Saturday, November 04, 2006

Take your daughter to work a bit early

Badmom (and dad) pulled Iris out of school early to drive up the coast before the Friday afternoon traffic started on the 405 over Sepulveda pass. We tried to put her to bed early at the hotel, but she refused to cooperate. Then we hauled her out of bed at 3:45 AM and made her sit on cold metal bleachers. Why?

We have liftoff. The rocket is the bright spot on the right of the corkscrew contrail.

The early morning sunlight hit the upper portion of the contrail first and made it glow relative to the lower contrail below.

It was the prettiest launch I have ever seen. Usually, we watch the rocket for a few seconds before it hits the stratus deck and see nothing but a diffuse glow after that. Today, we saw everything.

Read more about it here. I made a 3 minute video of the launch, but it is 19 MB and I haven't mastered imovie or youtube yet.

Then we went back to the hotel for breakfast and checkout. On the way home, we stopped in Solvang to buy some birthday cake at Solvang bakery and to buy some needle-felting supplies at Village Spinning and Weaving. We got home with just enough time to eat lunch and rush out to Iris' last regular season soccer game.

3 comments:

  1. What a great present for Iris! I'd say this was a good mom moment.

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  2. It is hard to find a birthday candle bigger than a Delta IV rocket!

    Iris says that I have been a good mom lately. She is heavily influenced by bribes like the dresses.

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    Replies
    1. Oops, it's a smaller Atlas rocket.

      Delete

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