Moving Fiasco

Well, we're getting settled into the new house. The move is done, but of course it didn't go as smooth as we had planned. It's a good thing that Molly and I are crisis management specialists!

The Move

We had scheduled movers for Sunday, but they were short staffed, so they cancelled on us. They came the next morning (Memorial Day). Everything started out fine; we got several things loaded. Then, just on queue, it started raining. And I don't mean a light rain, I mean a good ol' Texas Gulf Coast torrential downpour. This kept up for several hours - long enough that we released the movers after we got the stuff that was already in the truck unloaded into the garage at the new house. Now 30 minutes after they left, the skies opened up, and the sun came out. Molly, the eternal optimist, said, "let's rent a U-Haul and get it done." Turns out we found a U-Haul place with a truck, and we moved the rest of the stuff ourselves - probably about 2/3 of everything.

It got done, and we had a feeling of accomplishment considering we did it with just the two of us.

Now we're plowing through the unpacking. It's more fun than packing!

- Mike

OK, OK, Discovery Rolls to the Pad

OK, so we can't be the only NASA nerds in Houston not to post something about Space Shuttle Discovery rolling to launch pad 39B today. It's a very exciting time indeed with the launch to the International Space Station scheduled for July 1st.

Here's a piece of trivia for you. Each crawler has 458 tread "shoes" and each one of them weighs 2100 pounds! The entire crawler weighs (minus the shuttle) 5.5 million pounds. Read more about it here (PDF).

- Mike

James Blunt Concert

Molly and I went to see James Blunt in concert Saturday night. It was a really great show! The opening act was Toby Lightman, and she was fantastic as well! To the left is a picture of Toby Lightman that our friend Josh took with his cell phone. The show was at the Verizon Wireless Theater downtown Houston. We could only get general admission tickets, so we didn't have seats. It was kind of not fun on the legs standing the whole time, but we were only about 5 rows back from the stage. I guess you have to give-and-take in this life.

We had dinner before the concert at a mom-and-pop Italian place called Perbacco. I had the Gnocchi. It was the second time I had ever had it - the first time was at Chez Dr. Bob (which was also very good).

Here is my quote of the day: "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."
-- Henry Ford

- Mike