Wednesday, July 05, 2006

The Day After

What a day we had yesterday. In a good way, mind you! Mother Nature did her bit to make sure it was a good day. Nice and sunny, just a few scattered clouds here and there. And it stayed that way! Till way later in the day.

I turned to the NASA channel at 12.26, too late to see the final astronauts being settled. Instead I was in time to see the ground crew finishing up sealing the hatch on the shuttle. Oh well. I watched part of the Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi channel, and switched to NASA now and then to see what was happening.

Mike got his camera ready as it got close to time for lift-off. He had been keeping track of things online, I think? We watched the lift-off on the tv, then all dashed outside to watch for the shuttle. We spotted it pretty quickly and had a really good view. I was amazed at how long I could see it. Mike and Anne gave up after a bit, but I decided to watch till I couldn't see it any longer. It was pretty tiny, but I didn't end up giving up till my view was blocked by a big enough cloud that I was certain it wouldn't be visible once it was clear of the cloud. I watched it for about 4 minutes. (I was amazed to hear that it was only about 4 minutes, it seemed longer, in a good way) Wow! I think that is about the very best way to see a launch. Kind of the best of both worlds. I imagine that the astronauts got a kick out of going up on the 4th of July!

As Mike mentioned, I made reservations at the Chinese restaurant. We had a really good dinner, with some leftovers! For those who might be interested, we had General Tsao chicken and cashew chicken. Yummy!

Luck continued to shine upon Anne. She wanted to make a stop and have a look around Ron Jon's. It is a famous surf shop. There are several stores now, and the first store was in New Jersey. If you are interested in the story, go to www.ronjons.com and click on locations. Anyway, we figured that it would be impossibly crowded and no parking spots to be found, but we would drive by and see. As Anne's continuing good luck would have it, I pulled into the lot and a car was just pulling out of a spot right there at the front row, by the store. We took a good look around, Anne found a cute shirt she wanted, and we found a cashier upstairs with no line. Wow! The store is huge, by the way, two stories, open 24 hours a day. They sell surf boards, and just about anything else you might want that is remotely beach related.

We had a good trip home, and watched as more and more clouds moved in, some of them quite dark and thick. No rain till very late that night. Anne had calls from both sets of grandparents and Jo, but she missed a call from Brian while we were out. We did presents and cake and that was all good too! Oh, the cake--applesauce cake with butter cream frosting. Yum! I think she had a pretty good day!

In other news.... Mike spent part of the long weekend working on some of the wallpaper borders. He pulled off the outer layer of all of it in his cave--well, most of it, as I had removed the paper around where the bookcase went. Yesterday he started on the border in the kitchen, and has a good bit of it done too. I will take a photo of some that is still left, so you all can see it. I had gotten used to it, amazingly, so it wasn't quite as jarring, but I do like the kitchen better without it! I will go through and removed the lower layer of the paper--although both rooms look better as they are than they did with the paper---keep in mind, we aren't into all this wallpaper border stuff--haha!

Joel and the guys were here on Monday and put down mulch in all the beds, around the trees, etc. It all looks really nice, and there is that nice smell of cedar when we go outside!

Mike's folks have left VA and are headed for home--we hope they have a good trip!

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