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Jul. 1st, 2005 09:30 pmWell, as the fates would have it, my air-conditioning started acting flaky Saturday. We were slated to play Champions that afternoon out at Jim's in Apache Junction (I got blowed up by robot Leon Trotsky!) We had a previous understanding that Jim would turn down the temp at his house, that, and Ziploc bags of ice, kept Russ at survivable temperatures throughout the day/evening.
But Saturday morning there were errands to be run. One pre-planned, a Trader Joe's run to get goodies for the game. The other less planned, Friday night we had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen with Audrey (my best man) and Gailand (her new best man). Excellent dinner, wandered around the Biltmore afterwards, visited a dog biscuit bakery for treats for Celeste who had been in a kennel whilst we were in Ohio, hit Borders, hit Godiva, eventually ran away. We were thinking about going out to Tempe to do some gaming (see Magic Rat's Xanga blog) but I was so tired of travel, I really wanted to be at home. So home we went.
Not so Audrey and Gailand. They were cutting through Macy's going to Audrey's car, and she saw a sale of Victoronix luggage, the same people who make the Swiss Army Knife. Said company makes an amazingly cool computer backpack. I'm currently using a Camelbak TransAlp for my computer bag, all I can say to recommend it is it holds all my stuff. The Victoronix bag is awesome! It's heavily padded, so your laptop won't take as much abuse. It has more zippered compartments, so you can more easily segregate your gear by how often you use it. The one that I was looking at originally, and that Audrey has, also has a top compartment for an MP3 player.
It's very cool.
It's also very expensive.
So I go to Macy's, unfortunately, they don't have the precise model that I'm looking for in stock, much less on sale. They don't carry it. Sigh.
Well, didn't need to spend the money anyway.
I get home and Russ tells me the A/C is out. It's vaguely survivable as it's only an hour or so until we leave for Jim's, so I take a quick nap and we head off.
Game goes well, we discuss and pretty much decide to go ahead and leave that night. Basically we head out about 2am AZ time, our intent being to get to kennel in Alamogordo so we can pick up Celeste. We didn't make it quite in time to get her, but they were nice enough to hang around an extra hour so that we could pick her up. To say that Celeste was happy to see us would be an understatement akin to saying that 49% of the United States was unhappy in early November.
We get up to her house in Cloudcroft about noon and go to bed. It was in the mid 90s in Alamogordo, +4600' in to Cloudcroft and it was low to mid 70's.
It's been a pleasant most-of-the-week up here. Thursday night I did my first "husband-at-large" home maintenance task last night, we installed a flexible shower head thingie in the front bathroom so that Celeste could be bathed with a special medicated shampoo. The vet did some additional tests and found that Celeste has a yeast infection on her skin, thus causing her well-nigh incessant scratching. Russ found bathing her to be much easier with the shower massage unit, once in the bathtub with the doors slid closed, she became very cooperative being bathed and very hyper once she was let out!
We spent part of a night at the observatory, Russ doing some engineering, me doing some database programming. I didn't get any photos because my monopod was en route, having been shipped from Ohio, and I didn't have time to get my tripod from my brother. Later we went to a "laser safety meeting", they've installed a big laser on the 3.5 meter telescope to bounce off the moon, when the Apollo missions left the moon, amongst the many scientific experiments they left behind were laser reflectors. They've gotten first light through the detector and have powered up and energized the laser within the dome, but have not yet formally shot it at the moon. Because it's going to be shooting a 3.5+ meter beam of laser light, they have to get all sorts of clearance from the FAA, Satellite Command, Space Command, USAF, The Disney Corporation, McDonald's, etc.
We've watched a couple of movies on DVD, I finally saw Finding Nemo and quite liked it, we also watched a new edition of Princess Bride. It has new commentary by William Goldman, the author of the book. And we made it down to Alamogordo and saw the new Will Ferrill/Nicole Kidman movie, Bewitched. I have to admit that I enjoyed it. I am not a fan of Ferrill, but this movie was a very good fit for him. It's pure remake shlock, yet still I enjoyed it and laughed lots. It had a few subtle gags that were quite enjoyable, and Michael Caine was great.
Well, it's Friday night and I'm now in Las Cruces. Russet is working the next five nights or so straight, full nights basically from 6pm to around 7am. Normally they do two split shifts, but there's only three people who run her telescope, and with her missing most of June and part of May, she's got some making up to do. Her two co-workers really came through covering for her.
