yesterday i got my invitation to ron and buzz’s wedding and my plans for going to colorado crashed and burned. yes, that’s right, their wedding is april 5, the same weekend for which i’ve already bought a plane ticket to denver. argh!! if it were possible to kick my own ass, i would have done so last night, seeing as how i’ve known since october or november that april 5 was the day. it just didn’t click until i actually saw it in writing on the invitation. stupid brain.
missing the wedding is not an option in my opinion, because ron is one of my best friends. and yet by not going to colorado, i leave becca, matt, gavin, jen, and cari hanging. it’s funny; we knew someone might not be able to go, but it was supposed to be because the shuttle mission was delayed, and it definitely wasn’t supposed to be me.
argh argh argh argh. though i can kick myself all i want, the decision is a non-issue. i’m going to the wedding. hence i’m not going to colorado. i’m about to go call continental and see what my options are in terms of changing dates, destinations, etc.
so yesterday afternoon, becca and i went over to the jsc library on a tip from gavin. they are getting ready to move to u. of houston-clear lake, which i don’t really understand, as that makes accessing the library more difficult, because a person would have to get in their car and drive there rather than just walk to building 12. but anyway, apparently there is not quite as much space at uhcl than there is here, so the library is getting rid of duplicate copies of many old documents.
“getting rid” of them meant piling them on a bookshelf with a sign saying “take what you want.” free books? free space books? woohoo! so becca and i each took as many as we could reasonably carry back to our building and giggled the whole way as if it were christmas. some of the highlights of what i picked up:
- “the problem of space travel: the rocket motor” translated from the german by hermann noordung, written in 1929.
- “human response to sustained acceleration”, a nasa publication from 1966.
- “exploring the unknown” with the full text of papers by the gods of aerospace like percival lowell (1895), tsiolkovsky (1903), oberth (1923), goddard (1919), and von braun (1952).
- “lunar flight handbook, part 1: background material”, a nasa publication from 1963.
- “space for mankind’s benefit”, a summary of a congress held in 1971.
yes, i am a big engineering dork.
(10:18 a.m.)
so i called continental. i can rebook the ticket as long as i do it by april 4 (the original date of travel), and i can change the destination and everything. there’s a fee of $100, which i expected, but i get a credit for the price of the original ticket, which was $158. so in the end, i lose $100 instead of $158, because i’ll have a $58 credit. i guess that’s pretty good, considering.
so i have to decide on somewhere to go by april. i’m thinking atlanta for the 4th of july (and running the peachtree) would be lovely…
