The Space Shuttle I Knew

*If I hadn't been too lazy to drag my laptop to a Latvian coffee shop with a decent Internet connection, this would have been published on July 21st. But I was lazy.

When I was in elementary school, the space shuttle was doing piggy-back test flights. During one of these low-altitude test flights, the shuttle flew over my school in Deer Park, Texas, located not too far from the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake.

I was outside when the shuttle flew overhead. In the only incidence of mass hysteria I’ve ever been part of, all of the kids who were playing outside began to run after the shuttle. The teachers, with their longer, grown-up legs, sprinted to cut off the mass of children before they dispersed into the long grass of the field next door, explaining that we could never catch it. When they admonished us, they were panting from a combination of spring heat and exertion.

Not long afterward, I remember holding a shuttle radio antenna that my dad had made for NASA. (That’s the triangle piece on the very front of the shuttle, part of the black nosecone of the vehicle. It fit in the palm of my hand.)

The first time the space shuttle launched (in the early 80's), I was in my elementary school cafeteria. There was an entire school of children crowded around one television set, and, if you squinted at the tiny image all the way across the room, you could see the white shape move across the blue sky on the television screen. For those of us in the back who couldn’t really see the TV, the teachers announced when the shuttle had launched.

Stepping through a NYC winter

Stepping through a NYC winter
Originally uploaded by annainaustin

I just found this photo while I was cleaning up my photo collection. It makes me happy.

A Video with Duke and Chuckie

 Last time they were here, my Latvian houseguests made a video about Duke and Charlie.

We lost Chuckie this past August (at the age of 10), and we lost Duke this week (he was 13). But since I never take video myself, I'm so glad my houseguests made this, so I can see both of them together and happy.

FOOD: New England Seafood

I spent last week seeing the sights of New England with my family. Being that it's my family, it included a lot of stops for noshing.  (And a few stops for shopping.)

Pictured on the left is a really awesome tie that I totally wish I'd bought at Building 19--(which is a New England cross between Goodwill, the dollar store and a scratch and dent joint--but the glory that is Building 19 deserves a blog post of its own!)

Here are a few of the places where we went last week on our quest to eat our way through New England:


Red's Eats

While I'm partial to the lobster roll joint on the bridge in Kennebunkport I realize that there are other places you can eat this delicacy.

Red's Eats is one of the other top places where you can get lobster on a bun, with nothing but mayo and butter to set it off. I love a lobster shack far more than a fancy lobster place!

It looked like Red's Eats might have been included in the book,  "1000 Places To See Before You Die."






One of the things you may not know about my home life is that my sweetie is addicted to fried clams. And when I say addiction, I mean addiction. On one trip up north, we had to pay a visit to a real ER. The diagnoses: an overdose of fried clams. Honest.

As a result of this addiction, we often pilgrimage to what is often considered to be the best friend clam in the world: The Clam Box. (It's quality over volume these days for my sweetie.)



But of course, these weren't the only seafood places we ate. Here are some other seafood pic's after the jump:

FILM: Madness at the Movies

Recently, I've watched both the French film Seraphine (2008) and the most recent cinematic version of Jane Eyre.

The representation of madness in these films couldn't be much different.

In Seraphine--based on the real life of primitive artist "Séraphine de Senlis"--we watch as the painter slowly goes madder and madder, and is later committed to the asylum where she dies. At no point is her madness is she attractive. She is a peasant who paints her way out of poverty, only to leave the world of sense and reality.

In the current Jane Eyre, the madwoman in the attic is crazily beautiful, passionately attached to her husband, vile to Jane, and beautiful in an eerie and otherworldly way. She's a heiress fallen on bad times.

What does the difference between these two versions of madness mean? Heck if I know.

Sometimes I just observe, without having an answer for everything.