Category: my actual life

My Jesss got married!

Well, that was the most fun wedding I’ve been to in a long time! (Maybe ever?) Probably in part because of having the most people I knew and loved present!

The wedding was held in a lovely park overlooking Harrisburg, so I drove out the night before and crashed on the Keitel’s couch. After an emergency run to Best Buy to grab a camera batter (upon realizing the other one was still charging… at home!), I got dressed and headed over to the park! Apparently, while I was driving there, there was an earthquake?! I was completely unaware… I guess it wasn’t strong enough to be noticed over the normal vibration and motion of my car, so I just missed it entirely, but once everyone else arrived a little later (Jess had asked me to go early to guard the picnic area) they all clearly had noticed!

Earthquake aside, it was a gorgeous day, and a gorgeous wedding, for a gorgeous bride! (And sharp-lookin’ groom!) Everything was beautiful and simple and thoughtful and very, very, Jess!

Also, my friends are silly. And pretty. (But mostly silly!)

So happy for you two! <3

August 25, 2011
Airplanes and an Oxymoron

“Family Vacation”

As I figure it, a trip has to either have a reasonable expectation of being relaxing, or be exciting in some way, in order to count as a vacation. (Preferably with elements of both, but let’s not be picky.) Not that I don’t love my family, but we don’t do particularly well together in confined spaces for extended periods of time, so on the whole, it isn’t exactly tranquil.

As for exciting, they once again chose New Jersey as the site of our mostly-yearly temporary migration, so that was pretty unlikely too. Not that I have anything against New Jersey either, but I’m not a beach person and boardwalks have long since lost their novelty, so going “down the shore” (when there are so many places we haven’t seen yet, and several we’re always saying we should go back to, yet never quite manage to) is just kind of lame.

Not very relaxing, not very exciting… it’s not so much “vacation” as “let’s move to New Jersey, and then move back home a week later!” :/ Oxymoron. But I got my exciting vacations in already with the NASAtweetup trips, and at least we’re staying in a different town than usual (Cape May instead of Ocean City), so I’m not fighting them on it this year.

My dad did end up discovering a couple actually-fun things for us to do this time! Both involving airplanes. The first being the NAS Wildwood Aviation Museum, so while my mom and the sistercreature went to the beach again, we went to check it out!

The outside of the museum

The inside of the museum

As you can kind of see there, the hangar is just crammed with planes and helicopters and other really interesting exhibits, including “All Available Boats” (about 9-11 rescue ops), a whole area about the Coast Guard, and a ton of historical stuff from WWII, when it was an active Naval air combat training station. Very neat stuff! And I got a hat.

The next day, it turned out, was the Atlantic City Airshow, “Thunder Over the Boardwalk” featuring the USAF Thunderbirds! Not that Cape May is all that close to Atlantic City, but we figured it was worth a little drive.

And oh, it was! I got so many pictures. And almost all of them are awesome. Narrowing it down to a reasonable number to post was quite the challenge.

A biplane. Upside-down.

Thunderbirds!

So much flying awesome. 🙂

Also, Cara and Quinn came down to hang for a few days!

I think he's afraid of the sistercreature. (As well he should be?)

Well, I still wouldn’t call it “relaxing”, but this family vacation definitely had more of my sort of fun in the mix than usual. And by “my sort of fun,” I mean airplanes and books. Got lots of reading done too.

The parents weren’t planning on coming home until Sunday night, and I’m driving out to Harrisburg on Monday for Jessss’s wedding (and need to do laundry sometime before then), so when my Grandma and Aunt Carol came down to join us at the beach for the day on Thursday, I decided to hitch a ride home with them. So now I have the house aaaaaaaaallll to myself for a few days!

August 19, 2011
“I’m old, let’s have a party!”

…or something to that effect.

Pop (my Dad’s dad) decided to throw a big fancy shindig and invite pretty much everyone he knows. No particular occasion, he’s just glad to be 92 and still kickin! We are too, so very nearly everyone came out for a random afternoon of family fun!

There was music!

Uncle Joe’s crew

Sweet little Lyla

Smile!

It was great seeing everybody! A rare occasion to get everybody together, especially when it wasn’t for a wedding or a funeral! We should do it more often! (Weddings and random gatherings – not funerals.)

