Wednesday, November 23, 2011

No Traveling!

Enjoying the fact that I'm not traveling on this busiest travel day in the US.   I did brave going to a grocery store after work.  It was crowded but I managed to pick the right line and only had to wait for one person to be rung up before I was.  I purchased four bottles of Martinelli's as my contribution to tomorrows feast at my brother's house.  Nine people will be there: my brother, his wife, a neice, a niece and her  boyfriend, a sister-in-law and her boyfriend, me, and .... I don't know who the 9th person will be.  It should be a jolly group.   We plan on going walking rain or shine on the beach before dinner.  The dog, Faith, needs to get her energy used up before dinner!   The weather forecast is for rain.  Maybe we'll get out there in between showers.  I'll bring my raincoat and maybe some extra dry cloths.

The day after Thanksgiving I'm going to work to watch a satellite launch.  It will be televised on a big screen in the cafeteria.  The actual launch will happen in at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.  The launch is scheduled for 11:10 a.m. but there is a number to call to be sure the launch is on schedule.   The launch celebration includes some speeches by project managers and then watching the launch and after that its time to pick up the free goodies: usually t-shirts and posters.   Its the anticipation of the launch,  the holding of your breath that everything go well during launch and being around people who have worked on the satellite that really make it a fun event.  The actual launch footage is usually the same.  Often you view it in the dark.  So you see the big launch pad all lit up.  Then you see the rocket launch and watch a light go up in the dark sky.   You can't really see on the TV screen that its a rocket with a satellite in the nose.   At some point the camera's picture is just a small dot so they often shift to simulated pictures to show what is going on in the launch.