On the Road

Well, I'm almost ready to strike out for points south and east of here. I'll be driving this afternoon, Monday, and Tuesday to get to Orlando. Wednesday night, all things working nominally, I'll get to see the Space Shuttle (STS-119) lift off sometime after 9:00 p.m. carrying its crew and cargo to the International Space Station. It will be my first time to see any sort of rocket launch, and with the era of the Shuttle coming to an end relatively soon it is going to be somewhat bittersweet. I'll be heading down via Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. I'm not sure what path I will take to get home.

My car's aerodynamics got slightly altered last night. We had a big storm system move through, and my venerable "94 Civic got a bit of hail damage. We had hail up to 1" in diameter, but my car was in the lee of our garage so it didn't get totally obliterated. I've never seen hail so bad here at home before. But, dimples are cute, right... Anyhow, it will be something to take care of when I get back from the trip.

There has been no positive progress on my job hunt, save that I can probably go back to Pole as a science tech again in October should I wish/need to. It's going on 9 months now since I started trying to find my next job. All the more reason to get out and away from that for a while and try to come at it anew when I return.

Here are a few words of wisdom from authors I've been reading as of late:

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
~John Steinbeck

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~Mark Twain

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Not all those who wander are lost.
~J. R. R. Tolkien

The road awaits...