July 17, 2011
Marian Call at the MilkBoy

Now, I should like to point out that when one of your jobs lives in the interwebs and can be worked on wherever, whenever, and the other is retail with no predictable schedule or ever more than a week or week.5’s notice, and your social life is more likely to include coffee shops and board games than bars and… well, whatever the “partying” sorts do, weekends are apt to pass more or less unnoticed.

Obviously, sometimes I do weekendy things on the weekends, but neither the schedule inflicted upon me nor the ways I choose to fill in the blanks make the fun stuff any more likely to occur on a Friday or Saturday night than any other time in the week! (Particularly since most of the time, I’m not entirely sure what day of the week it actually is.)

So, for me to have 4 legitimately weekendy weekends in a row is kind of impressive. And! This fourth weekend of awesome featured another awesome Marian Call show!

Crazy, several years of waiting/trying to get to one of her shows, and now I swing two in eight days!

This one was rather closer to home, at the MilkBoy Coffee just over in Bryn Mawr! I used to go to the MilkBoy in Ardmore all the time when I took the train home from school, (since it was just across from the train station, and I’d walk over for a coffee and a warm place to sit until my Dad came to get me,) but I’d never been to the Bryn Mawr one before… and frankly didn’t remember it existed, so it’s a good thing I checked the address!

Once again, I helped with the selling of stuffs, but it’s a tiny place and she didn’t bring much this time, so I was mostly free to just enjoy the show. And once again, a great show, complete with Jayne hats, the TSA-friendly rainstick, typewriter percussion, a feather boa and kazoo, and lots of witty, geeky, folky, jazzy goodness!

This one’s not a very good photo, but it just makes me giggle!

Afterwards, I was invited to join Marian; her very talented guitarist, Brian Ray; their host for the night, Donna; and another couple, for drinks and “Nibbles”, as the menu called it, at the conveniently located Verdad Restaurant and Tequila Bar next door.

That’s a place I definitely want to get back to – can’t speak as to the tequila, but the sangria was tasty, the atmosphere lovely, and the food was friggin fantastic. I had a Black Truffle Flatbread, which was smallish-but-not-unreasonably-so for the price, and absurdly delicious. The kind of thing you force yourself to eat slowly so the flavor will be in your mouth longer. Mmm… and everything I didn’t taste looked delightful too!

The highlight of the evening, of course, was not the meal, but the company! Marian is just as lovely to chat with as to listen to her music. Donna, it turns out, is from the same town as my family and works with the Bethlehem Mounties(!) on social media. Somehow a conversation about shoes revealed that Brian and I have both been to and loved Taiwan! All in all, a seriously fun evening with a group of seriously fun, intelligent, snarky, very nice people! Can’t wait ’til the next tour swings our way!

July 2, 2011
#TGMarianAkira And Then Some

As promised, this weekend continued the sequence with yet another adventure, and this one a bit more of an adventurous adventure, being the sort that requires several hours of driving and an overnight stay. But to see Marian Call play at ThinkGeek headquarters with my awesome #NASAtweetup friend/co-conspirator @stephonee AND get to hang with Megan and Andrew, the travel was most definitely worth it.

Having finagled my way into the sold-out show by offering to help Marian out, I needed to get there early… which might have been more successful had I remembered that driving near DC at approximately rush hour on a Friday afternoon is a terrible idea.

Luckily, I was planning on stoping by Megan’s before the show, so I did have a bit of cushion time, and by giving up on that idea, I still managed to get to ThinkGeek a while before the show was to start, which was later than I was supposed to arrive, and much later than I planned to arrive, but still technically within the realm of “early,” which meant it was fantasmically earlier than I generally show up to such things. o.0

Marian Call live! (Finally!)

I was assigned to man the merch table, which was nicely situated on the side of the courtyard, so as to give me a pretty sweet view, so in between peddling cds and posters, the camerabeastie came out to play:

Jayne hat! For singing a song about Jayne.

This one, to be precise:

<a href="http://mariancall.bandcamp.com/track/its-good-to-have-jayne-on-your-side">It’s Good to Have Jayne on Your Side by Marian Call</a>

(Which, we soon learned, was not originally about Jayne, nor written by Marian, but fit him so perfectly, she adopted and adapted it!)

The crowd enjoying the show

Typewriters are the best percussion instruments.

TSA-friendly(er) rainstick!

For her tribute to YoSafBridge, she got out a feather boa and her best ‘bad girl’ attitude and sang us this!

<a href="http://mariancall.bandcamp.com/track/it-was-good-for-you-too">It was Good for You Too by Marian Call</a> (With a kazoo!)

