I was bummed that clouds had kept me from being able to catch a glimpse of the Transit of Venus in person Tuesday night.
I was extra upset because I didn’t realize it was the day Enterprise was to be brought by barge to her new home on the Intrepid, and so couldn’t make it up to New York in time to watch!
Enterprise was damaged in transit and that made me sad.
When our office intern came back with lunch, mine was not what I ordered/wanted, and kind of lame.
It was just one of those days… but they I saw this tweet:
…One of my favorite authors heading for my city (and terrorizing fellow train-goers)? That has potential. 🙂 So I asked what was bringing him to Philly…
https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/210430530502664192
and, of course
Lisa saw this exchange and expressed envy, which was followed by the following sequence of tweets:
Me: Cooooome to me! I will bring you to @scalzi!
Lisa: [this one mysteriously disappeared, but was something along the lines of “Waaah work til 5.”]
Me: Screw work, leave at 4! Plenty of time then!
Lisa: …do you think I could make it? With the traffic?
Me: Yes, the sooner the better, but if you leave by 4, you’ll make it.
Lisa: I’m in, let’s do this thing.
!!! *gasp* I seriously never expected her to agree. We play this game a lot. But she’s “responsible” and busy, so she hardly ever goes along with my crazy drop-everything-and-come-hang-out-with-me-schemes! But this time…
And she did! We both bailed out of work early and converged on a random shopping center parking lot not too far out of the way for either of us, joined forces, and headed downtown! While I drove, she tweeted:
We found our way to a parking spot, the bookstore, and the little corner of the 3rd floor where Mr. Scalzi was reading a new secret short story. Which was awesome. But secret, so that’s all you get to know about that.
Then he read an excerpt from Redshirts, which is not secret, because you can buy and read it, but I’m not going to tell you about it, because you should buy and read it!
The scene he chose to read was chock-full of witty banter, so rather than read the back-and-forth himself, he brought out a surprise special guest!
This was followed by some seriously entertaining Q&A time, during which he mentioned that there will probably be more books in the Old Man’s War series, which makes me ridiculously happy!
He talked a bit about his writing process and style, which are both devoid of superfluous details. I hadn’t really noticed as I read his books, but thinking back, you do realize that there’s not a whole lot of description, whether of the characters appearance or their surroundings or whatever, unless its actually relevant to the story. It works for him style-wise, keeping the plot moving rather than lingering amid pages of endless adjectives, but it’s not like he’s leaving things out – it’s not even in his mind. He tends to figure out the particulars only as he needs them, rather than planning everything out in advance.
"I'm not Tolkein, where I build the entire world, and then run a campaign through it! 'Why did four of you roll hobbits?!' – @scalzi
He hung around a bit to meet folks and sign books… the bookstore gave half of us panic attacks when they apparently ran out of copies of Redshirts – they thought they had more than that, but couldn’t find them for the longest time! Finally one of them found the other box of books so the rest of us could buy ours and get them signed. Though I had been one of the first few people to get down to the register, I was one spot too far back in line and had to wait for the second batch, so by the time I got my copy and got back upstairs, we ended up being just about the last people to get our books signed. But that was actually okay, because we didn’t feel quite so rushed as those sorts of lines tend to be.
I drove home from DC on Saturday evening, and Enterprise was scheduled to fly (via SCA) from DC to New York on Wednesday morning, so since I hadn’t really gotten any work done (or even seen my boss in over a week, I figured I should actually go to work for a few days before taking off on another random adventure, and thus figured I’d miss this one…
But then there was weather, and the ferry flight was pushed to Friday. Still wasn’t planning on going…
And then, all of a sudden, I was.
Thursday night, whatever scrap of sanity/restraint I had left snapped, and I bought a bus ticket. @CraftLass was getting a group together to watch the flyby from a pier in Hoboken, so the backdrop would be the New York skyline… and I figured out that I could take the train to the bus station in Philly, the bus to Newark, another train or two to Hoboken, meet up with the spacetweeps, watch the flyby, catch the train(s) back to Newark, bus back to Philly, train home(ish), and drive to the office by 2pm, still getting a solid couple of hours work in.
It sounded kind of nuts, but apparently I am completely unable to resist once-in-a-lifetime views. So Friday, at the buttcrack of dawn, I was up and off!
