weird perspectives, geocaching, waiting for lunar news

Waiting to see if our lunar lander proposal is one of the four (of 20 submitted) chosen for a more in-depth mission study over 4 weeks. If so, it might affect my availability in March, including curtailing other business tasks and travel. We're supposed to hear today...

Otherwise, I had a good weekend. Finished some yardwork and electrical work around the house on Saturday, went by C&E's party that night for awhile. Drove to the East Bay and then home and went out for coffee with patgreene. Sunday afternoon saw girlpurple and smoocherie and ocelotsden (and others whose LJ handles I don't know) at blacklight minigolf in Milpitas... weird, but fun. Can't gauge surface grains for breaks, though. Brought italian food in for dinner to a reeling and recovering House Weirdness, saw klrmn after her return, hugged a still-shaky dawnd, and did a meditation exercise one-on-one with akienm that gave me a couple of useful insights. Then swung by Berkeley and saw tenacious_snail briefly.

Then Monday... geocaching all day with my three sons and cyan_blue! Clear day, mild spring weather, and all three boys smiled and cooperated and were genuinely excited in the chase. It was a boost just to see them all engaged in the same activity, without fussing or bored looks... that almost never happens, anymore. We found ten caches... cyan_blue has now put me into double figures, overall ;-). She has some great photos in her journal entry from yesterday. We also made travel bugs for James and Kevin and dropped them in a cache near SFO airport.

Yesterday, the car went in the shop, lots of meetings, dealing with the resignation of a part-time team member, and waiting for the lunar news... I had a low-grade headache all day, and was slightly sniffly, but it seems to have lifted today.

oooh, shiny...

New skate blades, in this case. =) Still no word on the proposal.

dawnd was tired and still sick and so we postponed our lunch date... given the time window, I opted to follow my skating coach's suggestion and call the Harlick factory store in San Carlos.

I have had a set of new boots for two years, but no blades. So I took the boots out of their packaging and drove up 101 for a 1:30pm fitting. I bought Wilson Coronation Ace blades, a good general-purpose freestyle blade that is comparable to my Risport Cristallo mid-level boots. I also noticed the framed photo in Harlick's reception, celebrating one of their clients' recent success in ice dancing, a couple of days ago ( incidentally, the Russian pairs who won the gold and bronze in ice dancing were both wearing Risport boots, so I have my bases covered... ;) Then I went home and dressed the soles of my boots with waterproofing, before heading back to work.

I was wearing a NASA turtleneck... the Harlick receptionist noticed, asked me if I worked there, then called in one of their custom boot designers. They have an (unnamed) male competitive client who is preparing a program memorializing the Columbia and Challenger disasters... they wanted a shuttle and red, white and blue exhaust plumes on the sides of their custom boots for that program. The designer had tried stencils and laminated drawings, with no success. They asked me for any ideas -- I told them that the Ames gift shop sold cloth triangular shuttle patches in exactly the size they needed, for $4, all they had to do was cut off the bottom and seal it. Just like the flag on Brian Boitano's skates (they pulled out one of his to demonstrate how they could sew in patches). This idea brightened their day, and meant that I got really friendly service on my fitting (grin)... so if I see some male skater at the next Worlds doing a Shuttle commemorative program, I'll look closely at his skates ;-).