Where oh where did my weekend go?

Friday night I watched 50 First Dates and had pizza. I have to say the end of that movie disturbed me. The whole premise is that this girl (played by Drew Barrymore) has no long term memory, every morning, she wakes up and thinks its the day after she had a big accident. Anyway, Adam Sandler falls in love with her anyway. Well, I kept expecting for her to miraculously recover from her memory loss. (SPOILER HERE, as if you are actually going to see this movie if you haven't already) Instead, she stays the way she is, and still has a kid with him. Bizarre. Can you imagine waking up with a 4 year old and not remembering the previous 4 years? I don't think so!

That was longer than I planned on talking about that.

Saturday I slept in, then observed the Soyuz landing. It was interesting. That's really all there is to say about that.

Yesterday I went to 6 Flags with some free tickets Jen got for us. It was fun. I love roller coasters even though they scare the living sh*t out of me! So, we rode the roller coasters all day - stopping only for my favorite junk foods, slushees, french fries, roasted corn, and FUNNEL CAKE. Mmmm Funnel Cake...

Also this weekend, I caught up on reading the discussion groups of my favorite space blogs. Specifically the writings on the upcoming presidential elections. There's the ever famous NASA Watch. Then Space Politics and Kerry Space. Its kind of entertaining. You see, for most space junkies, there's no question, because they lean pretty conservative anyway, and President Bush has a clear vision (if not the funding) for the future of space exploration. But, man, are the Sen Kerry supporters up in a tizzy. They can't help but wish NASA would get off their hands and go to the moon and Mars. But they don't like Pres Bush - and they are looking to discredit him even in the space arena. So there were some pretty vicious discussions and accusations. I like seeing space people all worked up about something (usually things get so luke warm and intellectual when you talk about space policy).

What I wish I saw on those blogs is a discussion, from both sides, about how to get the public more engaged in setting the agenda for the space program. Make it a voting issue. Make it something the public wants to know about how their candidate stands. Then, the debate would get interesting. The only space policy debates between the parties are going on between low-level advisors that probably don't even have the ear of the candidates.

The bottom line is that the general voting public doesn't really care about either party's plans for the space program, so neither of them really have a plan. I mean, Pres Bush announced a "vision", but he hasn't mentioned it since, pretty much not even in a single speech, certainly not in the State of the Union that followed his vision announcement, not even in a campaign rally last week while sitting NEXT TO Buzz Aldrin. Though, one speach is all it took for NASA to be off and running - even without the funding to support it. Meanwhile, Sen Kerry is equally wishy washy about space, saying he thinks the moon and Mars is cool and all, but he doesn't know how much it should be a priority.

Anyway, enough political ranting. Maybe in a few years I'll make a second career of this. But not now. Off to real engineering now.