Houston: Mission Control

When I was in Houston at the end of January, as a side trip from the meeting, we went to the Johnson Space Center. This picture is from the gallery at the original Mission Control. As with all pictures from the race to the moon I was struck by how amazing it was that any one actually made it to the moon let alone back. The computers in the mission control were only terminals and the guide says the computing power was something tiny and the main frame took up a whole floor underneath this control room.

Really remarkable. But the most interesting bit was the next picture.

Rocket with boosters

This is one of the two or three rockets left. There is this one laying on its side with stages slightly separated in Houston and apparently there is another one standing upright at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The most interesting thing about the rocket, apart from the scale which no picture can really capture, is the fact that the whole thing looks like it was put together in someone's backyard. Ok a really really big back yard but still.

One of my fellow tour takers said, "Really look like it was made in shop class, doesn't it?"

That really captures the essence. Although they weren't really reused, the enormous rocket was slightly bashed in looking and when you looked at the business end, the end where the giant propulsion occurs, you really get the feeling you are looking at something smushed together slightly badly then covered in tin foil. I really wish I could have captured that in a photograph. All I could get was this shot from near the top end; this thing is huge.

Being there did give you a frisson of pride. If man can do this then surely they can figure out some other stuff. Of course that was ages ago.

Note to Mum and Dad: I still can't believe you wanted to do this Dad or that you were willing to let him, Mum.

Robert is Here fruit stand

On saturday, we went for a walk in the Everglades National Park. On our way there we stopped at "Robert is Here" fruit stand. Neither Ali nor Ules (nor the boys but they are all under five) thought it was odd that this place was called Robert is Here. I thought it sounded like a fruit stand for a guy who could use some therapy. They figured he just used to be out in the middle on nowhere, declaring his availability for fruit purchases.

I highly recommend this fruit stand; they had a key lime pie milkshake that was out standing as well as some really ugly tomatoes which, of course, tasted excellent. Just north of Homested, I believe. Make sure you visit Robert.

Robert has Purple Martins, too

In addition to excellent key lime milkshakes and tomatoes; Robert also claims to have the southern most purple martin house in the continental United States of America. Which reminded me that in all my travels across the world, I have RARELY, nay, NEVER seen another country have such bizarre roadside attractions as you do in my home country.

Why do we do this kind of thing? The best you can get here in the UK is a stand which will sell you cornish ice cream or silly stuff with pictures of royalty on it. But even here in the land of the truly eccentric; you never see anything like a claim to have the southern most purple martin house in the continental USA. Which make me think is Hawaii more southern than Homested? That must be the reason for the "continental" modifier. I wonder if they even have purple martins...

Of course, there were alligators

Who cares about the purple martins anyway. There were alligators to be seen. Here is a view of a few wallowing in the swamp, just feet away from our board walk. very very similar to last year's alligator picture. But this year I was with intrepid boys under the age of five. Who were kitted-out with binoculars. Well, at lest in the begining they were...

Binoculars floating away

Unfortunately for my intrepid fellow alligator hunters. One set of binoculars had to be sacrificed to the alligator gods. After a rather thrilling siting (see previous picture) we clambered up on the railing to get a better look and one pair of binoculars fell off.

Sadly, Ules didn't feel up to wrestling the alligators that saturday afternoon; so, we had to watch the bright yellow and orange, grandma-purchased, best-est of all binoculars float away.

I slept with Superman, Spidey and Captain Jack Sparrow...

After a meeting in Houston, I flew through Miami to spend some time with my friend Ali and her family in Coral Gables. Ali and her husband have three lovely little boys.

Got kicked out of their room so I could sleep in amongst the most fabulous collection of super hero's I've ever seen. This is the view from my twin bed. Superman has certainly got better looking than what I remember of him. The pirates of the Caribbean sheets were also fun. Please not that the planets in front of superman actually glow in the dark, but Ules had some trouble with getting th eorder right so I think they are all revolving around saturn. Ali says that because he didn't go to catholic school. I took umbrage at that, being a public school girl myself...

Back in the UK and more on Thor

I wrote this last week and never posted it.
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I'm back in London and feeling slightly more grounded. As I mentioned in my last posts Tripoli was a surprise; picturesque and pleasant.