Of course, my brain wasn’t quite functional at that hour, so I was waiting on the wrong side of the train tracks until it was too late and thus missed my train, had to drive like a lunatic to 69th Street Station to get the subway to 30th Street just in time to run to my bus, but I made it!
The bus even had pretty decent WiFi, so I got to watch the Soyuz landing on NASAtv on my iPad! I figured out the train to Hoboken, which dumped me out right by the pier I was aiming for, found the crew, and waited for Enterprise!
SpaceTweeps waiting for Enterprise (Photo credit: Scott Orshan)
And she was definitely worth the trip!
Once again, we happened to be perfectly positioned and she flew right over our heads!This is how close she actually was! Not zoomed in at all!
The flew much further on the New Jersey side than we expected, playing peek-a-boo through Hoboken!Never did line up with the NY skyline… this was as close as we got!
Another gorgeous flyby! <3 (They'll be bringing her over to the Intrepid by barge sometime over the summer... hope I can make it back up to see that!)
It looked like I had a decent amount of time before I needed to head back in the general direction of my bus homeward, so we went to grab some quick food, but between folks getting distracted talking to other shuttlespotters, and slightly misjudging how long it would take me to get back to Newark, I didn't get there in time, and had to daisy-chain transit systems all the way home! Two different PATH trains, NJTransit, SEPTA Regional Rail, SEPTA subway, and a 15 minute drive later, I was home.
Unfortunately, it took a couple hours longer than the bus would have, so the still-working-a-half-day plan didn't quite pan out, but I regret nothing! :P :D
*The STS-134 tweetup began one year ago today! Happy tweetupversary, 134ers!
I’d thought after the space shuttles retired, I’d be done chasing them… but then they announced their “retirement plan” would be moving them to various museums – Atlantis staying at KSC, but Discovery to the National Air & Space Museum’s annex outside of DC, Enterprise moving from there to the Intrepid Air & Sea Museum in NYC, and Endeavour heading out to California somewhere – all traveling via the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), previously used to life Enterprise for test landings and retrieve orbiters that landed at Edwards.
To move a shuttle with the SCA, they tow the orbiter into this giant crane thing and hoist it up, then drive this specially-rigged 747 under it, and lower the orbiter onto the top and attach them. And then they fly the 747 with a frelling space shuttle orbiter on its back to wherever, and reverse the process. Check out the three days of work it took to get Discovery mated to the SCA in this spiffy 2-minute timelapse video!
Seriously, planes playing piggy-back. I had to see that in person. So, I knew I’d be finding somewhere to watch Discovery landing at Dulles, and it turned out the Udvar-Hazy Center, where she’ll be replacing Enterprise, is right next to the airport, and announced they’d be open to the public for watching the flyover and landing, as well as for the official welcome ceremony a couple days later, so I told work I’d be out most of that week and made plans to crash at my cousin’s house!
(There was also an official “NASA Social” (they decided to let Facebook and Google+ count, so can’t call them TweetUps anymore) which I didn’t get into, but that wasn’t going to stop me! (Or anyone else, apparently!))
As ridiculously excited as I was to see Discovery flying in on top of a 747 and hang out with spacetweeps all week, it’s also really sad. Putting these lovely orbiters in museums makes the end of the shuttle program seem real. The final flight was sad, but Atlantis was still intact and flying on her own… but Discovery’s been stripped down, engines and other components replaced with mock-ups, and carried and towed to her final destination… as much as it’s celebrated as a “welcome” or “retirement party,” it kind of feels more like a viewing on Tuesday and a funeral or wake on Thursday… D,: waaaah.
Just have to keep telling myself that it is retirement, and like many old people, she’ll be hanging around in the museum to educate and inspire generations of youngsters to do great spacey things!
Flyover
We were told they’d do one big, looping flyby for photo ops with various landmarks and monuments before coming in for landing, so we knew we were going to get two pretty nice passes, but didn’t know exactly how close or where, or how much of the landing we’d be able to see. So everybody was terribly excited when we first caught sight of that double silhouette, and it appeared to be heading right for us!
And then there was a great deal of screaming and cheering as she flew right over our heads!
We waited excitedly for the piggy-back planes to come back around and land…
This time around they flew more in front of us than directly over us.
