As soon as I finish listening to this week's episode of The Talk Show I'll devote my undivided attention to this post...
...Ah, there we go.
In the interest of attempting to continue writing, I present to you another post written largely for the sake of momentum. But I do actually have a real topic for at least part of this entry: The Space Shuttle program. The first space shuttle launch (for orbital testing) was in 1981, the year I was born. Today, some 30 years later, sees the end of the space shuttle program with the final launch of the Atlantis orbiter. I watched the launch live via UStream, and I couldn't hold back a little wave of nostalgia seeing the orbiter lift off, solid rocket boosters and fuel tank under-belly.
But that's only part of my day. The better part of it, at least what I anticipate being quite good, is that I get to hang out with one of my best friends for the first time in what seems like ages. Just dude time. Our wives will be hanging out elsewhere, and we can head out, grab some brew, and just chat. I normally like to go out taking pictures with Dave (he's a great photo-excursion buddy, too), but it'll be nice to just chat, joke, and so on with the dude who was one of my two best men in my wedding. These things get more difficult when graduate school (both of us) and a child (his) start to disrupt your schedule. And as much as I crave the sort of sitcom-style buddy situation where a friend just stops by whenever he feels like it, the real world seldom affords such a situation. So that leaves me to relish these times where I actually get to develop that friendly bond, left unexercised these past six months.
As for the remainder of my weekend, I anticipate a mixture of immense fun and equally immense boredom as I spend much of Saturday and Sunday in my first two of three classes about large format photography, and much of Satureve doing homework.
My primary reason for reviewing the details of my weekend is much more about forestalling the inevitable: my first week on the on-call rotation at work. A week that is sure to fill me with frustration, and empty me of sleep. We'll see...