Getting back to the UK was a bit of a strain. As we entered the gate at Tripoli International Airport (TIP, for those of you collecting airport call letters) my British seatmate - flying back from six months at an oil field-- informed me that "we had no idea where we were going." After a perplexing moment I replied that I was going to London and hoped the plane we just boarded was headed that way as well. He then told me there had been an 'incident" at Heathrow and runways were closed.

Now, when a British person uses the word "incident" I try to remain calm. They are a remarkably understated group and it could mean anything from a neutron bomb detonation to a taxi cab run amok. Turned out to be an amazing save by a pilot who landed an 777 with no power by gliding (!!) it down. Virtually no injuries -- an amazing story.

Lots of emails flying back and forth between my friends from college; spurred by the death of our friend Thor. Since he was peripatetic, his friends from around the world have built a memorial site. I found this very strange in the beginning, slightly unseemly, which is odd if you think about it since I write to all my friends through an open blog. Ultimately, I have found the site quite comforting because it allows me to remember with a lot of others the hysterical life and death of Thor, the God of Thunder. Best of all there is a collection of his yearly letters which show you how funny and witty he really was.

I spent Sunday rooting around in my flat looking for photos from the mid 1980s when most of the Emory crew were still in Atlanta and found an great set of negatives from when I was taking black and white photos. The picture above is Thor posing for me. I don't remember subjecting my friends to this but apparently I did because there were a ton of black and white negatives from then.

I'm headed to Paris...

At the end February, I'm finally taking the super duper fast and speedy train to Paris from the snazzy newly renovated St. Pancras Train terminalwith some friends. We are staying for a couple of days; I'm just telling you so you can get all set up for great pictures. Maybe we will run into Sarkozy and his squeeze who are being endlessly written about in the British press. Who knows - it could happen. Chances are what you really have to look forward to is the usual funny signs and possibly a picturesque cafe scene...

Sportswear for modest women

Becasue all the signs are in arabic I cam only take pictures of scenery. This display shows a remarkable adaptation of the "mall suit" or sweatsuit. I suppose its sportswear for modest women.

BY the way headscarves are very prominent here in Triploi along with generally demure women's clothing. But chadors or other full body covering has been a very rare sight.

Libyan plumbing

I have a long standing beef with British plumbing specifically the ridiculous habit they have of two taps in the bathroom - so that washing your hands is a freezing or scalding experince.

This picture shows Libyan plumbing is much better. Who knew a country coming out of exile could learn so much quickly that the world's seventh largest economy.

This is Tripoli in January

I'm in the Libyan capital on business. I was gentily approaching this trip for a variety of reasons, mostly it took sooooo long to get a visa and it was difficult to arrange a hotel. But things opened up considerably overthe lastcouple of months or my companies in-country group got better at figuring out how to book rooms. Regardless, I have been pleasantly surprised by Tripoli.

As usual most of my trip is spent in conference rooms and hotels so there's little time to explore. Yesterday, I did get out for a walk for lunch. This is the view in the regular neighborhood. Not bad, eh? Well the weather is much better than in London at this moment, so that's a plus. The infrastructure is really hurting for a variety of reasons: lack of cash from embargo, insufficent planning and god knows what else. The people I've met have been really great, eager to help sort me out and very friendly. So I guess the jury is out but I encourage a visit. Did I mention the whole country is dry? no alcohol, none, nada.

Terrible news

An old Emory friend was killed yesterday in Afghanistan. Thor Hesler was killed when Taliban rushed into an expat heavy hotel with grenades and guns. Its very odd to think he's gone. I got an email from a friend in the US yesterday while they were still saying "an American" had been killed. I wrote back to my friend asking if it could possibly be a mistake. The answer is no, Thor was that American.

Thor had been in hot spots all around the world and spinning tales of his travels in yearly letters to his friends. December's missive was as usual great reading.

Not much you can say when someone dies like this; but its on my mind and I'm far away from home so I wrote it down.

New Haven as an example

First, let me say that I love having this new Mac. It means that I can finally get some speed out of my home Internet pipe, so there's lots more surfing going on. Now if I could just figure out how to get all my old files transferred I would be golden but that requires that I sit down and RTFM since the easy way has had a hiccup.