*squee!*
At which point we realized the SCA didn’t have her landing gear down, so she couldn’t be landing then, as we’d thought… We were gonna get another pass! We still weren’t completely sure what we’d be able to see when she did aim for the landing strip, but then, after another long loop around, we caught sight of this:
Sad to think that was the last time we’ll see Discovery flying. 🙁
After that I headed inside to check out Enterprise before they moved her out of her long-time residence, and take a peek around the rest of the museum.
She looks enormous from this angle!…Not so much from this one.
At some point, somebody mentioned we could go up in the tower to the observation deck, so we did, and guess what we saw?!
Discovery on the SCA! And a passenger plane landing right by them! And over to the left, the crane they’ll use to de-mount Discovery!
Swag Swap Dinner
Between the folks that were actually part of the official NASAsocial and the herd of us that just showed up and declared it a #RogueTweetUp, there were rather a lot of space tweeps in the area to welcome Discovery and give Endeavour a proper send-off! We thought we should have one big gathering at some point while we were all more or less in one place, so on Wednesday, the day between Discovery’s arrival and the welcome ceremony, after most folks spent the day sightseeing in DC, we made one massive dinner reservation and took over like half of a lovely Italian restaurant – family style, like the big nerdy space family we are!
Since many tweeps had brought little bits of swag to share, whether extras from prior tweetups or places of employment (NASA centers or otherwise) or other random geeky events, it had been declared this gathering would be the ideal time to swap some swag! (Thanks to @KelleyApril and @LibbyDoodle for organizing everybody and making the reservation!)
Official “Welcome Discovery” Ceremony
The next morning it was back to the Udvar-Hazy Center to welcome Discovery to her new home! I was up and out pretty early, but detoured to pick up @fedward and @EmilyKnits from the Metro, and then some very necessary caffeine from the Starbucks, so by the time we got there Enterprise (and half a gazillion people) were already out behind the hangar waiting for Discovery. I made my way to just about the front, and found AstroTimmy! (and @Stephonee, of course!)
Soon they began to tow Discovery around from her hiding place…
Discovery accompanied by a parade of her astronauts!…and followed by her support crew.
She was welcomed by the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, Astronaut/Senator John Glenn, other distinguished speakers, and thousands of adoring shuttle lovers!
Enterprise and Discovery reunited*ShuttleSnuggle* Crazy how worn Discovery looks next to bright shiny Enterprise!
”I
Eventually, it was time to move Discovery into the hangar, so they pulled Enterprise back out of the way, and then towed Discovery in!
But her tail wasn’t quite lined up right with the taller slot of the hangar door, so they had to back up and try again!
…and this time, they got it perfectly!
Popped inside then, and it was too crowded to stay long or see much, but I did get a quick glimpse of Discovery safely tucked into her new home! I’ll definitely have to go back sometime soon (and drag my Dad along) to hang out with this lovely orbiter more, and explore the rest of the museum properly!
SpaceTweeps are fun!
Most of us were planning to leave Saturday morning, so Friday evening a herd of us gathered once again… not quite as large a crew as the Swag Swap dinner, but a good bunch of very awesome people went out for drinks, and then gelato! And then we just kept chatting outside the gelato place for ages. 🙂
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 museumThe 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!
Before Endeavour had even vanished aglow into the cruelly low ceiling of clouds on her final [operational] flight, STS-134, I knew I had to try to come back for STS-135. No, really, I knew I would come back to see Atlantis launch, one way or another. I did apply for the tweetup, of course, but as expected, did not get in. (Even if they didn’t automatically eliminate folks who’d already made a launch tweetup, there’s no way I’d get that lucky twice in a row!) I registered for a chance to purchase tickets for one of KSC’s public viewing areas as well, but didn’t win that lottery either. Undeterred, as soon as they set the target launch date, I started figuring out travel potential travel options and kept looking for any available tickets. After all, this was the last space shuttle launch ever. It wasn’t like there was going to be another chance to catch one, and I did not intend to pass it up if I could help it!
I told my Dad that I meant to go back down, expecting him to understand, if not actually join me again… but he kinda flipped out on me instead, so I had to let it drop for a while. He eventually came around and did decide to join me if he could make it a work trip again, so for the third time in as many months, I kicked the plan-making into high gear!
