Mars or Bust!

So I'm channel surfing during the weekend and come across NASA officials beside themselves because we are just minutes away from learning whether or not we were able to successfully land on the northern pole of Mars. I'm talking the culmination of ten years of focused and dedicated work all to be either totally justified or considered a colossal waste of numerous resources in just a matter of minutes.


Well, the good news is it was a major success. Here it is: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/phoenix/640/phx20080525-recap-640.swf

Just imagine, this entire team of scientists working together to build a rocket that could propel and direct this spaceship 90 million light years into space to reach a particular target area on the surface of Mars. How in the world do you do that? I simply don't have a mind that can even conceive of what it would take to make that happen and happen according to plan. Anyway, here are some photos from the surface of said planet, neighboring or not, it certainly doesn't look like home.

My other observation is that many if not most scientists have serious overlap bellies, probably because they are busy exercising their brains and not their bodies. Kind of sad considering all that they know.

So, what does all this mean? Will my grandkids be living on Mars? Probably not, but it may teach us something more about our solar system and perhaps that can help us to get the message through to our political and other parties in power that we need to pay attention to our environment and conserve in a big way.

It's really fascinating stuff, I wish I had more gray matter in the left side of my brain so I could understand a little more about it. If science isn't explained to me at the Carl Sagan level, I'm pretty much lost, sad to say.

A Little Day Tripping

I think back on this song and like many of that era, I'm still not sure what it meant. I still wonder if you had to be high to really "get it". Probably so I guess I'll never really know. Although I maintain the lyrics don't really matter if the music gets inside you. That's what happened to me in the '60's/'70's. I became the music and the music became me.

Me and my $105 stereo earned with my strawberry-picking bonus in 1967. Here is a little video of "my stereo" or certainly a reasonable facsimile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_c6NlqP6ls

That stereo was probably provided me with the best value of anything I've ever purchased. It traveled with me from the Cornell Road house in Hillsboro to the basement dorm room at Southern Oregon College, to two different apartments in Ashland (overlooking Lithia Park) after that, briefly back home then to an apartment while working at the worst possible job for me (junior bookkeeper), then to San Francisco where I didn't get any smarter and stuck with finance by working for Bank of America, to a couple of different residences there, then back to a number of apartments and a duplex in Aloha and Forest Grove, then back to a house in Ashland, then to a tiny, doll house in Medford, then finally back to a house in Aloha. It survived at least 14 years (1967 - 1981) under my watch and a couple of dancing fool baby girls with their dancing fool mom.

I'm wondering if my memory is faulty, but I think it finally left with my first husband so all my friends and family went together to buy me a new stereo as a gift for my 31st birthday along with my favorite album in the world at the time by Toto. I played "Roseanna" and "Africa" over and over on it.

But back to my old friend, it played everything from Elvis, "Crying in the Chapel" to the Beach Boys, "Hang On Sloopy" to Disney's "Jungle Book" to Cream's, "Sunshine of Your Love" to 3 Dog Night's "Eli's Coming", to The Beatles, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" to Gary Lewis and The Playboys, "This Diamond Ring" to Henry Mancini's "Breakfast at Tiffanys" soundtrack to The BeeGee's "Stayin' Alive" in the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack of John Travolta fame, to Abba's, "Fernando" to Donovan's "Sunshine Superman". What a time for music! It was hard to live those years and not be influenced. I would say you had to make a point of ignoring it and I chose not to.

I honestly believe the sign of great music is you never tire of it and it appeals to multiple generations. I know my kids listened to this music and I hear even younger kids listening to it.

What can I say, it was and still is magical.

Sunshine and Sore Muscles

What is it about the sunshine that sends us over the edge? All of a sudden all that pent up energy and motivation causes us to think we have the stamina and flexibility of a 20 year old and we proceed to overdo it in a massive way. I think I would call this a pheromone attack. It's a lovely thing but then, the soreness lasts an extra day for each year you get older. That means you can be limping around for weeks if you are as old as I am. Once I'm my mom's age I'll be living on a massive, daily dose of Extra Strength Tylenol!

But it's all worth it. Our yard is already in really good shape which means we will be able to enjoy it for the ENTIRE summer. That's a first. It only took us 6 years and a little help from a friend to get to this point. But that's okay. I'm ready to kick back, entertain and simply soak it up.

I wonder if there has ever been a presidential campaign for either of the parties like this one for the Democrats. I don't mean the fact that there are still two candidates duking it out as we approach the convention. What I mean is, one of them is obviously the winner and the other is a Kling-On who just won't let go. It was tough enough when Al Gore won the election but lost the presidency. This is crazy.

Thankfully, the candidate who has already won is already taking on his real Republican opponent instead of letting his past Democratic opponent distract him. But methinks Hillary and her camp doth protest too much. Give it up already! I'm all for a woman in the White House but not this woman at this particular time. I don't know, maybe some miracle will occur and she will get the nomination, that's obviously what she's grasping for causing her to go into tremendous debt. Her representation just makes the female gender look like we are grasping and desperate. I don't like that feeling or being represented that way. Face it like a man! Well, maybe not exactly that since that approach got her into trouble in the first place.