We were also so very lucky to be the first to hear her new song, written as an entry to NASA’s astronaut wake-up song contest! (And would have won, if I were the judge! Been stuck in my head ever since!)

<a href="http://mariancall.bandcamp.com/track/good-morning-moon">Good Morning Moon by Marian Call</a>

Dear ThinkGeek, please hire me.

After the concert and merch-selling wrapped up, Steph gave me the grand tour of ThinkGeek’s very entertaining office, including her natural habitat and many other intriguing sights. Definitely looks like an awesome/awesomely geeky place to work! *must apply*

Timmy, the ThinkGeek monkey, complete with Jayne hat.

The coolest plant home ever.

…well… read the sign.

And of course, the Ninja Exit.

Lots of Timmys! (Timmies? Timmyi?)

Mythbusters Timmys!

(Also, remember the tent/canopy thing behind/over Marian in the pictures? Well… it may or may not have migrated into somebody’s office.) o.0

We then moseyed back to where the lurkers were lurking and lurked with them a bit (a very nice/friendly/ entertaining bunch!), eventually said our goodbyes, and I headed off to find Megan and Andrew’s place and acquire sleep. That I did, quite successfully, and spent Saturday hanging with those crazy kids.

A Trip to the Post Office (no really!)

When we’re together, our power of indecision is greater than the sum of its parts… or something… anyway, as usual, it took us a [very amusing] while to decide what we wanted to do, but eventually we ended up on the metro heading into DC.

We went to the Old Post Office Building (it’s actually called that– the “Old Post Office Building” (and has been since 15 years after it was built!)) and toured the Clock Tower, which has an observation deck with a pretty incredible 360 view of Washington DC:

The clock tower also houses the Official Bells of Congress– the ringing of which, apparently, is both a regular occurrence and quite the ordeal! There’s a whole organization of “change ringers”… there are different types of “peals,” ranging from a couple hours long to pretty-darn-near-forever… and this supposedly attracts visitors from all over! Who knew?!

Also, BSoD. I imagine there was supposed to be a very informative presentation of some sort running here, but their display wasn’t cooperating… which may have had something to do with the fact that it was actually just an old Dell laptop with busted hinges hanging from chains, with a printout in a plastic binder sleeve taped on the keyboard.

There was also a barbecue festival going on that weekend which we thought might be worth checking out. ^
It cost $12 to get in, so I assumed we’d at least get lunch’s worth of BBQ included in the ticket… but all that was actually included were a couple samples, most of which seemed to be toothpaste…? We’d paid a decent meal’s worth to get in, but we’d have to pay it all over again at one of the stands to actually get that decent meal. What free food there was was tucked away in the “sample tent,” the line for which was so long and folded back on itself several times, that we couldn’t see where the end of the line even was, nor what sort of samples were available to decide if they were worth attempting that sort of a line!

It was super crowded (much more so when we got there than it looked from above earlier), rather too hot and sun-blasted, not even a cheery atmosphere, and basically a colossal rip-off! After we walked the length of it a couple times, we finally found a stand where we could actually taste some BBQ (on sweetbread the size of a small dinner roll) and it was tasty, but by then it was pretty clear we were never actually going to get our $12 worth of anything, and it was generally unpleasant enough being in there that we just gave up and left.

Just outside the fence, we discovered an ice cream cart, bought an overpriced soda and some strawberry popsicles (the awesome kind with legit chunks of strawberries frozen into them), found a nice shady patch of grass to sit and eat them, and it made it all better! That was sufficient adventuring for the day, so we hopped back on the train and headed back to their apartment for dinner and some bumming around. We watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” which was both really good, and amusingly appropriate, though I am not Mr. Smith.

Some adventures are the fun kind, others are… well…

The next morning, armed with The Latte of Happiness from the Starbucks in the bottom of their building (*envy face*), I headed home, and made most of the journey uneventfully. The better part of the way back up through Maryland, however, I stopped for gas, and when I got back in the car and attempted to start it back up, it decided not to. Seemed like the battery was dead, which was odd, since I’d been driving for two hours just fine, and stopped for all of four minutes, but whatever. Thankfully, the gas station was at one of those full service rest stops, and thus included a garage with a mechanic, who gave me a jump start and sent me on my way.

All seemed peachy… for about a mile. Then Charlie (my poor little car) started acting all sorts of not-thrilled.

When I say valiantly, I mean it. Here you see the tools required – including the hammer & dollar-store butter knife.