One of the crazier things I’ve done
For the last few launch tweetups, since they’re two-day events and tweeps come from far and wide for them, people have started a bit of a tradition of getting groups together to rent vacation houses for the week. As I’ve mentioned, my uncle (who works on the shuttle) and aunt live nearby, so for both of the previous trips, we-and-then-I just stayed with them. However, I felt like I was both wearing out my welcome and missing a-whole-mother element of tweetuppy goodness, so I decided to look into a shared rental for round three.
The fine folks at NASA did invite tweeps who had been at the 133 or 134 tweetups but hadn’t make it back for their actual launches to come back to watch this one from the press site with the 135ers, which was nice. Would have been nicer if that included me, but it did mean @Stephonee and several others we now knew would have a very good reason to make the trip, so we decided to try to get a house together (which took nearly as much convincing Daddy as the trip in the first place, but once again, he did eventually agree, if only so I wouldn’t be stranded if he needed to go off to do worky things), so Steph and I started looking for a good one.
We both put in so much time and effort and (being the organizational nerds we are) spreadsheet work, just in the preliminary scouting of what rentals were cheapish, could accommodate several unrelated people, and were still actually available, that we felt compelled to share all that research with the 135 tweetup attendees and the rest of the alumni and other space tweeps who’d be looking for places to stay that week.
Get ready, here comes the crazy part…
Somehow, for some now-unknown reason, we came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea and just go ahead and organize everybody’s housing who wanted us to.
O.O
Yup. And we did. We figured we’d maybe get enough alumni and a few of the new group to fill one or two big houses, maybe three. So we compiled our lists, put the word out, and started collecting info from folks who were interested. And the response was… impressive. Thankfully, It occurred to me early on that this was going to involve a crazy-ass-ton of email, so I snagged a new gmail account just for this… and boy was I glad I did.
As the first bunch of people indicated interest, the info we gathered seemed rather haphazard, so I made a survey/form thing to standardize it and make sure we got what we needed to know the first time and not have to email back and forth a thousand times. Then, our offer the link to the form got tweeted to the masses… over 100 responses!
So we were really in it now. D: And we had just under a month to work with, before people would start arriving!
Mad scouring of the interwebs, half a godzillion emails and phone calls to property owners, and 3 massive drowning-in-data spreadsheets, and we started piecing things together, forming strangers from all over the world, by the half dozen, into groups of temporary roommates, finding them houses and condos to rent, and facilitating communications and/or transactions to seal the deal.
Of course, it being summer in a vacation spot, and oh yeah, the little matter of an expected million people converging on the area for the same reason we were, finding available rentals on short notice was not exactly cake-like. Also, my computer up and died (the rest of the way) a week before we left, which didn’t exactly help! But we did it. It took us a while, but we did it. Not everyone who expressed interest ended up joining a tweetup house, but in the end, we had organized or helped coordinate 9 houses, accommodating over 60 tweeps altogether!
#SerenityHouse
The first time the idea of getting a shared rental for the 135 launch came up, long before any of it was actually decided (possibly while we were still at the 134 tweetup?) the conversation went like this:
Steph: “So you realize if we get a house together, it has to be called #SerenityHouse, right?”
Me: “Of course.”
Tweetup group houses traditionally have names, and being the domain of spacetweeps, they’re usually space themed and hashtagged. When we decided that we were actually going to go the rental house route, it was not even a question that ours would be named after our favorite fictional spaceship!
And oh was it shiny.
It was a little farther away from KSC than we wanted, way down at the southern tip of Merritt Island. And I do mean way. way. down. At the very end of the island. It tapers down to a skinny little spit of land between two rivers the farther south you get, and by the time you get to where this house is, it’s only wide enough to fit one house across, plus the road to get to the next one. It’s not even a road, technically, but a private driveway to reach the last 10 or so houses… only 3 of which are farther than ours.
It has a dock on both sides, and I think it was just about as far out to the end of the main one as from one river to the other… crazy.)
The owners are apparently really fond of spiral stairs and turquoise glass block, which I didn’t know existed, but they managed to not only find but incorporate into pretty much every room in the place!
Besides Daddy and I and Steph, the “crew” of #SerenityHouse also included Steph’s boyfriend @_caturday, a couple of Steph’s friends and their munchkin, and fellow tweetup alumni @JackDearlove, @DrLucyRogers, @genejm29, and @RobPegoraro. There was a great deal of awesome, smart, and snark going on in that house!
