Day 3811

I watched the astronauts arrive at the International Space Station this morning. It must have taken them two hours to open the door to their spacecraft. These guys had a checklist for everything. Even the most minute proceedure was followed to the letter. I'm a methodical person, but this blew me away. I kept thinking that we should all be a bit more like this. If we had an exhaustive checklist for our daily activities and actually followed it, we could avoid so much trouble.

My checklist would be pretty basic. Make your bed every morning. Brush your teeth. Eat a decent breakfast. If you have a dog or a child, take care of their needs before your own. Don't be in a hurry. And never skip an item on your list. You get the idea. I'm a big believer in leading a disciplined life. I've always been suspicious of people who let their emotions get the best of them. Emotions aren't to be trusted. I'm much more comfortable when someone acts like Spock on those old Star Trek shows.

I think the past three months have been defined by strong emotions. First there was the fear caused by the coronavirus followed almost immediately by the anger caused by the death of George Floyd. I guess fear and anger are pretty basic. I get scared and angry too. I don't really think these emotions solve anything though. There's got to be a better way.

I cringe whenever I hear someone say "we're all in this together." Jeez. "Don't drag me into this," I think. I prefer to solve problems by withdrawing and thinking through things on my own. Of course, this kind of attitude will never solve the problems of society. At best it will only allow you to live outside of society. Is that so bad though? I felt happy when I was the only person inside the huge dome of the 107" telescope at the top of a lonely mountain in West Texas. I could live this way. Maybe I should have been a forest ranger. Is it really that hard to learn to love the sound of silence? Is it that hard to just mind your own business while you follow your own personal checklist?

Today's checklist started with a walk with Dawn. The walk even comes before making the bed these days. The warmer the weather gets, the earlier we need to start. The weather is wonderful before the sun gets too high. I just need to figure out how to get more sleep. I've been going to bed late because I'm having trouble writing the blog. The blog is always the last thing on the checklist and I still want to get to Day 5000. It's not really enjoyable writing about a world falling apart though. I'd much rather write about visits to observatories and the joys of getting published in obscure little magazines.

I washed the car today. I'm not going anywhere, but I do like a clean car. We'll take Dawn on another long walk tomorrow morning. I like a happy dog too. Janet made pulled pork in the slow cooker, so there's tasty food for the rest of the week. Who knows. Maybe I'll even hear something from the Air Force about getting media accreditation. All in all, life is good.

Amy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3800

My visit to the dermatologist wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I was diagnosed with actinic keratosis which my doctor assured me could be easily and effectively treated. This was good news because I was a little nervous that the rough skin on my face might be squamous cell carcinoma instead. Left untreated, actinic keratosis can actually turn into squamous cell carcinoma, which is probably why my regular doctor wanted to get me into the dermatologist's office in a hurry.

Treatment was fairly straightforward and involved no cutting. Basically the doctor wanted to destroy the skin lesions by freezing them. Technically this is called cryosurgery, but it felt more like accidentally getting freon on your skin while you were trying to top up your car's AC. The doctor took a pressurized canister of liquid nitrogen and carefully sprayed the skin lesions. "Don't freeze my eyeball," I told the doctor. "I still need these eyes."

The whole process took less than five minutes. The dermatologist wants to see me again in a month to makes sure the actinic keratosis has completely disappeared. He said there would probably be some redness, blistering and crusting in the weeks ahead but not to worry about it. On the off chance that the liquid nitrogen doesn't work, he said that there might be some curettage and excision involved on my next visit. This sounds suspiciously like going under the knife, so lets hope the liquid nitrogen works.

I wouldn't recommend spraying your face with liquid nitrogen. I've felt like I've walked into a hot frying pan for most of the day. A freezer burn is still a burn. The whole purpose of the treatment is to destroy the keratosis. Luckily our new social distancing rules will ensure that few people see me for the next several weeks.

We had a nice walk with Dawn this morning before I left for my doctor's appointment. The sky was overcast, but this kept the temperature down and Dawn was happy. I like overcast days. Everything photographs better without hard shadows. For photographers, an overcast day is like having a giant softbox in the sky.

I watched an interview with Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley after they arrived at Kennedy Space Center this afternoon. I noticed that the pair arrived in a Gulfstream corporate jet. Quite a change from the old days when astronauts used to fly their own Northrop T-38 fighters to the cape. I guess they won't be using the old Airstream Astrovans anymore either. These guys will make the final journey to Pad-39A in a Tesla Model-X.

When I handed my ID cards to the receptionist at the dermatologist's office this morning, she handed me back the ID cards belonging to another patient. I recognized immediately that the Medicare cards were wrong, but ended up putting the other guy's driver's license in my wallet. Jeez. I didn't even recognize my own picture. The error was quickly rectified but it made me wonder how the world works at all. We all make mistakes every day. I make many of them myself.

Harley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3365

I'm still thinking about yesterday. I sometimes confuse pictures with the real thing. Yesterday I was reminded that they are not the same. I've seen pictures and videos of the Saturn V rocket for most of my adult life. I wasn't prepared for the reality. This thing isn't just impressive, it is one of humanity's greatest achievements. The Saturn V has to be right up there with the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China. How did Wernher von Braun and his team ever get this complex beast to work? The Saturn V weighed 6.2 million pounds when it was fully fueled. It was taller than the Statue of Liberty. The rocket was conceived and developed in an era before digital electronics even existed. The entire thing was analog. When you look at the rocket up close, it is a gigantic steampunk dream. There are hundreds of miles of carefully color coded wires, all attached to something important. There is a plumber's nightmare of pipes surrounding the engines and fuel tanks. I've never seen anything so complex in my life.

The rocket was so heavy that the enormous first stage was only able to lift it about sixty miles. It took the other two stages to get a much lighter vehicle to the moon. It is a lasting tribute to the optimism of post World War II America that this impossible rocket ever flew. When you see the Apollo capsule attached at the very tip of this huge rocket, it looks so small that it almost appears to be an afterthought. I wonder if we could do something like this today? Probably not. When John Kennedy committed the nation to going to the moon, nothing was working. Rockets routinely exploded on the pad. The engineers never gave up though. They had an almost unlimited budget and kept experimenting until they finally got it right. Most importantly, the nation was with them. We still thought anything was possible in the early sixties.

There are still a few people who think anything is possible. One of those folks was NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock, who was our guide through the NASA space vehicle mock up facility. I was amazed that this guy was gracious enough to spend the afternoon with us. He has spent over 100 days in space, including a risky and dangerous spacewalk where he was able to repair a faulty solar array on the International Space Station. One of the younger people in our group asked Wheelock if there was anything he learned in school that prepared him for becoming an astronaut. It was clear that some of the younger people in our group wanted to become astronauts themselves. Everyone expected that Wheelock would mention something about advanced physics or engineering classes. Nope. He said he learned the most from his high school metal shop teacher. He learned how things go together and this knowledge helped him repair the space station. I was impressed by this. Nobody knows how things work anymore. We are a generation that has become addicted to our phones but nobody has a clue how to repair them or how they function. The original astronauts and the support teams that put them into orbit were all problem solvers. It's good to know that the current generation of space travelers still are.

I have always been fond of grandiose projects like the La Sagrada Familia, The Hoover Dam, The Manhattan Project, and the Apollo Program. This is humanity at it's best. We've never been very good at being kind to one another, but we're damn good engineers.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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