to rain all day, but the rain didn't start until this evening. I think Dawn enjoyed her walk more than I enjoyed mine. I made an effort to move faster on my long walk this morning, but that just made my foot hurt more and I ended up walking much slower on the final mile. Even though my first two miles were faster, my overall pace didn't improve at all. Growing older is frustrating. Even on the best of days, aches and pains are just part of normal life. I think I'm healthy, but maybe I'm fooling myself. It seems almost impossible to increase muscle mass at my age and my balance isn't what it used to be. You've got to keep moving though. I think things would be a lot worse if I just sat around.

I finally changed the furnace filters today. I've been seeing a reminder on the thermostat to do this for the past three days, but I keep forgetting. I even forgot what day it was today and Janet had to remind me to take the trash out to the curb. It's actually pretty easy to forget what day it is when they are all basically the same. Maybe another launch trip will be the change of pace I need. These trips aren't very relaxing though.    I don't sleep well and I usually just end up substituting anxiety for my typical boredom.

The temperature got up to 85 degrees today. I was hot on my long walk and it made me realize that Summer is not far away. Nice weather doesn't last long here in Texas. Currently we are under another severe weather alert. There is no danger of a tornado this time, but we might get some good sized hail. We'll see what happens. I'm watching the weather radar and it looks the worst of the storm is going to travel a little north of us. So far we've been pretty lucky with bad weather. No damage this year, but I still haven't repaired the damage to the greenhouse from last year's storms.

This week has gone quickly. I'm really glad that Dawn seems to have fully recovered. She's fine now. I'm not so sure about myself. I didn't accomplish much this week, but I'm still here. We'll see if I can do a little better next week. I hope the Viasat-3 launch schedule doesn't change at the last minute. Flights already looked pretty full when I made my reservations. Oh, well. Much of this is out of my control. At least we missed the really bad weather tonight. I think the storm has already moved north of us.