We ended up getting the master bedroom, which turned out to be the whole top floor! It was pretty much enormous… and strangely devoid of furniture.
(That counter wrapping around the glass block wall continues about 5 more feet to the left and ends with a minifridge and bar sink… add a microwave and you’d have got a killer studio apartment! The stained glass door leads out to a deck and stairs to the roof, the windows to the right are actually giant screened-in sliding doors, and there’s another screened-in balcony opposite them! Insane!)
The views were incredible. I’m afraid to even wonder what this place is worth?! I seriously want to know what the folks we rented it from do for a living! And yet the weekly rental was pretty reasonable for a group!
Obviously, I did not particularly want to ever leave.
However, we did, of course. Several times in fact! 😛 (and then once at the end, when we didn’t go back!)
Pre-Launch Wanderings
Most folks, including us, got into town sometime Wednesday. The tweetup started Thursday, but those of us not attending had a day to hang out before the launch, so when we got to the house around 11 Wednesday night, I wasn’t too concerned about getting to sleep… and thus was still awake and tweeting at 3:30, when I discovered that @Ruthie147 had never gotten connected with a ride from her hotel to KSC. It wouldn’t have been hard to find her a carpool even on short notice, except that, being from Ireland, she needed to leave rather early to hit the international badging place before heading to the regular tweetup check-in, and it seemed like most of the other international tweeps had either been around for early registration or were coming from the opposite direction, and nobody else was heading out that early – the sort of early that my “late” was rapidly turning into – so I just drove up and took her over myself.
Once she got her super special international visitor’s badge and we found some other tweeps she could catch a lift with to the regular check-in and on to the press site, I headed back, detouring to a Starbucks to make use of some of Ruth’s overly generous gas money (and to mollify Daddy, who was less than thrilled upon waking up to me and his car being gone). Back at the house, there was breakfast, squeezed a bit of work in, some twittering, some puttering, and then we gathered the troops and headed off to Fishlips for lunch!
Space tweeps, assemble!ThinkGeek’s AstroTimmy!
The majority of the afternoon was spent scouting for locations from which to watch the launch. (I bought Causeway tickets from a guy on CraigsList who seemed legit, but he’s either a complete moron, or was indeed a scammer, as he claims he filled out the shipping form wrong, so they couldn’t get to my house before we left, and he supposedly couldn’t get them back to re-send them to my aunt’s either. He *says* he’ll send my money back… I really hope he does… grr.)
We eventually decided on the beach in Cape Canaveral (just down the street from a few of the tweetup houses!) which wouldn’t have quite as good a view as Titusville probably did, but there were already so many people camped out there we knew we’d never get a spot on the bridge for the clear line of site, so we opted for infinitely less crowded, easier access, and a much shorter drive. That settled, we headed over to Cocoa and had dinner with my aunt and uncle.
One Last Launch…
While everyone else started their day before it was actually day time, having to be in their launch viewing locations hours in advance, Dad and I had nowhere to rush to, so I slept until a rather lovely 8:30 or so, got ready and gathered my things at a leisurely pace, and we drove up to the Cape in very minimal traffic, parking at a tweetup house and walking down to the beach around 11.
We deployed chairs, tripodded camera, radio, and even found some open wifi to watch NASAtv, and waited to see if the rather testy weather would permit the launch. Part of me was hoping for a delay, so I could have another day or two to try to get tickets for a closer view. It really didn’t look like the weather was going to cooperate, but at the last minute, the clouds broke up just enough and the wind calmed down just enough, and they decided to go for it! Then, with 31 seconds to go, a surprise hold. For two minutes, I was sure it was going to be a scrub… but then countdown resumed, and 30 seconds later, the Space Shuttle left Earth one last time.
(Darkened and upped the contrast on this one so you can actually make out the shuttle a bit.)
Obviously, we didn’t have nearly as gloriously close a view as I did last time.
I didn’t want to watch the whole thing through my viewfinder, so my blind-shooting camera didn’t quite keep up…
…but it was awesome, I promise! 😀
Though not as close as I would have liked, our vantage point on the beach did have one advantage – while the clouds again impeded the view from KSC much too quickly, we were far enough away to see her pop out the top and peek-a-boo through the less-dense clouds for almost a minute before she faded into the haze and distance!
