Spring Travels in Full Swing

We have managed to seriously overschedule our spring this year. We have quite a few trips planned, and we just got back from our first one.

We went to Orlando for a week. GB had a class to go to for work along with a couple of coworkers, so I tagged along with the intention to work in the hotel while they were in class. The hotel internet connection had different plans for me, so it became a catch-as-catch-can week of work. That part of it was stressful, but somewhere along the line I've figured out how to turn off the work thoughts when I stop working. I think it's called something like "burnout". Oh well. The world shouldn't cave in on itself if I have a less than 110% productive week, and it turns out that it didn't.

While we were there, we did Universal Studios and Disney World. While I had a nice time, I think I have enough of prepackaged fun for a while. We also went to a science museum with lots of cool hands-on exhibits. I enjoyed that quite a bit, especially the phone-booth-sized category one hurricane simulation. We hit up a dinner murder mystery theatre, played pirate mini golf, and ate a lot of good food.

But the clear highlight of the trip for me was the early Tuesday morning shuttle launch that we witnessed. The launch was at 2:30am, and it was a cloudy pitch black -- no stars, no moon, no natural light at all. We were set to watch the launch from about 6 miles away. As we listened to the countdown approach zero, the light from the ignited jet fuel lit everything up like it was mid-day. It was phenomenal how fast the dark went to light, and then when the shuttle got past the cloud cover, it went right back to black again. I worked as an intern in one small portion of the space program back when I was in college, and I've always wanted to see a launch, so this was extra exciting. I did try to take pictures, but they just didn't do justice to the experience, so I'm leaving them out.

This was also our next installment in vacationing with another couple. It worked pretty well, but there's nothing like spending 24 hours a day for 9 days with people to find out what annoys you about them. But, for the most part, we all got along pretty well. Course, GB actually has to work with them, so if there is going to be any awkwardness, it'll be on him. Poor guy.

Anyway, so we made it through our first trip. More installments coming soon!