Day 4633

I said goodbye to Florida today. I still have mixed feelings about missing the launch, but I don't think I had much of a choice. When the Artemis team moved the second launch attempt from Friday to Saturday afternoon I lost my Airbnb because my host had new guests arriving. 

Truthfully, they weren't wild about me even staying until Friday because they need to clean between guests. I promised to check out super early. I was going to check out before the Friday attempt and then drive straight to the airport afterwards. 

Since the launch is now scheduled to take place on Labor Day weekend, there are no hotels either. Lots of people are traveling. The hotel situation definitely hasn't gotten better since Monday's launch attempt. The guests may have changed but the hotels are still booked solid. I didn't think sleeping in the rent car was a good option. It gets quite expensive to spend this much time away as well. Too bad I can't find a magazine that pays my travel expenses.

I enjoyed returning to the space center, but I didn't really feel like I belonged with the journalist crowd. Usually I just hang out with the local rocket photographers when I'm attending a launch. The national reporters and journalists who came down for this high profile launch were from a completely different world. It was a world I had little interest in joining.

Maybe I'll see a future Artemis launch if they can ever get this one off the ground. Yesterday's readiness briefing didn't give me a lot of confidence. The launch team was going to tweak a few things but were basically going to go through exactly the same procedures they attempted on Monday while hoping for better results. If they succeed this time, I'm going to regret my decision to return home. Did I make a mistake? Hey, quite a few people I met this week actually did sleep in their car. 

I did enjoy my Airbnb experience. My hosts were extremely nice, the place was spotless and was located in a nice quiet neighborhood. It made the Holiday Inn I used to stay at look pretty shabby. After I checked out this morning, I drove to Orlando, returned my rent car, and followed my normal airport routine. I got a banana and strawberry smoothie at the food court and then got my 10,000 steps for the day walking up and down the concourse. You can learn a lot about America by spending time at an airport. We are definitely overweight as a nation. The only skinny people I saw were from other countries. We are also an affluent country. There were lots of people taking their entire family to Disneyworld. If you've got four or five kids, that's an expensive vacation. There are a lot more wheelchairs in airports these days. When did this change? Do these wheelchairs mean that the country is getting sicker, or that the disabled are regaining their mobility? Probably a little bit of both.

Dawn was glad to see me when I returned home. She did well at training class tonight too and came home with another blue ribbon. Tomorrow she gets her teeth cleaned. We take her to the vet right after her morning walk. I'm tired. I'll unpack tomorrow, maybe start to write my article and keep wondering why I came home so early.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2372

Like most of you, I woke up to the news of the horrific mass shooting in Orlando. I think in the weeks and months ahead, a lot of people are going to be asking why someone who was already on a terror watch-list and had been interviewed several times by the FBI was allowed to have a job as a security guard and purchase weapons in the first place. Omar Mateen's coworkers warned us about this guy, but nobody listened. The same thing happened when the Russians warned us about Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the Boston bombings. This has got to stop and it probably will. Safety and security has always had a higher priority than abstract concepts of personal freedom. I think we are headed toward a world like the one depicted in that movie Minority Report. It won't really be that hard to arrest people before they commit a crime. We won't need Pre-Cogs like in the movie, because Google knows everything about you already. In a world with no secrets, you will give yourself away. If you don't think this is going to happen, just wait. The technology is here already. All it will take is a few more incidents like Orlando and people will be more than willing to use it.

When I was younger I never dreamed that the world would wind up like this. I was convinced that we'd all be driving flying cars by now and would have already established a thriving colony on Mars. It's sad that we haven't lived up to our potential. Personally, I'm not all that worried about climate change. Humans will be extinct in 30,000 years, mostly as a result of our own stupidity. The earth will survive like it has for four billion years and maybe the next species to evolve will do a better job of things.

Current events frequently leave me feeling that dogs make better companions than humans. It makes perfect sense to lead a quiet, somewhat solitary life devoted to keeping two aging Dalmatians healthy and happy. That's pretty much all I did today. I cleaned Dot up after several accidents in the house. We took both dogs on a slow, but pleasant walk. Later, I comforted them when the thunderstorms arrived. It's a simple existence, but it makes as much sense as anything in today's increasingly chaotic world.

I did make it to the gym before the afternoon storms started to frighten the dogs. Like always, today's workout reminded me that I need to go to the gym more often. Aging is such a losing battle. I still do a pretty strenuous workout, but it seems much harder than it did three years ago. I wish I enjoyed all this activity. I know it's necessary, but personally I'd rather just eat cake.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day