We stopped for coffee and the obligatory RonJon’s visit on the way home, hoping to wait out the traffic (which was decidedly worse than it had been on the way in), but it didn’t really work. At this point I finally realized this trip was the ultimate License Plate Game opportunity, and started playing as we plodded toward “home”. (I got 20some just on that drive, and ultimately hit the mid-40s… probably would have won if I’d started playing on the drive down!)
Between the complete gorgeous epicness of watching a space shuttle launch, and the leftover sleepyness from the previous couple days, the rest of that afternoon didn’t quite stick in my memory, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t really do much anyway. There may have been a dollar store involved.
SpaceTweeps Rock – Part 1
We went out for an earlyish dinner with my aunt and uncle, but I wasn’t really hungry yet, and when we got back to the house, a few of the housemates went out to a post-tweetup dinner. It was kind of awkward initially, as we kind of landed in a booth, from which it was hard to join any of the other conversations, but eventually I got up and “lurked strategically” so as to get absorbed into one conversation or another (my version of “social skills”).
I ended up talking with a lovely table of folks I realized had to be the residents of #NewFrontiersHouse (the arranging of which had been rather an adventure, but came together quite well at the last minute). And then I introduced myself…
Holy wow. Spacetweeps know how to make a girl feel appreciated. I figured some portion of people I’d helped find a place would, upon finding out who I was, thank me, and maybe one or two would offer to buy me a drink… but I never expected them to announce it to the whole group or give me an actual frakking round of applause in the middle of a restaurant! (I also got dinner, a whole lot of raving about how great their house and group turned out, and the offer of a youngest child!) Hehe. After all the drama between that landlord and finding enough people to take a longer rental, I was super glad they were happy with the place, and they did turn out to be an exceptionally fun group!
And now for some fictional spaceship.
Saturday we decided to use my free pass to the KSC Visitor’s Complex from the 134 tweetup, since I hadn’t gotten over there on either of those trips, and we don’t expect to come down a 4th time this year, before it would expire! We had spent a day and a half wandering there when we came on vacation a little over a year ago, so there wasn’t a whole lot we hadn’t seen, but there was a new Star Trek exhibit, and we were hoping to catch one of the “Astronaut Experience”s, which ended up not working timing-wise, but we did get to wander around a bit and check out the Trek stuff!
Main EngineeringResistance is futile.Phasers and miscellanyCaptain’s chair.Hmm… don’t actually remember whose spaceship this is. o.0
The panels behind the ship are a timeline… everything from the beginning of the space program through the present to the significant events of every Star Trek show and movie. It was very cool to read, but there was so much (the picture only shows a little more than half the wall of panels!) that I couldn’t get through it all without eating up our whole day… wonder if it’s published on the innertubes somewhere so I can read it sitting down? 😛
DRAGONS!!! Er… just the one.
Next stop, it was back to non-fiction spaceships, stopping at SpaceX to see the Dragon capsule!
SpaceX’s building was right next to the Air Force Space and Missile Museum History Center, so of course we popped in there too, but it’s just one big room with everything on the walls, so it didn’t take long to make the circuit and see what there is to see.
SpaceTweeps Rock – Part 2
From there we headed back to the house, and Dad went off to Tampa to meet up with a boat or two for work, since I was planning on hitching a ride with some housemate or another to #EndlessBBQ and hanging there for the evening… only I somehow missed everyone leaving, and found myself stranded there, a solid half-hour drive from the shindig. I knew there were plenty of people staying reasonably close to where I was, but it turned out everyone had either already left, or had a full car!
After a bit of frantic twittering, looking for anyone who was still heading that way, a couple guys who were already there were actually considering driving all the way down the island and back to pick me up and bring me to the party! Then they decided, “Call a cab, we’ll pay for it.” O.O I figured, what the heck, and went along with this wacky plan.
Turns out, this wacky plan was far from being the wackiest part of this wacky plan… that award goes to the cab driver… I gave him directions to the end of the driveway-road, rather than the actual house, and he still barely found it, and then did not shut up the entire drive. -_- He was nice enough, I guess, but went on and on about every gorram thing, bouncing between very Florida-hick-ish, decidedly creepy, perfectly reasonable, and garden-variety annoying, for 19 slow miles in a minivan that smelt of cigarettes and God-knows-what. But he got me there in one piece, so okay. I was definitely thrilled to scramble out of that car as soon as we pulled into the driveway though!
