The National Review reported yesterday that the President is expected to offer a vision of an America returning to space. This is supposed to happen somewhere around the 100th anniversary of manned flight, although it could be politicized into the State of the Union address in January.

Very cool — I’m somewhat surprised to hear that Dubya is pondering a return to Luna, though. That just seems awfully forward-thinking, and that’s a trait I don’t give him much credit for.

As with the Soviets in the late 50s, it appears all we need is a race partner — in this case the Chinese — to challenge our dominance in space, and then we begin looking upward again. It’s a shame that it takes that kind of nudging to get us looking forward again.

However with the death of the Concorde fleet, the grounding — and maybe mothballing — of the shuttle fleet, and continuing cuts in any program in the US that puts a human above 100,000 feet, I continue to feel like the future is dying before our very eyes.

Aside from the philosphical waxing that goes with this sort of thing, there were two bits of trivia of the article, though, that were intriguing.

The first was that all US astronauts deaths have happened in the same calendar week (from Jan 27 to Feb 1). This leads me to thinking a moratorium on US space launches from about Jan 20 to Feb 10 might be in order…..

The second was that anyone 31 years of age or less has never known a manned lunar landing — they’ve all been born since Apollo 17 left the lunar surface.

Ad astra? Not likely in my lifetime.

Ad luna? It’s happened before, and I’d like to see it again in my lifetime.

So today is December 1st…. What? Where did the year go? This has absolutely been the fastest eleven months I’ve ever experienced. I can remember when I was growing up hearing older folks talk about how fast the days were passing. I thought — foolishly, apparently — “that will never happen to me!”

Guess what? It is. And there’s not a thing I can do about it. *sigh*

Nothing new on the house front. The new house becomes our financial responsibility in just about two weeks. I cannot believe how fast this has come! I also can’t think about anything else — I’m constantly planning where this or that will go.

Now if we can just get the current house to sell…… !!!

A nice, leisurely drive from The Mountain, and we are now back home.

That’s the good news.

The not-as-good-news is that the open house this afternoon didn’t exactly attract throngs of folks. In fact, I believe we only had one visitor, and they were looking for a place with a garage. Oh well!

Wendy has a good plan, though, that I think will move the house sooner rather than later. Canvassing the close-by apartment complexes is the plan for January — that’ll drive traffic our way!

Today, Sio, Beck and I went downtown to the Aquarium and to Big River Grill for dinner.

Sio and the Aquarium

I’m still so impressed with the Aquarium here. It’s been here ten years (or more), and still looks brand new. However, a nwe addition is going on that will connect it and the Hunter Museum (somehow), and should be finished in 2005.

As always, the big attraction seems to be the Gulf display, full of humungous fish, sting rays, small hammerhead sharks and other colorful fish. It’s one of the biggest displays, too, so it gets a lot of noses pushed against the glass.

The other large displays — like the Nickajack Lake — are really great too, but the fish just aren’t as dazzling, and it’s probably just not that exciting to see fish you could probably go a few miles upriver and catch.

Big River was a nice choice for dinner. I’ve not been there in years, and it didn’t disappoint. I had the blue crab and artichoke stuffed chicken. Way, way high on calories, but really great flavor.

When we decided we were coming to Mom’s, we brought a whole bag full of sparklers and smoke bombs that were left over from the 4th of July. It’s much easier to shoot them off here on The Mountain, and I knew Sio would have fun playing with the fireworks. No, I didn’t bring them down for me! 🙂

Sparkler in the Wind

So fireworks we did, blowing through 16 boxes of sparklers, a bag of smoke bombs, and a box of snakes, all inside of 30 minutes. We did single sparklers, and a few at a time — I even tried a whole box at once…. and promptly threw them across the driveway when they exploded into the most brilliant blue flame!

Blizzard on the Mountain

As we started cleaning up the mess, it began to gently — then more seriously — snow on us. What a wonderful treat — our first snow of the year! We frolicked in the lightly falling snow and enjoyed its presence. Sio even made a snowball that she threw not just once (at Grandma), but twice (at Darla). Molly promptly ate that same first snowball of Winter 2003.

Picture of Gluttony

If so, I should be dead by now! 🙂

I’ll attach the photos after I get back to the server, but hoo-boy what a spread! Whole turkey, smoked turkey breast, smoked ham, candied yams, cranberries (not out of the can!), stuffing in the bird, dressing in a bowl, deviled eggs, new potatoes, green beans, rolls, key lime pie, pumpkin pie, cake….. My eyes (and belt!) are popping.

And, after a nice dinner at 2pm, and a nap at 5pm, it was time for round two around 11pm. So much food……

It was a great dinner, and will be for the next several days I’m sure!

Many hours of driving later, we are on The Mountain for Thanksgiving. We got in last night around midnight after a very uneventful trip.

Unfortunately, it looks like we’re in for rain all day — it’s pouring cats and dogs and has been all morning.

We’ve left the house on Hollybrook to the realtor for the weekend. There’s an open house on Sunday, and we’ve already had our first “customer” come by. I’d like nothing better than for us to come home on Sunday and find that there were offers waiting in the wings.

Kevio’s up here, the rain is quietly pitter-pattering on the tree leaves, and the smells of Thanksgiving meal being prepared are filling the air….. all seems right with the world.

Today finds our fair couple trying to lock in on a mortgage rate — 5.75% is what we ended up with. That’s 1% less than we refinanced here for about a year ago, and 3% less than we originally financed for in 2000. It’s nice to see these low rates!

Tonight, Wendy came by, and we finished the paperwork up for selling this place, and also completed the paperwork for our purchase of the new house. We take possession on December 22nd. Merry Christmas to us!

Today, we did the physical inspection of the new house. No huge surprises, but a few things that will need to be corrected by the seller before we can go forward. The formal report will come out tomorrow, and that should give us the time to get the “honey-do” list complete before Sunday (our contractual deadline).

I’m still really impressed with the place — it’s beautiful! Of course, there are things we will want to change, but it is in move-in condition, with very little for us to do to be comfortable from day one. That’s quite a relief after the move in we had here.

I think we spent almost two weeks solid of painting, stripping, cleaning, changing, and who knows what else — it was rough!

Wednesday sees us going home for Thanksgiving, with an open house for this place on Sunday. It would be great to come home from Chattanooga with a buyer already on the hook!

Well, not the same one Terrance and Phillip celebrate, but a good Boxing Day nonetheless….. Boxing stuff up, and carrying it to the Storage Banc boxes out front! 🙂

It’s amazing how much cleaner the house looks with 120 cubic feet less stuff in it… Tomorrow, the cubes will be picked up and stored.. all good.

Tomorrow, the house docket carries inspection on the new house. I’ll be taking loads of photos, so there will be a bunch of new ones on Canon Fodder.

Also, redesigns are in the works over the holiday. Watch this space!