Sparrows, finches, and these guys…
The pigeons are the worst! If you’re eating and they don’t get their share, they’ll attack!
Author Archives: momdude
ORD Again
I’ve always loved this corridor at O’Hare.
It’s pretty empty at 00:30 AM, the only folks there were the ones getting off of our plane.
Our plane arrived early, our luggage didn’t get lost, and we got to the hotel with only one little “adventure.”
It’s good to be back. I don’t think I’ve been here in over twenty years.
Filed under Photography, Travel
A Pollution
During their vacation, many folks to a “cleanse,” where they retreat from the stress of work and home life and social media, eat healthy food, drink pure fluids, get some exercise, do some yoga, get a massage, and so on.
I’m not one of those folks.
It occurs to me that I do the opposite, more of a “pollute!” Normally I try to eat well, get some exercise, watch my weight, manage stress, but when I go on vacation, all of those rules are gone. It’s time to eat all of that crap that I normally don’t allow myself to have!
Burgers & fries yesterday for lunch, pizza last night. Getting on a plane, there’s always a big bag of M&Ms and some chocolate bars to help suffer through those long, long, four-hour flights. A pound of chocolate an hour for every hour in the air – isn’t that the rule? There’s some FAA regulation about that, I’m sure.
Plus, once we get to the hotel and I’m not driving anywhere for DAYS, it’s time to have a margarita or three! I won’t drink if I’m going to be driving or flying, but if everything is either in the big hotel and convention center or I’m going someplace by cab or subway, then why do I have to worry about being 100% sober or 0% hungover?
Next week I can carefully check the scales when I get home and see how much damage I’ve done and begin the grim task of moving that counterweight back to the left a few pounds. In the meantime, IT’S TIME TO GET TOXIC, BABY!!
Filed under Silly Shit, Travel
Another Night Launch Out Of Vandenberg
Perhaps not quite as spectacular as a launch just after sunset, when the sky is almost dark but the Sun’s still just over the horizon, illuminating the cloud of gas at stage separation to make a giant “space squid” in the sky. Perhaps. But far easier to see than a day launch, where with binoculars you might see a bright dot for five seconds, if you’re lucky.
About 45-50 seconds after launch something like 100 miles northwest of here, the rocket climbs high enough to be seen above the mountains to our west. The rocket’s tail is orange and grows longer as the rocket climbs and the atmosphere gets thinner. It also turns more blue and white, finally blinking out as the first stage shuts down and separates from the second stage.
Visually I could see the rocket’s second stage firing and pushing the payload on to orbit for another two minutes or so. With binoculars in the past I’ve seen it for another two or three minutes, all the way until it disappears over the horizon to the south. Tonight, with just my Mark I eyeballs, I wasn’t quite that lucky.
Quite the show! I can’t wait to see a launch much more up close and personal.
Destination In Sight
You probably heard – Artemis didn’t get off the ground this morning. Part of it was technical and mechanical, some sticky valves and temperatures out of range, communications issues. Part of it was weather, lighting in the area that delayed fueling and then storms building up as they were trying to decide to press ahead and try to solve the engine issues. In the end it was a good decision to stand down, solve the technical and mechanical problems, wait for a better day to fly.
This evening, just before sunset, the destination was making a most beautiful appearance in the evening sky.
Along with one of the obligatory jets on final approach to LAX after a 15 hour flight from Asia.
When it got a little bit darker and the contrast was a little better and the Moon wasn’t down in the coastal fog and atmospheric soup, a bit of detail could be seen.
Click on it to blow it up – that big round spot on the illuminated limb is Mare Crisium.
If I wasn’t in deadlines up to my eyeballs and trying to get out of town to Worldcon in less than 48 hours, it would have been tempting to haul the ‘scope out of the back yard.
But I am and I am, so I didn’t.
We’ll get an idea tomorrow afternoon of when NASA might try to launch again when they have an update on Artemis’ status. If they can repair it on the pad fast, there’s another launch window on Friday. If they can repair it on the pad but need the weekend, there’s a third launch window next Monday. If they can’t repair it on the pad or it’s going to take more than a week, they’ll have to roll the vehicle back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, which means a launch attemp no earlier than October.
When we’re ready, the Moon will still be there. I have faith.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
To The Moon Again – Maybe
You’ve probably heard of NASA’s Artemis mission. They’ve been designing and building the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft for about a dozen years. It’s NASA’s program to bring crews back to the Moon’s surface and eventually build a permanent base on the Moon.
The plan is for the Artemis I mission to launch as an uncrewed test flight, possibly as early as 08:30 AM (or so) EST tomorrow morning. As we speak they’ve had a delay in starting the fueling due to thunderstorms in the area, so that time may bet bumped a bit, but they have a two-hour long window, so there’s some slack available. If they aren’t able to launch tomorrow morning (this is a first launch, a gazillion things could hold them up) they have more launch opportunities later in the week and next week.
