Day 3977

One launch down, one to go. The United Launch Aliance NROL-101 Mission lifted off right on schedule, but tomorrow's Crew-1 launch hit a snag. The launch got postponed until Sunday night because what remains of tropical storm ETA is headed towards the drone ship that will recover the Falcon 9 booster. For a while today we all thought the delay might be a lot worse. Rumors were swirling that Elon Musk had wasn't feeling well and had tested positive for cronavirus. The fear was that when contact tracing was finished it would lead all the way back to the astronauts. This seemed unlikely to me, but you never know with Elon. He could have had dinner with the astronauts recently.

Today was busy. After a light breakfast I drove to the NASA Accreditation Office and picked up my credentials. There are always lots of badges at these events. Everyone wears a lanyard around their neck with the badges they need. I had an orange badge and a green badge today. I had two one-on-on interviews with Commercial Crew mission specialists and went to a press conference with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and other dignitaries. I was going to ask a question at the press conference but someone from a television network beat me too it. Hey, at least it was a good question.

Tonights's launch was a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. Since this was an Air Force mission, the press group I was a part of viewed the launch from Patrick Air Force Base. The weather was good and we had a spectacular view. The Atlas 5 rocket lifted off just after sunset and as it rose in the sky you could see it break into sunlight again. I was expecting a night launch and had a little trouble with the constantly changing exposures right around sunset. I got a few good pictures though. Doing this is definitely a learning experience.

I decided to extend my stay in Florida in hopes that Space X can resolve its problems with the drone ship in the next 24 hours. I can't stay here forever, but it would be a shame to miss what I came here for. Some launches get delayed again and again. The Crew-1 mission has been delayed several times already. It's a shame that tomorrow's launch got scrubbed. The weather looks perfect tomorrow. On Sunday the chances of rain start increasing again. We'll see what happens. Hey, I'm on assignment. I need to get the story.

I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Nothing's happening at the Space Center. I don't want to stay in the Hoel all day, but Covid has certainly curtailed a lot of what you can do around town. Since I arrived at Patrick Air Force Base early today I went to a neat little museum on base while I was waiting for the launch. I know there's a space museum in Titusville, but I think it is closed. Maybe I'll go back to the KSC Visitor Center. I've been there twice but there's still a ton of stuff I haven't seen yet.

I think I'll sleep well tonight. It's been a long day. Covid has certainly changed the way we cover space launches. Some of the people I interviewed today are still working at home. If Elon Musk actually does have Covid he won't be allowed back at the Space Center until he has completed a fourteen day quarantine. I wore my mask outdoors all day today. NASA is pretty strict. It made me appreciate our ability to walk Dawn in the park every morning and pretend that the world is normal.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

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Day 2805

What a surprise to wake up to blue skies. If the rain is over for us, maybe it will stop soon in Houston as well. It was such a nice day that it seemed like a good time to do something different. Instead of doing our normal chores, Janet and I went out to lunch together and then went to a museum.

I almost never eat lunch anymore. Three meals a day is way too much for me now. After I took Dash on his morning walk, I just had a small bowl of fruit, instead of my usual enormous breakfast. This seemed to do the trick. I was hungry at lunch. Maybe I should just eat lunch and skip both breakfast and dinner. After my meal, I felt full for the rest of the day and just had a small salad for dinner.

While we were at the museum I was interviewed by a reporter from a French newspaper. This seemed a bit odd. I can't imagine a French newspaper sending a reporter all the way to Dallas for this show. Maybe she was on her way to Houston to cover the hurricane and was just killing time in Dallas for an afternoon. Who knows. I can't say that I'm an art expert or even a Dallas expert, but I answered her questions as best I could. I thought the woman was German until she corrected me. All Europeans speaking English sound German to me.

For some reason nothing leaked when I took a shower this morning. This was a mystery to me, since it leaked a lot yesterday. Maybe this was just an omen that today was going to be a good day, but I'm still curious about what is happening under the tiles. Why would the shower leak yesterday and not today when  all the variables were exactly the same?

Janet bought some of those little solar powered garden lights for the back yard and when they arrived today, I discovered that the instructions were in Spanish. I had a little trouble putting the things together, but I must have done something right because they lit up this evening when the sun went down. The only problem with solar garden lights in our back yard is that we don't get any sun. The thick tree canopy is the main reason the grass doesn't grow well. We'll see how long the little lights continue to glow. I'm guessing that two hours from now they'll be dead.