This afternoon we went to a restaurant in Alamogordo that I can definitely recommend, Memories. Excellent baked potato soup, basically the entire menu is pretty good. Then Russ went back up the mountain to pick up her dog and I went across the White Sands to 'Cruces and I'm heading home tomorrow. There's a book store to raid, Coas, always a fun crawl. Then there's Mexican food in Tucson, a great place called El Charro. Then home.
At least for a week.
Next Saturday it's back to Cloudcroft.
There is a married couple who work the Sloan telescope, they're leaving and moving to Hawaii. There is a going away event at the observatory on the 11th, and I intend to be there. I'm not terribly happy that they're leaving as I won't yet be living in Cloudcroft, but that's the way things are. Their basic problem was that funding for the Sloan, from the government, was supposed to come through in February. If funding was not approved, the telescope would be shut-down, possibly never to work again (depending on whether funding was approved to properly mothball and maintain it).
The funding was officially approved on Tuesday. The end of the fiscal year was Thursday.
It's not easy for married couples to find jobs at the same observatory, and when the gov't started dinking around with the funding, their incomes were in jeopardy. So they started looking. An observatory in FL offered Scott a job, but they didn't have one for his wife. So they offered to half his salary and give the other half to his wife. What an insult. Finally the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii came through, Scott's going to be an observer and his wife, Atsuko(sp?) is going to work apparently in the PR department.
They accepted the position since the Feds couldn't come through with the funding for the Sloan in a timely manner. Now it's going to be tough for Apache Point to get two more operators in to run the Sloan.
I would have loved to have been at their wedding: Jewish/Buddhist with each set of in-laws and relatives not speaking the other set's language. Atsuko is a really cool woman, Japanese raised and educated. And her English, as far as I'm concerned, is pretty much flawless! I asked her where she went to school, expecting her to have been born an American, I was quite surprised when she said Tokyo. She thanked me for the compliment on her English, then added that her writing really shows that she's actually ESL.
Scott's pretty cool, too, but I haven't gotten to spend as much time with him as with his wife. Flukes of timing.
At least now I know someone in Hawaii, so convenient excuse to go there! Plus, it is a telescope that Russet is interested in working at, so there's a possibility that we could end up living there regardless.
Anyway, it's almost 10:30pm, I'm tired, and I have a 350 mile drive in front of me Saturday.
Ta!
But Saturday morning there were errands to be run. One pre-planned, a Trader Joe's run to get goodies for the game. The other less planned, Friday night we had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen with Audrey (my best man) and Gailand (her new best man). Excellent dinner, wandered around the Biltmore afterwards, visited a dog biscuit bakery for treats for Celeste who had been in a kennel whilst we were in Ohio, hit Borders, hit Godiva, eventually ran away. We were thinking about going out to Tempe to do some gaming (see Magic Rat's Xanga blog) but I was so tired of travel, I really wanted to be at home. So home we went.
Not so Audrey and Gailand. They were cutting through Macy's going to Audrey's car, and she saw a sale of Victoronix luggage, the same people who make the Swiss Army Knife. Said company makes an amazingly cool computer backpack. I'm currently using a Camelbak TransAlp for my computer bag, all I can say to recommend it is it holds all my stuff. The Victoronix bag is awesome! It's heavily padded, so your laptop won't take as much abuse. It has more zippered compartments, so you can more easily segregate your gear by how often you use it. The one that I was looking at originally, and that Audrey has, also has a top compartment for an MP3 player.
It's very cool.
It's also very expensive.
So I go to Macy's, unfortunately, they don't have the precise model that I'm looking for in stock, much less on sale. They don't carry it. Sigh.
Well, didn't need to spend the money anyway.
I get home and Russ tells me the A/C is out. It's vaguely survivable as it's only an hour or so until we leave for Jim's, so I take a quick nap and we head off.
Game goes well, we discuss and pretty much decide to go ahead and leave that night. Basically we head out about 2am AZ time, our intent being to get to kennel in Alamogordo so we can pick up Celeste. We didn't make it quite in time to get her, but they were nice enough to hang around an extra hour so that we could pick her up. To say that Celeste was happy to see us would be an understatement akin to saying that 49% of the United States was unhappy in early November.
We get up to her house in Cloudcroft about noon and go to bed. It was in the mid 90s in Alamogordo, +4600' in to Cloudcroft and it was low to mid 70's.
