The Guy Who Came in from the Cold

Once again I will be heading south to work, but not THAT far south.  I have actually accepted an actual offer for an aerospace-related position in Houston, TX.  I will work at National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Johnson Space Center (JSC) in mission control as a Visiting Vehicle Officer (VVO), supporting flights to and from the International Space Station (ISS).  I will not start until later next month, but am already in the thick of doing hiring paperwork, background check data collection (daunting), and the usual interstate relocation song and dance.  It feels great to have gotten this opportunity at long last, and I look forward to much learning and professional development in years to come.  A door has certainly opened at an opportune time.

“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.”

~J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Hobbit”

Northward, ho the wagons!

I had a nice little road trip and visit to Omaha, Nebraska last week.  It was a new destination for me, and having some local friends from the Ice to see the sights with was certainly fun.

The first big destination was the Strategic Air and Space Museum, which had many remarkable vehicles on display.  Getting to see a B-29, let alone go in the cockpit of a B-36 was pretty novel.

Downtown Omaha with its NPS visitor’s center for the Lewis and Clark Trail, multiple monuments to organized labor, relatively new pedestrian bridge over the Missouri River, and proximity to my most newly visited state of the Union (Iowa) was a fun outing for day two.

The last day there we went to the really big and excellent zoo.  I didn’t really photograph anything there, but really enjoyed the day.  Animals of note for me were a giant Japanese salamander (head the size of a large cantaloupe), sleepy aardvarks, snow leopards, and pygmy hippopotami.

The drive to and from was nice as well.  We visited the Atomic Cannon above I-70 at Fort Riley, the Pony Express barn (last home station in existence) in Marysville, and the Homestead National Monument of America near Beatrice (that’s pronounced be-AT-tris, FYI) on the way up.  On the way back we had lunch in the oldest restaurant west of the Mississippi (Hays House in Council Grove), visited the verdant National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, and watched muddy flood waters of the Cottonwood River at Cottonwood Falls.

“The slow cavalcade of horsemen armed to the teeth has disappeared before parlor cars and the effeminate comforts of modern travel.”

~Francis Parkman, “The Oregon Trail”

Home & Away

Unfortunately my plans for what comes next are still in flux around that familiar acronym, TBD.  One of these days that will change.

Here at home we had a visitor one day a while back: the second horned toad I’ve ever encountered.  He/she was quite fleet of foot, and certainly lived up to its name.  It didn’t spit any blood out of its eyeballs, though.

Over the Independence Day weekend I took a quick road trip to St. Louis.  My venerable chariot “El Civ” knocked down 42.8 miles per gallon going and coming, which was reassuring.  It was nice to get away, and I had some lovely company for the duration.  I also espied 43 states’ (and one Canadian province) license plates, which seemed pretty darn good for the brevity of the journey!

The savior of the Union and 18^th President of the United States figured largely in two of the places we visited.  The first was the Ulysses S. GrantNational Historic Site, which was the home of his wife’s family.  It was a slave plantation; and-yes-that issue did create strife with Grant’s in-laws (should come as little surprise).  Across the contemporary street is the Grant’s Farm facility, which includes the humble cabin U.S.G. built for his Hardscrabble Farm, as well as some of the herd of Clydesdale horses.  The place is owned/operated by Anheuser-Busch, and has a bunch of other animals in its menagerie as well.

The Sandy Creek Covered Bridge was also on the itinerary, which is just one of four remaining such structures in the state of Missouri.  It turns out covered bridges were primarily enclosed to protect their wooden truss structures.  That practical means just serendipitously led to a rather picturesque end.

The Mastodon State Historic Site had an interesting museum, as well as a nice walk down the bluff to the site of the historically significant Kimmswick Bone Bed.  It was here that not only were a bunch of fossil bones found, but that some Folsom spear points were found in contact with the bones.  This pretty well established the contact between megafauna (like mastodons and 8-foot-long giant beavers) and early human residents of the neighborhood.  Cool, huh?

On the way home I made a quick stop in Jefferson City to stroll through the state capitol building and Missouri State Museum therein.  I would have gone through the buildings down at the Jefferson Landing site at the bottom of the hill on the Missouri River, but they were closed on Mondays.  At least I got to see an Amtrak train arrive and depart from the little station there.  It was cool to see one of the multitude of places the Corps of Discovery, headed by Lewis and Clark, passed on their way to/from the Pacific.

"The world is old, and no doubt plenty of people have lived in it and been forgotten."