Any way that's not why I'm writing I'm writing this post because I've been thinking about infrastructure (can you imagine how dull my life must be?) and then today I read this marvelous article in NYT on Public vs. Private infrastructure. It sure isn't pretty but basic infrastructure is what makes cities great and every city I have lived in has a crumbling infrastructure. Atlanta's water system, San Francisco's schools and roads, when I left Tampa it was so busy growing that the infrastructure hadn't caught up yet. Sort of makes you long for early to mid 20th century when civil engineering was kind and social infrastructure got nothing...

Here in London, I'm still having trouble understanding how these things are funded. They don't have bonding as I know it from the US - central government shares our revenue to local authorities who get work done (or not). They have privatised everything so its a very strange quagmire. As fully realised in this week's cock-up concerning net work rails in ability to get the line work finished on time to re-open Liverpool Street Station. They seem to have split up the companies which maintain and deliver the rail lines from the companies which run the trains. No overhead wire engineers available over the holidays so no line from Rugby to Liverpool Street. Good thing no body was at work last week!

Anyway back to infrastructure, I suppose it was always this - before it was privatised the service was crap, now its privatised the service is slightly better than crap but the infrastructure is weak and failing.

As and aside, despite all the great papers here I miss my Sunday morning coffee and NYT ritual, either in the sunny spot in front of my place in Dogpatch with my neighbour's or in Henry's back yard.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mum!

So badly out of date

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to the blogosphere (note trendy verbiage). I'm woefully behind in posting, my old mac was actually wheezing so I took advantage of the ridiculous exchange rate to buy a new MacBook (thank you, Santa) whilst (note silly Brit word) in Florida visiting family over Christmas. Yay. Its so lovely and white and spanking-ly great. Has a big-ish screen and the battery lasts for ages and any minute now I'm going to transfer all th egoop from my old machine to my new machine but for the moment its all just so shiny and new.

I flew back in town today -- arrived at a stellar London airport on Sunday. It was sunny and warm the entire week in Mad Beach, family is all doing fine, thank you for asking. London is cold dark and dank. Not sure why I live here; oh yes, its a great job. Hmmm, may need to rethink my priorities and chuck it all in buy a boat and float around a la Travis Magee. Bonus points to anyone who remembers the name of his boat and sends in a comment!

Really was a great and relaxing visit, will dig up some photos and post at some point. Had a great catch up with My Friend Nancy Last-name-starts-with-a-Y-or-did-until-she-married-but-its-too-late-to-change-a-nickname--also known as MFNY. I have decided I can talk about my friends but only if I don't use a real name. Anyway, she brought me up to date with all the friends who didn't know I had moved: Cat Mag, Manker, Elise, etc. etc. Great to here all about every one's life and especailly see MFNY's giant wall O' Christmas card pictures. So many children!

Anyway, have a safe and Happy New Years celebration.

And Note to Ali - be nice to my English friend doing a tour of Florida; I think she needs Cuban coffee and perhaps some roast pork while she's in your fair city.

Politically incorrect signage

Really not much I can say about this sign except to note that I may not have found it as incorrect if I hadn't been raised in the southeast United States post-Jim Crow. I think its aimed at Japanese residents in my neighborhood--of which I have seen very few, but there you have it.

Meant to post this earlier

In early December the leaves are almost all gone, reminds me of how desparate I was in the spring to see green and flowers. So I took this picture walking to work one morning just to remind myself that Fall (or early winter) is also lovely in leafy north London

New St Pancras

Snuck this one in by back dating it. When the female parental unit was visiting last month, we made a pilgrimage to the newly renovated St. Pancras station in London. It was really great; beautiful HUGE train shed. It is still getting finishing touches, but that was OK because you got to see things like the picture above. Its working crawling all over the enormous glass ceiling getting some last minute Windex-ing done.

The trip including some champagne at the champagne bar that watches over the trains to France. Best part of that was the fact that the seats in the banquet tables are heated. Reminded me of putting the top down on my old car and driving around with the heated seats on. Very luxurious. Well worth the visit and tipple.

Mum visits

Hmm, I don't think this worked right. The picture is a CLASSIC tourist photo of me and my Mum at City Hall in London. Note the fabulous weather. When she returned home she told me the AC was on. Oh well, there is no tower bridge in Florida so we do have some good things here.

Lovely visit. If I can figure out a better picture I'll refresh this link.