This will be about a 40 to 42 day mission, depending a little on when they launch. It’s that whole “we’re moving, the Moon’s moving, orbital mechanics” thing.
If all goes well (eventually) with Artemis I, then Artemis II in 2023 or 2024 will carry a crew. They won’t land on the Moon, but they’ll go past it, around it, and then back to check out the whole system. If that goes well, then Artemis III is scheduled for 2025 to land a crew near the South Pole of the Moon. That crew wouldn’t be there for a day like Apollo 11 or even three days like Apollo 17. It would stay for a couple of weeks at least and start working on the foundation for a future lunar base.
There’s no “maybe” to me if we’re talking about going back, just “maybe” in terms of whether Artemis I will be launching tomorrow or not. Even if NASA wasn’t building Artemis, SpaceX has clear plans to get crewed and cargo missions there using Starship, and that should be flying in six to twelve months, with crewed flights not too long afterwards. Not to mention the Chinese, who have a clearly stated goal of putting their crews on the Moon.
When I was four, my dad got up up at O’Dark Thirty to watch Scott Carpenter and John Glenn go into space. In 1973, while only 17, I went to Florida to watch Skylab launch. I’ve been dragging my butt out of bed way too early to watch Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle, ISS, and SpaceX. I’m sure I’ll be up too early tomorrow morning as well.
You can watch live also, on NASA-TV.
If the weather has turned bad or something else has gone south and they’ve scrubbed, I’ll go back to bed and we’ll try again in a few days. If not, I’ll be hoping to see our spacecraft go back to the Moon.
Let’s hope it’s a good day to go to space! If not, let’s hope they remember that it’s better to be safe down here, wishing you were up there, than to be in trouble up there, wishing you were down here.
Filed under Space
Master Of Disguise
Not to steal any thunder from Dr. Earyn McGee‘s excellent and wonderful Wednesday evening Twitter game, but can you find the lizard in this picture?
Don’t sweat it if you can’t – I know where it is and I can only just barely see it by blowing the image up to full sized. (Click to enlarge it.)
A bit more zoomed, this is a “normal” view and you might see him now.
He’s stil a challenge, looks a LOT like the bark of the tree, but a fair number of you will be able to find him in this image.
There he is.
Pixelated as all get out if you blow it up to full sized, but he’s pretty obvious at full zoom. I suspect it’s this guy who hangs around the tree to begin with, but I didn’t get a positive ID. He said that he had left his driver’s license in his other skin.
Enjoy the sun, little lizard dude. Winter is coming.
Filed under Critters, Photography
A Conversation With StumpTail
StumpTail apparently drew duty guarding the front porch. I didn’t want to distract or disturb him, but didn’t want to be rude either, so we exchanged a few pleasantries:
Some might say that StumpTail is too small to serve as a proper guard lizard. Oh, ye of little faith! Have we seen one single Mongol horde or legion of Uruk-hai come through that door today? NO!
I say the results speak for themselves. All praise and honor to StumpTail!
Flash Fiction: Doors
This week Chuck Wendig gave us a Flash Fiction Challenge composed of five AI produced images with a theme of “doorways.” I put a picture of all five of them up and let it simmer. This afternoon during a Zoom call, my muse politely gave me the scene and the story. Despite being exhausted and my first thought being that there was no way I had the energy or time to write this tonight, adrenaline and the first paragraph kicked in, the muse went to the whip (“Hurt me, hurt me, make me write bad fiction!”) and it’s at least presentable.
The biggest problem from that point on is that she kept spewing details while I was typing. Not so much of a “1,000 word short story” as “the opening scene of the opening chapter of a 120,000 word novel that’s the first of a series,” from here I can see who’s doing what, what the questions are, who the other folks are, the quest to figure out what’s happened, the big “why” it’s happened, who caused it, their motivation and desparation, the fight to overthrow the powers that be, the big decision at the end questioning everything that we know so far…
Somehow I figured out a way to stick an actual ending that I like onto this scene and wrestle it into a somewhat story-shaped entity. Maybe later it can be the next great science fiction series of our time. For now, here’s my picture and slightly bloated story. I hope it leaves you wanting to know more.
DOORS
What did they teach us the first day of journalism school? The five Ws. Every story has to answer all five in order to be complete. It’s drilled into you from Day One.
Then the Universe does a hard right turn into “WTF just happened?” and you can’t answer a single one. You just hope to survive. I don’t know how many people couldn’t, didn’t, or just weren’t quick enough on their feet to even try.
The Door in front of me this time is already partially open, carved wooden panels on either side cracked apart, folding in the middle like an accordion. Through the crack I could see nothing but a black void, as always. A white mist was seeping around the edge, a streamer of fog falling down from the arch overhead. No sound or smell came from beyond that portal, although I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears and smell my sudden sweat despite the cold.
Let’s hope there was someplace to take a shower on the other side.