The middle of a 4-lane freeway didn’t seem like a great place for Charlie to develop a mind of his own (or lose it, maybe?) so I coerced him to the shoulder, just as it gave up/out again, and called Daddy. A highway maintenance dude came along and gave me a jump again, so I could make it to the next exit, and Charlie cooperated long enough to get to a shopping center.

I got some lunch and camped out in a Dunkin Donuts with very pleasant airconditioning and wifi, and waited for Daddy. When he got there an hour or so later, he discovered the battery was not just drained, but well and truly dead, so we found a WalMart, bought a new one, and he valiantly coaxed the old from Charlie’s corroded clutches and replaced it.

June 26, 2011
Karaoke with Xander!

Back in February, I finally got around to watching of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix, and of course, being a Joss Whedon creation, I was quickly hooked and watched all 7 seasons, and started following cast members on twitter, including @NicholasBrendon (who played Buffy’s best guy-pal, Xander, as well as Garcia’s boyfriend, Kevin, on Criminal Minds!) Not long after, “his webgirl” Jacqui, who does most of the tweeting, announced Nick would be doing a karaoke meet-and-greet in Philly in June, while he was in town for the Wizard World con, and it sounded kind of awesome so I got a ticket.

Duet

Like CSTS Philly last weekend, when the night finally arrived, I didn’t really feeling like going out, but I had actually paid for this one, so I definitely wasn’t missing it, and it too was lots of fun!

It was even smaller than I expected. They rented out the second floor “Fuji Bar” of the Fuji Mountain Japanese restaurant in center city, which was one small room, and there were maybe 30 people there, including Jacqui, Nick, and his twin brother, stuntman Kelly Donovan! They were super friendly and entertaining, singing with each other and other folks. I sang… something… can’t remember what now… but then at the end I sang “Piano Man” with Kelly!

Good times. 🙂 I ended up leaving with a ton of leftovers… most of which I realized when I got home were sushi, and went to waste with no one else home to eat them that night, but the tempura was yummy!

Nick and I

Kelly and I

Also, as our shindig was ending, Mercedes McNab, Julie Benz, Clare Kramer, and Clare’s sister showed up. I thought I recognized them, but I didn’t want to bother them, and I wasn’t totally sure until I saw this conversation on twitter:

Hehe. 😛

June 19, 2011
CSTS Philly

Kicking off what promises to be a fairly epic month of smaller-yet-geektastic adventures in between space shuttles (yes, that’s a valid notation of time in my life lately!) was CSTS Philly last night.

For those who may not know, CSTS = Can’t Stop The Serenity, in which browncoats from all over the world gather in their respective cities to watch the movie, generally goof around, and raise money for Equality Now, a charity Firefly/Serenity creator Joss Whedon supports.

It’s been happening and growing every year since 2006, and I tried to go the last few years, but never could, for one reason or another.

Finally, a year arrived when I knew about it well in advance, yet remembered when it got closer, and had no other obligations that night! Of course, when the day actually arrived, I didn’t feel like going anywhere, but Marian Call (who made an awesome album inspired by Firefly and BSG) was coming to play in the area a couple of weeks later, and I had told her I’d take some flyers to put up/pass out there, so that filled in the missing motivation my inner lazy introvert ate, and it turned out to be a really fun night!

There were refreshments, trivia, raffles, and live music by Sean Faust. At one point he asked if anybody in the crowd could sing, and nobody volunteered, so after a minute I did, and ended up singing “The Hero of Canton” (also known as Jayne’s song) with him, though I didn’t know all the words to the verses, and once folks realized that was what they were being asked to sing, others quickly picked up the slack!

The main organizer, Matt, called me back up on stage a little later to announce the Marian Call show, which was awesome, and a bunch of people took flyers. We watched Serenity then, as a “Special Hell” screening, in which the audience is encouraged to talk in the theater, adding emphasis and snark a la MST3K, which definitely added an interesting layer to the always wonderful ‘verse. Definitely glad I went! I even won a couple of the raffles, coming home with the book finding Serenity (edited by Jane Espenson) and a copy of the “Done the Impossible” DVD!

June 5, 2011
Two Weddings in One Day!

Well, that was a first for me! I can’t remember if I was ever invited to more than one wedding in a day before or not, but this was definitely the first time they were scheduled so I could actually go to both! (Of course, I ended up missing the first ceremony, because my car was feeling cranky, but that’s beside the point.)