It's been a pleasant most-of-the-week up here. Thursday night I did my first "husband-at-large" home maintenance task last night, we installed a flexible shower head thingie in the front bathroom so that Celeste could be bathed with a special medicated shampoo. The vet did some additional tests and found that Celeste has a yeast infection on her skin, thus causing her well-nigh incessant scratching. Russ found bathing her to be much easier with the shower massage unit, once in the bathtub with the doors slid closed, she became very cooperative being bathed and very hyper once she was let out!
We spent part of a night at the observatory, Russ doing some engineering, me doing some database programming. I didn't get any photos because my monopod was en route, having been shipped from Ohio, and I didn't have time to get my tripod from my brother. Later we went to a "laser safety meeting", they've installed a big laser on the 3.5 meter telescope to bounce off the moon, when the Apollo missions left the moon, amongst the many scientific experiments they left behind were laser reflectors. They've gotten first light through the detector and have powered up and energized the laser within the dome, but have not yet formally shot it at the moon. Because it's going to be shooting a 3.5+ meter beam of laser light, they have to get all sorts of clearance from the FAA, Satellite Command, Space Command, USAF, The Disney Corporation, McDonald's, etc.
We've watched a couple of movies on DVD, I finally saw Finding Nemo and quite liked it, we also watched a new edition of Princess Bride. It has new commentary by William Goldman, the author of the book. And we made it down to Alamogordo and saw the new Will Ferrill/Nicole Kidman movie, Bewitched. I have to admit that I enjoyed it. I am not a fan of Ferrill, but this movie was a very good fit for him. It's pure remake shlock, yet still I enjoyed it and laughed lots. It had a few subtle gags that were quite enjoyable, and Michael Caine was great.
Well, it's Friday night and I'm now in Las Cruces. Russet is working the next five nights or so straight, full nights basically from 6pm to around 7am. Normally they do two split shifts, but there's only three people who run her telescope, and with her missing most of June and part of May, she's got some making up to do. Her two co-workers really came through covering for her.
This afternoon we went to a restaurant in Alamogordo that I can definitely recommend, Memories. Excellent baked potato soup, basically the entire menu is pretty good. Then Russ went back up the mountain to pick up her dog and I went across the White Sands to 'Cruces and I'm heading home tomorrow. There's a book store to raid, Coas, always a fun crawl. Then there's Mexican food in Tucson, a great place called El Charro. Then home.
At least for a week.
Next Saturday it's back to Cloudcroft.
There is a married couple who work the Sloan telescope, they're leaving and moving to Hawaii. There is a going away event at the observatory on the 11th, and I intend to be there. I'm not terribly happy that they're leaving as I won't yet be living in Cloudcroft, but that's the way things are. Their basic problem was that funding for the Sloan, from the government, was supposed to come through in February. If funding was not approved, the telescope would be shut-down, possibly never to work again (depending on whether funding was approved to properly mothball and maintain it).
The funding was officially approved on Tuesday. The end of the fiscal year was Thursday.
It's not easy for married couples to find jobs at the same observatory, and when the gov't started dinking around with the funding, their incomes were in jeopardy. So they started looking. An observatory in FL offered Scott a job, but they didn't have one for his wife. So they offered to half his salary and give the other half to his wife. What an insult. Finally the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii came through, Scott's going to be an observer and his wife, Atsuko(sp?) is going to work apparently in the PR department.
They accepted the position since the Feds couldn't come through with the funding for the Sloan in a timely manner. Now it's going to be tough for Apache Point to get two more operators in to run the Sloan.
I would have loved to have been at their wedding: Jewish/Buddhist with each set of in-laws and relatives not speaking the other set's language. Atsuko is a really cool woman, Japanese raised and educated. And her English, as far as I'm concerned, is pretty much flawless! I asked her where she went to school, expecting her to have been born an American, I was quite surprised when she said Tokyo. She thanked me for the compliment on her English, then added that her writing really shows that she's actually ESL.
Scott's pretty cool, too, but I haven't gotten to spend as much time with him as with his wife. Flukes of timing.
At least now I know someone in Hawaii, so convenient excuse to go there! Plus, it is a telescope that Russet is interested in working at, so there's a possibility that we could end up living there regardless.
Anyway, it's almost 10:30pm, I'm tired, and I have a 350 mile drive in front of me Saturday.
Ta!