Without any other options and the air getting stale, I pushed the door panels aside and stepped through.
I came out in a hallway, cramped and filled with boxes, some on wooden shelving, some just stacked floor to ceiling. It was hot, steamy, and muggy so I immediately took off the coat I had been wearing. It looked like I wasn’t going to be needing it any time soon, but I sure wasn’t giving it up either. As of about two seconds ago it was all I had in the world.
To my right came the sounds of activity, voices and clattering, metallic. A kitchen, perhaps? I went to the left instead where there was a bit more light, emerging into what was obviously a restaurant. To get my bearings I stepped to the side, my back against the wall.
The Five Ws. Where was I? When was it? What was going on? Who had summoned me? Not an answer in sight and I knew how dangerous it could be to not have answers ASAP to at least those four questions. As for the fifth question, “WHY does this keep happening?” I knew better than to start screaming that one out loud. I didn’t have the time or energy to face those consequences a second time.
Standing quietly and listening, I could hear several voices, but I didn’t yet recognize the language. The room was filled with booths along the walls and open tables in the middle, maybe a dozen people in sight. All appeared human. In the oppressive heat, most were wearing robes of some sort. The light in the room came from the bright sun outside but I could see some fixtures hanging down from the ceiling that might be electric. Or not. Fans turned slowly under the ceiling, moving the air a bit, each powered by a belt attached to the next, the final belt heading outside. No help there in judging the local technological level.
Looking out through the open windows I could see a town plaza in front and a narrow alley running along the side of the building. A few folks walked along, mostly slowly, but given the heat that wasn’t surprising. No sign of any cars or trucks, not even a bicycle, but no grazing sheep or other livestock either. That was promising.
I breathed in deeply, listening to the voices in the room. Slowly, their conversation started to make sense. Bit by bit I began to understand, the lettering on a menu board suddenly snapping into focus in my brain. I could read and understand the local language now.
How? Well, that was the sixth W, wasn’t it? I didn’t have an answer to that either.
There was the ultimate “W.” It simply Was.
I headed for the door, hoping that no one would stop me to pay the bill for a meal I hadn’t eaten or start to ask embarrassing questions about my attire. The first fifteen minutes were always the most exciting.
“Hey, stranger. Over here, please.”
From experience my feet knew to keep walking and not look toward the speaker. Act like I hadn’t heard. Pretend I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I was wearing headphones. Maybe I was deaf. Maybe I could make it to the door. Be quick, but don’t hurry as Coach used to say.
“Okay, but you’ll regret it.”
Wait, that was English!
I might not have left skid marks on the floor, but I did stop and turn. In a booth along the wall with a view out onto the alley sat a woman in a light blue robe. She was smiling, and as I turned, she gestured to the chair opposite her. I hesitated and looked back to the door, judging the distance to escape, while she calmly picked up a pitcher on the table and filled an empty mug. Setting the pitcher back down, she gestured again at the chair.
It had been more than ten extremely hectic, chaotic, and guanopsychotic years since I had heard a word of English. Almost endless days of confusion and danger, lost, adrift, cut off from my past, and not sure of my sanity from one day to the next. Years since I had been taken, kidnapped, from my comfortable life and firm grip on reality, forced through Door after Door, clueless, just trying to survive on the other side of each one, waiting to be trapped again sooner or later with no way out but to open the Door in front of me.
Where would I end up on the other side? No way of knowing except to step through.
What was the purpose or meaning to any of it? No clues had ever been given, no pattern or plan to be deduced.
When was it ever going to end? That one I thought about a lot, without any data to go on. Would I end up back at home and then stay there? Would I just someday find myself to be old and simply to have never been trapped by another Door, having spent the rest of my life in whatever world I happened to have been in at that moment? Or would one of these Doors just lead me to oblivion or a quick death on the other side? Had I merely been lucky so far and one day my luck would run out?
Who had done this to me? Was it bigger than me? Was I the only one or were there others? Dozens? Thousands? Millions? Did this happen to everyone back on Earth and scatter us throughout some unimaginably huge and bizarre multiverse?
From all of these thoughts came madness. I had learned over that surreal ten years to not think, not questions just keep going and survive. Rather than figure it out, it was far easier to just assume that I had gone insane and all of this was just a psychotic delusion in my rotting and defective brain as I lay strapped into a straightjacket in a rubber room in Poughkeepsie.
“So many questions, I’m sure. I have answers,” she said, rudely interrupting my nervous breakdown.
She still had her arm out, offering the empty chair and full mug to me. Her eyes were locked on me, but there was no madness or threat in them.
Like a drowning man desperate for a life preserver, I walked over and sat down with her.
Filed under Writing
Less Color, More Texture
The colorful, vibrant sunsets get all of the attention, but tonight we just had some faded pastels. On the other hand, there were some bits of clouds and the textures were sublime.
It will do.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 