It worked out nicely, as they were both out in Lancaster-ish, and scheduled so I had time to get from one to the next, though I didn’t have too long to linger at the earlier reception.

Mr. & Mrs. Miller

Adam and Michelle were first on the agenda! I sort of grew up with Adam, as our parents have been in the same bible study group since I was in… 2nd grade? So he was in 1st, I believe. Haven’t seen much of him lately, but our parents are good friends, and our families hung out quite a bit when we were younger. I don’t know Michelle, and missed the darn ceremony thanks to my car being a drama queen, but they looked happy and cute at the reception, so yay!

Michelle and Adam Miller

Michelle and her Dad

Adam and his Mom

The adorablest cake topper!

Mr. & Mrs. Lehman

Next up, Sarah and Devon! Sarah is a good friend from the freshman peer group I led my sophomore year (the first of three groups I led, and by far the closest! (and dare I say… awesomest?!)) and the Collaboratory, where I also got to know Devon some, and I approve. 😛 It was a lovely wedding, gorgeous and terribly classy, yet still fun and a bit quirky! If you know these two, you’d expect nothing less. 🙂

Exchanging rings

”You may kiss the bride!”

Introducing Mr. & Mrs. Lehman

The getaway drivers

After the official exit, they snuck back into the church for pictures, and I decided to play photo ninja and do the same! I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way, so I went up to the balcony like a creeper. 😀 I got a lot of the same shots the photographer was going for, with a slightly different angle, and a couple awesome candid moments in between the poses.

Pretty Sarah

The beautiful bride

Awww…

Little ring bearer is not impressed with your kissyface.

Eventually, photos were wrapping up, so rejoined the crowd heading to a nearby country club for the reception. I mostly continued to roam around taking pictures, but unfortunately, it was rather dim, and I didn’t feel like blinding everyone with my flash, so a lot of my shots were quite dark, but some turned out rather nicely!

Pre-dinner mingling

Soon, the wedding party arrived, dinner was served (and delicious), and then it was time for dancing!

First dance as husband and wife

…which concluded with a foot-poppin’ kiss!

Daddy-daughter dance

Mother-son dance

The DJ then asked all the married couples to come out onto the dance floor… and gradually narrowed it down to those who had been married the longest.

The final four

The couple who’ve been married the longest turned out to be Sarah’s grandparents. They shared the secret to staying married so long with the newlyweds, and then the couples married longest and shortest paused for a picture together. (Ridiculously cute!)

Then… this happenned.

And delightfully geeky cupcakes for a pair of comp.sci. majors!

I very much enjoyed reading the cupcakes, (decorated with mathy/computery/geeky symbols and terms!) and eating them was even better! (Dinner was fantastically delicious too!) I was less keen on the dancing and it had been a fairly long day, so I made a fairly early exit, hugged and congratulated the happy couple, and set off on the hour.5 drive home.

Happy 0^th Anniversary, Devon and Sarah!

May 21, 2011
134 TweetUp, Take 2!

On the Monday the 9th, they announced the new launch date would be Monday the 16th, around 3 in the afternoon. Daddy said he had to help the sistercreature move home from school right around then, so wouldn’t be able to go. (Somebody got their priorities on wrong! 😛 )

I still wanted to drive back down so I’d be able to get around without begging my aunt/uncle or the tweeps for rides, but the parents were none too keen on me roadtripping with other tweeps, (even though I had been talking to them for ages, spent a few days with them in person now, and everyone had to pass a Federal Government background check to get into the tweetup!) and even less amenable to me driving alone, and no friends from home were available for a random vacation that week, so I talked my aunt into letting me borrow their extra minivan once I got down there, and started scrounging for cheap flights.

The plan was to fly down either Sunday evening (or super early Monday morning if it was significantly cheaper), since I’d been co-planning a “baby party” for Rachel and Elliott, to be held Sunday right after church, so wanted to stick around for that. (You’re not hallucinating, the last post did say I rushed home from the first one for Rachel’s baby shower, and now I’m talking about another one… sort of. That was a small family-and-close-friends sort of shower, this one was a bigger church-wide celebration for almostMama AND futureDad.)

