jay | Bad start, better finish

This morning,

hopeforyou and I went down from Pasadena to Northrop/Grumman, in El Segundo, for a demonstration of their software for designing vehicle health management systems for future space vehicles. We were a bit late, and there were also lots of grey slides with too much extraneous information.

Then around 11am, a woman came in and exclaimed proudly, "Our B-2s are in the air now over Iraq!" I felt uneasy... even queasy. Northrop made the B-2s... while I could understand pride in one's handiwork, these things were killing people in downtown Baghdad while we were sitting there munching doughnuts in our meeting. Icky. I didn't say anything, and just turned away from her.

We left around 2pm, finally... then sat in creeping traffic on the 405 . But then the day improved markedly... I got to have lunch with Hope and

shaktiqueen and her adorable toddler (smile). The food from a local restaurant was excellent, and

shaktiqueen had made some chocolate-pecan cookies (whose crumbs I'm finishing off as I type this, back home). Then the delightful

ame_chan arrived, with her two daughters (same ages as James and David), dog Pico, and her lovely red hair ;-). Followed by

giaxcomo, home from work early. It was relaxing, friendly, and felt... somehow life-affirming, amongst the kids and dog and a mug of hot tea.

Then Hope and I left for home around 6pm, arriving about five hours later after a deep and diverse conversation during our drive back. :-).