He was absolutely thrilled to get to spend time with his cousins (my 1st cousins, his 1st cousins once removed--but he's closer in age to them than I am). The whole family busted on me about my Jackets [sob], especially after occasional reports of the rapidly widening scoring gap came in. My mom's family is all from Hartford, so the UConn sentiments were running high. Even my Arkansas-born dad was rooting for the Huskies.. TANJ. Okay, those of you who know me well are probably flabbergasted thatI'd spend more than two words on sports, let alone a whole paragraph. Suffice it to say that I was excited for my school friends, fraternity brothers, etc., because they are jazzed. Personally, I don''t care--but it gave us something to tease each other about.
We had a fantastic time at the National Air and Space Museum Dulles Annex (otherwise known as the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center). The several hours on my feet walking around, perhaps aggravated by the car ride yesterday made my syrinx (NINDS Syringomyelia Information Page) act up, causing the signature (for me) sharp pain in the chest at the base of my rib cage. This is actually referred pain caused by that particular nerve bundle getting "the squeeze" from the syrinx and not any actual trauma--but trust me, it hurts just as fiercely as if something really was wrong there...before my diagnosis I once drove myself to the ER when the flare up extended to some partial numbness, pain, and tingling up the chest and out the left arm.
Highlights from the NASM triip: seeing Enterprise up close and personal--made more poignant by the missing leading edge segments from both wings, removed at the request of the Columbia accident investigation board to support replicating and exploring the conditions leading to the disaster, particularly, of course, the ice/foam strike. The museum is expecting them back relatively soon, although if one of them was used in the test, rather than as a model to build or validate a test article--it'll have to be restored--anyone who saw that footage knows the size of the hole the test strike made, and its implications for the accident investigation.
In just a few hours, I give my case study briefing to the NDIA Modeling and Simulation Committee. Be thinking about me tomorrow morning, okay? My client liked my briefing--he says that he "loved every slide." Have I mentioned that I love my client? Now I hope I can only do a credible job with the briefing.