This is the invitation I drew (pretty adorable, if I do say so myself!), which we snuck into church bulletins on a Sunday we knew they wouldn’t be there:

Conflict! D=

Then, we tweeps were informed that we might be able to have another shot at seeing the RSS retraction (well, re-retraction!)… which was scheduled for noonish the day before launch – AKA, exactly when the party was happening! The real trick was “might”. Being there for RSS retraction and getting to be that close to a shuttle on the launch pad would be an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, if it turned out we could, especially since there will literally only be one other space shuttle on a launch pad ever again… but did I want to miss a party I helped plan for my best friends for a maybe? A long-shot, even? Dilemma! (And we didn’t even know when we would find out if we could go, to at least decide if I could wait to find out before finalizing plans!)

The more I thought about it, the more I was leaning towards taking the chance that the maybe would pan out, skipping out on the party to get to Florida in time to make the RSS retraction if we were allowed to go. I mean, logically, seeing RSS retraction up close and unobstructed would be a literal once in a lifetime opportunity, while baby showers are clearly not, and in this case, not even limited to once for this baby! And I did technically fly a thousand miles to make it to that one…

Besides, Rachel is almost as excited about all my crazy NASAtweetup adventures as I am!

BABY SHOWER vs. SPACESHIP

Ultimately, no matter how awesome the friends and anti-cheese the shower, that right there should have made it a no-brainer. But, after all, I am the master of making simple decisions way more epic and convoluted than they have any right to be… and then the maybe did solidify into a yes, I saw a picture from a previous tweet-up of how close we would actually be, and I was sold. I found a super cheap flight on Spirit airlines for early Sunday morning, arranged a ride straight from the airport to Kennedy, and told my fellow party planners I wasn’t actually going to be present at said party.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that I was going to get a new camera. Not so much a decision as a realization – I’d wanted a nice digital SLR for a couple years, but my inner cheapskate would always slap me upside the head, point at the price tag, point at my bank account, and laugh. “Someday…” I’d think, wistfully. And then, an epiphany of sorts:

If you are EVER going to spend THAT much money on a camera,
it BETTER happen in time to take some pictures of that frakking space shuttle.

Instinct had always said wait until I was a “grown up” with an income I could actually survive off of outside my parents house… but honestly, the value of a camera is not in the camera, it’s in the pictures. What makes it worth the money is how you use it, and I did want to get a nice camera eventually, so in a sense, I would be being a bad steward of the hypothetical future camera if I missed my chance to photograph one of the last space shuttle launches and a ton of other cool stuff, just because I waited too long to buy the camera.

I thought about going with one of those in-between sort of cameras, with a decent optical zoom and more manual functions than a point-and-shoot, but without interchangeable lenses, but then my mom agreed to chip in a couple hundred bucks as my slightly-early birthday present, so entry-level legit dSLRs were a bit more doable. So I perused the interwebs a bit, asked twitterfolk for their opinions, and ran around to every store I thought might have a decent camera trying to figure out which to get. It would have been nice to get another Canon, so I could use the lenses on my film camera too, but I was ultimately wooed by the Nikon D3100 (plus 55-200mm lens for some nice zoom), which seemed like a better camera than the Canons in the same range – and then was on sale at Best Buy for a hundred dollars less than that!

And then there was panic.

Spirit Airlines is cheap, in every sense of the word. The ticket price is very reasonable, comparatively, but/because they charge you extra for everything other than getting your arse from Point A to Point B. For a hopefully 2 day trip, with access to a washer dryer if needed, I didn’t need a lot of stuff, and Spirit wanted at least $28 for even a carry-on, so I figured I’d try to avoid that, and just cram everything in my purse, but I needed to clarify that I could have both my rather large purse and camera bag without paying anything. Spirit’s website was not helpful, so I tried calling them, which was less helpful. (Automated menu was broken, no matter which button you pushed, when you finally got a human, it seemed to be the same guy who barely spoke English and couldn’t understand my question!)

So I turned to the rest of the internet… which just made it worse. Not only could I not find an answer to my question, I could not find a single positive review of Spirit Airlines. Besides complaints about nickel-and-dimeing, which I was okay with because the total still ended up cheaper than any other ticket, last minute anyway, there were horror stories about planes getting delayed for days because of weather or mechanical problems and Spirit refusing to put passengers on alternate flights or refund/compensate or do anything to help, cabins being horrendously dirty, seats being even more crammed and uncomfortable than usual, and the staff being generally unpleasant.

Also, in the midst of this, I discovered I didn’t know where my drivers license was, which I’d need both to get on the plane at all, and to get into KSC. Spent the better part of the day before I’d leave looking for it, getting yelled at for not having it with me at all times (it’s not like I need to see it regularly, so I just hadn’t noticed it wasn’t in my bag), trying to pack, and generally freaking out. Eventually my dad found it under a seat in my car, where I had looked, but apparently not well enough.