The fare came to $60some, and I was thinking there were probably like five people in on the plan, intending to chip in a couple bucks, and I was gonna get stuck paying the difference (or feeling really guilty when some poor unwittingly generous soul felt obligated to cover it)… but it turns out, the hatchers of said wacky plan had actually temporarily commandeered the sound system, made an announcement explaining what was up, and then passed a bucket around! They actually collected more than enough to cover the fare and tip the crazy driver! (Who got out and seemed to hang around a while, though I ducked into the crowd as soon as possible so didn’t stay to find out how long.)
There was a pool, live music, and of course plenty of food and beverages, but [besides the top-notch company] the real hit of the party was taking pictures of the moon with our cellphones! (We are space geeks, after all!)
Yes, I really did take that picture with my phone… and a little help from @priesett‘s 10-inch-diameter telescope! (Just holding the phone camera over the eyepiece!) That picture’s not even the half of it though – in person, the detail was absolutely incredible. And when pointed at Saturn, you could actually make out the shape of the planet and its rings with that sucker! Crazy awesome. (Now I want one.)
I’m not typically much for big crowded parties, but when it’s a crowd of SpaceTweeps, it’s sure to be a good time! It’s still kind of mind-blowing to me that a crowd of people who, for the most part, I have never met, and many of whom I haven’t even really talked with, would collectively give upwards of $70 just to bring me to a party! But I’m very glad they did! It was a ton of fun!
SRB Retrieval
For those who aren’t NASA geeks: The Space Shuttle consists of an Orbiter (the plane-like ship containing crew and cargo), an orange External Tank, and two white Solid Rocket Boosters. A few minutes after launch, the SRBs are jettisoned and fall back to Earth, and the External Tank does the same once it reaches orbit. The Orbiter, obviously, is the part that stays in space a while, orbiting the planet, and the External Tank burns up in the atmosphere, but the SRBs, since they break off sooner/lower, land in the ocean intact, and a pair of ships, Freedom Star and Liberty Star, find and fetch them to be refurbished and reused.
Of course, these SRBs won’t be recycled for another shuttle launch, but they were retrieved nonetheless. The ships were supposed to be coming back to Port Canaveral sometime Sunday, and we didn’t have to leave until Monday, so we decided to go see them come through the canal! Unfortunately, one got back Sunday morning before we got up, but the other was still expected to get there in the early evening, so my Dad, aunt, uncle, and I went to Fishlips for dinner (which is right on the canal, and we got a table by the window).
Halfway through dinner, my ears catch someone at the table behind me talking about #EndlessBBQ! I turn around and exclaim, “I was there!” and discover it’s @KelleyApril! (Who I hadn’t met in person yet, and was seated so I hadn’t seen the NASA meatball temporary tattoo on her face when we came in, so I didn’t connect the girl eating dinner with her family to the picture on my Twitter feed!) Turns out she had had the same idea, but we eventually heard that the other ship was having engine issues and wouldn’t arrive until late that night, so we had to give up on that.
However, I found out that both ships would be going through the lock the next morning, and I convinced Dad to stop on our way out of town!
Freedom Star was in the lock when we got there.
We watched them guiding the first SRB out to Liberty Star, which had already passed through the lock.
They went through the lock single file, and once they were through, attached each SRB to the side of one of the ships.
The lock had walkways over the water at all sorts of odd angles, so I ran around taking pictures from different vantage points for a few minutes, and then we left, timing our exit so we would be crossing the one highway bridge just as Liberty Star would be coming out onto that bit of river!
Liberty Star heading for KSC with the VAB in sight!Bye bye SRB!
And then the trees invaded my view as we drove away, and 18 hours or so later, we got home. Another lovely sort-of-#NASAtweetup adventure concludes!
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!
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:
(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 showTypewriters 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!
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!)
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.
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 IKelly 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:
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!
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 MillerMichelle and her DadAdam and his MomThe 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. LehmanThe 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 SarahThe beautiful brideAwww…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 danceMother-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.