BTW, does McCain think he's funny or sexy or what when he does these stupid poses for the camera? Somebody needs to tell him to knock it off because it doesn't build confidence in him as a serious contender or leader. It's like he thinks this behavior appeals to the younger generation. Guess what, John, we don't want to play with you, we want you to lead us, or somebody does anyway.

Enough political commentary, I need to go outside and make sure my sore muscles add enough more sore muscles to prove I earned the sunshine for this next week. This is why ThermaCare, IcyHot, ice packs, heating pads, Ben-Gay, Tylenol and Advil will always be in business.

My Laptop Is Back!

...and life is good. I didn't realize how dependent I had become on having this easy, quick access. What a great example of lazy America that I thought it was a hassle to go all the way downstairs to the desktop in the far, windowless corner of the basement. The convenience of this little gem was most certainly taken for granted by me before, but never again. Since it was me that caused the problem (I fried the hard drive), I can't complain much but it did take a long time to get it back to a functional state. I'm again in lovely laptop heaven.

The news right now is so full of horrific stories about the cyclone victims in Myanmar, the tornado victims in the Midwest and the earthquake victims in China that I count my lucky stars everyday that I only have to deal with rain. No problem as long as freakish Mother Nature continues to overlook our little neck of the woods. You do kind of start to look around and wonder who is going to get hit next. It's almost like the grand, overall forces of nature are getting all wound up and these poor locations are bearing the brunt of their angry displays. You know the old saying, "you can't fool Mother Nature". Well, I wonder if all we have done to destroy and break down the healthy environment has contributed to some of these horrible events. I don't suppose there is any way to know but I'm sure we didn't help.

There was a news story yesterday that an environmental group had taken out an injunction to prevent the installation of a number of windmills along the Columbia River Gorge that would have created an amazing amount of pollutant free power. Their issue was it would ruin the view. Hm, view vs. finding healthy alternatives to oil; what's wrong with this picture?

I'm sure the primaries fall in the classification of freakish somehow too. There just isn't a pleasant word for politics. It is what it is. They played back the news election analyst reactions when they couldn't immediately get election results from Lake County, Indiana. They were pretty funny. I actually think they are all as sick of it as the rest of us. Fortunately, I don't have to face a television camera when I'm rolling my eyes after hearing about the latest antics of one of these candidates.

John McCain was on The Daily Show (rerun) yesterday and I have to say, he was having trouble keeping up with John Stewart, as most people do. He just looks so old and unhealthy, downright pasty. I can't imagine how he would last through four years in the White House, let alone eight. I feel kind of sorry for him for waiting so long to get it right because I do think he would have made a few wiser choices than our current, sad excuse for a Republican president. In comparison, I look at all the good that was being done by Lincoln, Kennedy, King and Kennedy; assassinations seem to hit the most unlikely people unfortunately.

Time for me to go tickle the ivories (okay plastic).

Seven Days in the Week

Have you noticed how there are many times that when you end a Friday on a certain note, you simply can't get that tune out of your head throughout that weekend? This has been one of those weekends. That doesn't mean I haven't been very busy and doing some cool stuff. After all, Mother's Day with my girls, my mom and more, spending a little time with baby boy, seeing the movies "Baby Mama", "Waitress" and "Juno" cover just a few of the hours this weekend.

I think the reason Friday is continuing to haunt me is that it concerns the future employment of someone, which is a life-altering decision. Whenever I have to make a decision of this magnitude, there are many hours of consideration, deliberation and lots of other "tions". It has to be the right decision.

And tonight is the final episode of Survivor where the last four women, who have survived beyond all the strongest men, will compete and after the elimination from one final immunity challenge the jury will ultimately make the finalist choice. This is the first contest of this sort I've more or less watched, and then I really only watched the last 3 or 4. Maybe it's just me but $1mm just isn't worth the rain, the humidity, the bugs, the snakes or the poisonous fish types. Oh, and don't forget 19 other people constantly trying to stab you in the back or similar types of nastiness. DON'T sign me up. Give me a dry, somewhat clean 7-11 where I can just buy a ticket, yea, that's my kind of competition. I'm probably more likely to win that than I would ever win an episode of Survivor.

I wonder if anyone will ever do an analysis of what types of people actually choose to pursue these reality show contests. I mean, you never see a CEO, a VP of Finance, a president of a company, a manufacturing manager, an engineer. No, instead you see ice cream scoopers, personal trainers, aspiring designers, construction workers, charity organizers and okay, nurses.
For the most part, they all have jobs they can leave and come back eventually.

I wonder if they really learn as much as they say they do or if it's all for effect. My guess is it's about the effect because that's what the whole game is about. This up close and personal stuff is wierd, the music sounds like those exposes they do with the Olympics. Good grief!

Anyway, those are my final thoughts on this final night.