Getting there: AKA, more panic.

The flight was to leave at 6am, from the Atlantic City airport, so I figured we should leave around 3am to have time to get there and get through the airport… and since I rarely get to sleep before then, just didn’t plan to. That evening, I went over to church to help set up for the baby party I wouldn’t be at, and then came home to finish packing (and conceded to maybe having to pay for a carry-on backpack, if they wouldn’t count that as the personal item in addition to purse and camera bag… the rules were really confusing!)

I knew I had told my dad when and where I had to leave from, so when I went to wake him up and he said we didn’t have to leave for an hour yet, I figured he knew what he was talking about… but when we were getting in the car close to 4:30 and I asked him if he knew how to get there or needed the GPS, and he looked at me like I was a moron, I realized he thought I meant Philly, and had forgotten the flight was from AC, and I had been right with my original time estimate, so now it was going to be a miracle if we got there before the plane left at all.

Thankfully, traffic at that hour is pretty non-existant, the airport was slightly closer than Dad thought (he was thinking of a different one another side of the city, apparently), and I was able to call the airport itself, who had no way of getting in touch with the Spirit people at the gate (???) but did assure me our ETA would leave me enough time to get through security and to the plane in time, which I did. *phew*

Spirit’s lines were confusing as crap, and the lady directing traffic was bitchy and condescending about it, but I had ditched even more of my stuff in the car so I could get through faster, so with just the purse full of clothes and camera bag, I got through security pretty quickly, and ran frantically through the airport, only to discover there was still a frakking line at the gate! >.<

The plane wasn’t nice, by any stretch, but it wasn’t disgusting or noticeably more uncomfortable than other coach seats, and did manage to leave on time and arrive in Orlando in one piece and on schedule. My ride’s flight was not, and rental car confusion added further delays, so I had a nice long while to sit in the parking garage waiting to leave, but we still made it to KSC and the press site a few minutes before we needed to be on the bus to the launch pad!

May 15, 2011
Intermission

This post may make more sense if you read the #NASAtweetup posts first. (Part 1 & Part 2)

So launch was delayed until Monday at the earliest, and the tweeps were all scrambling to see if they could stay. For most folks, it was a matter of seeing if they could get another day or two off work and rearranging flight/hotel reservations to accommodate a few extra days on the space coast to see the launch.

For me, however, there was no question of if I could/would stay to see the launch. There is absolutely no way I’m missing a chance to see the space shuttle launch from this amazingly close! With a portable job and relatives to crash with, I’d stay til Christmas if I had to.

No, the question was, “Hmm… not launching til at least Monday, eh? Well, it’s Friday, and I’d like to be in Philly for Saturday afternoon… that’s enough time to fly home and back, right?”

Yep, you heard me.

Remember what I said about not having a reasonable bone in my body?

See, my dear friend Rachel is having a baby, and her surprise baby shower was Saturday. I wasn’t expecting to be able to be there, once the tweetup date had been moved from mid-April to the end, since the launch was supposed to be Friday afternoon, and with a couple gazillion people there, traffic would be all sorts of impossible getting out of the area afterward… and since we drove down, there literally wouldn’t be enough hours between when we could leave and when the shower would start, even if we drove straight through…

But with the delay, it occurred to me that this trip really hadn’t cost me much, so I had just enough time and money to fly home for the shower and fly back for the launch, and drive home with Daddy as planned.

He, of course, thought I was insane. But when I get an idea in my head, it’s hard to stop me, and I had decided I wanted to go to Rachel’s baby shower!

Surprise!

I found a reasonably-priced flight for Saturday morning that would get me back just in time, and my mom volunteered to pick me up at the airport. It was pretty funny, because I talked to Rachel via email Friday night, so she knew about the delay and that I was still in Florida… then.

So when I turned up in her house the next day, she was pretty surprised! ^_^

It was kind of epic, and just as well that I came home for it, because now it sounds like it’s going to be a little while before the next launch attempt. They’re not setting a new date yet (until they make sure the part they’re replacing fixes the problem, I guess), but not before the 8th, they say, so Dad’s driving home, and once we get a date, we’ll see if he can go back, and if not, I’ll find a flight back! One way or another, I will see Endeavour fly!

May 1, 2011