~Allan's Wife by H. Rider Haggard

Hanging in there

Well, summer is gorgeous so far here in Kansas.  Things are still green, but the wheat has gone golden in the last week, so harvest is shortly going to get underway.  Lightning bugs, bats, skinks, all manner of birds, snakes, mosquitoes, and the other cast of billions have made their appearance.  That includes the usual arrival of the armada of buzzards that roost on one of the water towers in town, which does not bother me as much as it does some people.

I’m still searching for some clarity regarding what comes next for yours truly, but have a bunch of proverbial irons in the proverbial fire.  Sometimes it seems like reporting on what I’m doing would sound like the guy’s paper on what he did during his summer vacation in Cheech and Chong’s Sister Mary Elephant sketch.  Something will coalesce here pretty soon, I’m sure, even if it ends up just being for a few months.  Regardless, it will be nice to have a purpose once again.  One evening this week I took a several-hour basic first aid refresher class down in Wichita, which made me feel pretty decent about my knowledge on the subjects covered and then some.  Next week I have an appointment for a little work to be done on my car to make sure I have a steed ready to ride off into the sunset upon whenever the time comes.  With luck by the time I’m all said and done I’ll have put together a biography as varied and interesting as Louis L’Amour’s.  One step at a time…

Eight folks got a nice, big step this week with NASA’s new astronaut candidates being selected.  One is an “ice person”, so it is nice to know the door is open, though it looks like military backgrounds are a lot more desirable.  I certainly will apply whenever the next selection begins again.

‘Despair, or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt.  We do not.  It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.’
~Gandalf (Council of Elrond), LOTR by J.R.R. Tolkien

Getting lush, still not flush

The wildlife diversity is gradually on the rise here as things continue to warm and turn green.  In the last couple weeks there have been first appearances of hummingbirds, toads, and for a first time in memory yellow-headed blackbirds.  This evening a lanky raccoon ambling into the yard at dusk was the first sighting of one of them in a long while.  I guess distemper laid many of them low in the last year or so.  The sound of frogs croaking down in the creek is a pleasant accompaniment to all the visual stimuli.

The grass is green and growing, but I guess the grass of prime importance in this region-wheat-is being largely assessed at lower qualities.  I imagine it is largely due to the dearth of moisture over most of the winter.  We have started to get more regular precipitation, but it might be too little too late.

What comes next has yet to reveal itself.  Unfortunately it is not my own (desired) timeline that drives most of that process of discovery.  I just keep at it and do what I can.  I have plenty of company, in that regard, despite the record highs on Wall Street.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
~Plato

Green wave breaks

Even though the cooler temperatures have managed to persist here, the green wave of spring has certainly arrived.  There have been a few days of really nice and warm weather, but for the most part it has remained cool thus far.  That is fine with me.  The blistering heat of summer will be here soon enough, and with a few nice rains under our belt, perhaps we will be on our way to recouping some of the precipitation deficit of the last few years.  Hopefully.

We got to have my brother’s kids here for a few days of long-weekend fun.  It is interesting to see them both mature and interact with each other.  I find it strange, but fun, to see the wee lad doing similar things around the house that I remember his father doing.  Pulling things out of the kitchen cabinets to play with really rang a bell!

The question of figuring out what comes next remains unsolved.  I am still assessing available options, and trying to figure out a timeline for my own actions while remaining flexible for whatever might arise sooner versus later.  My spirits are still doing fine.  I guess this is a skill honed with plenty of practice.

My best wishes and thoughts are for you, Boston.

“There are people who observe the rules of honor as we observe the stars: from a distance.”

~Victor Hugo

I Like (the) Ike (Center)

The job hunt rolls on, but hopefully something will materialize in relatively short order.  In the meantime, I’m just doing what I have to do.

A while back I did get to have a little day trip up to Abilene for a visit to the Eisenhower Center.  The have a good museum, with lots of interesting artifacts.  One that stood out to me (despite being only a couple feet from a piece of real Moon rock) was the actual teleprompter scroll DDE used during his speech that mentioned the “military industrial complex”.

On the grounds are a number of buildings, including a house DDE lived in growing up.  I was surprised to find out that it was still in the original location, not relocated from elsewhere in town.  It had a very nice front parlor room.

DDE and Mamie are buried in the chapel also on the ground of the center.

I read an excellent biography about Eisenhower (by Michael Korda) a few months back, which helped make this a very interesting little visit to a place I had not been to since high school.  Though DDE is not commonly mentioned in the pantheon of the greatest U.S. Presidents, I think he was an intelligent fellow that understood compromise and devotion to duty.  It would be nice if more of that could be injected into government today.

"Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help."

~Homer, The Iliad