(no subject)

Yesterday... early morning rush to DCA, but I ran and made my flight. In Newark... barely missed a connecting train, so I had to wait almost an hour for the next one. And my hotel... Augh. Tiny dilapidated four-story, no window, no a/c, burns on the plastic sink.

OTOH, I rushed to the theatre district (past "Spamalot"...) to have Chinese food for lunch with sinboy and rosefox. They looked settled and happy. And we walked by Rose's park, afterwards... :)

Work-wise... success! We drilled into a regolith simulant... pre-chilling the drill helped avoid getting it stuck in its own cuttings. Although we may have used too much LN2... -110C is sub-Martian, mostly.

Then a quick dinner with elissaann near her house... she was delightful and vibrant, as usual. Back to Honeybee to retrieve a lost notebook. Then to McNulty's for coffee for patgreene, walk across the Village over past NYU (heh, was stopped and asked for directions...) and finally to McSorley's. A pilgrimage, it's where I was introduced to beer at age 20 by a close friend.

Now... back home today, about to board...

oktoberfest?

I'm home now... crowded flights, grabbed an actual bagel (I'm not a fan of most bagels) from a sidewalk vendor outside of Penn Station, had a good lunch with Nancy en route. Her mother's been in the hospital for 10 days, Nancy's been very stressed... but her mom has improved and relief was evident. =)

I'm a bit tired, and not feeling sociable. And I've missed Pat and want to just stay close to her and cuddle.

Which could be possible in a different country in September... an email today from ESA: ... pleased to inform you that your submission, entitled "Drilling Automation for Subsurface Planetary Exploration" , to the 8th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space has been accepted for oral presentation. It's in Munich, 5-8 September. patgreene wants to join me there, if we can find childcare then. yay!