When we went to the museum there was an app you could download to your phone that described the exhibits. There is an app for everything now. I remember when museums had little tape recorders and headphones you had to rent. None of the visitors were the least bit surprised by the app. They seemed to expect something like this and were all holding their phones up to their ears as they walked through the gallery. Maybe I should have become an app developer. Never mind. I bet the percentage of seventy year old app developers is just as low as seventy year old web designers.

When Janet is home from work, every day seems like Sunday. It's kind of disorienting. I had some website updates to make today and I thought I'd save them until Monday morning. Then I realized that it was already Tuesday. It's going to be hard to remember that tomorrow is Wednesday. Nothing happens on Wednesday anyway.

Duke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 933

Life is unpredictable to say the least. I think of myself as a rock 'n roll, art gallery kind of guy. Imagine my surprise when I learned that a nature magazine wanted to interview me for an article. That's what happened though. You can read the resulting interview in today's edition of Nature Center Magazine. I guess it all makes sense in an odd sort of way. I don't go to concerts anymore and I rarely visit art galleries. How do I spend my days? I walk my dogs through the woods.

Maybe my daily walks with the Dalmatians make me more of a nature buff than I might have thought. I've certainly learned a bit about plants and animals during our walks. I'll be the first to tell you that photographing squirrels isn't quite as exciting as photographing fashion models, but the same principles apply. I try my best to make the squirrels look pretty. I also try to avoid snakes and poison ivy. I just like the pretty parts of nature.

I thought I might be able to escape work entirely this week, but no such luck. My clients seem to be slowly but surely returning to their offices. I got several new assignments today and actually managed to finish one of them. I'm still slaving away on my big website makeover project as well. Remind me never to do a site with over 400 pages again. It's simply too big. Even though I created the original site that I am now in the process of updating, I can't even remember half the stuff I added over the years. As I struggle to simplify things, I wonder if any of these obscure pages were ever really important.

While I was feeding the dogs lunch today, I heard a loud crash up on the roof. It sounded like a big, dead tree limb had fallen right over the bedroom. I climbed up to take a look and what did I see? Nothing! There were no fallen tree limbs, no debris, nothing at all. I even looked over the edge of the roof to see if the limb had bounced off the roof and landed on the ground below.  Nothing on the ground either. Now, I'm wondering if I was just imaging things. I know I heard a loud noise though. I'll probably wonder about this for weeks.

Isabella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 728

I made a quick trip to Houston today. I'm still amazed that I can fly to Houston in less time than it takes me to drive from my house to some Dallas suburbs. The first thing on my Houston agenda was interviewing an oil and gas executive for a magazine article I'm currently writing. I used to take copious notes when conducting these types of interviews. Now I just make a video record of the entire interview. It's much easier this way. After completing my interview with the oil and gas guy, I met with the marketing director of another company who ended up interviewing me for some potential writing jobs. All in all, it was a very productive day. I got a lot done, made some new contacts and was back in Dallas in plenty of time to give Dot and Dash their evening walk.

Not surprisingly, when I got home, the phone machine was full of messages from clients who needed something immediately. It never fails. If I'm here and readily available, nobody ever calls. If I'm gone, everybody needs something. I was going to start writing the article about the guy I interviewed today, but it looks like I'll spend tomorrow catching up on today's website requests instead.

On the plane this morning, I noticed that when the flight attendant told everyone to turn off their electronic devices, several people near me completely ignored her and kept right on playing whatever game had captured their attention. I have a feeling there are lots of potential Alec Baldwins out there. If I was on American Airlines, this kind of insurrection would have caused a big commotion and the flight would have been delayed. On Southwest Airlines, nothing happened at all. The plane just continued down the runway and took off with a boatload of people still playing games on their iPhones back in the cabin. The plane arrived safely, just like you'd expect, giving me one more reason to like Southwest more than other airlines. I wish we could just put an end to all these silly rules. I don't think someone reading a book on their Kindle is going to hurt the plane. And don't even get me started about taking your shoes off every time you go to the airport. I was behind an old man in the security line today who had so much trouble getting his shoes back on again that he probably missed his plane.

Tomorrow I won't even need to wear any shoes. I'll just be sitting here, working at the computer with a warm dog under my desk.

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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