Nico's Journal

The Lonely Miaow (the cat foster shelter organisation I got Ashley and Sebastian from) had a charity "garage" sale today. I didn't get that great a haul: just a set of nice porcelain mugs I'm going to give to my sister, painted wooden Thai cat and fish that sort of go with the ones I already have, a small tray, and two Mexican ceramic cats. That takes care of two days in August art month anyway. They were only charging $1 or $2 an item so I gave them more than that; they deserve it. What they mostly had was clothes, all piled on long tables, but they were too difficult to look at all jumbled up like that. I bet there was some great vintage stuff mixed up in there too.

Anyway, have some beautiful Soviet space posters, link care of toft. :-D There's an English translation under each.

A scary weather bomb came through this afternoon (sudden and relatively brief rain, gale-force winds, and really close thunder) and the power flickered, killing my already sick PC. The thing now refuses to boot.

I'm on Greg's one but lacking bookmarks, Photoshop (though I suppose I can install GIMP on here) and graphics tablet which means no photos of cats or drawings. I really hope I can get everything back. At least I backed up the story I'm working on by sending it to Gmail.

In other news, Sebastian had to go to the vet today for bad diarrhea and, it turned out, an inflamed gut. He got an injection, some probiotic powder and some pills (oh joy, I'll now find out how easy he is to pill) and some special sensitive stomach food till he comes right which should take about five days. Apart from that however he's fine: playful and happy and hungry.

And while I'm here, have a very cool vid: NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman, aboard the International Space Station*, and musician Ian Anderson, founder of the rock band Jethro Tull, joined together for the first space-Earth duet. :-)

* Speaking of the International Space Station, they're on LibraryThing where I friended them--and they friended me back! I thought the "You are now friends with the International Space Station" email was too good to delete.

Last night at Apollo 13 - Mission Control was absolutely wonderful--better even than I'd hoped!

First we went to the Middle East Cafe which has been there for ever (well, since 1980 according to their sign) and still makes the best falafels in town. It's a tiny place you have to go to early to get a table, but it's worth it: absolutely delicious falafel and salads. And lots of camels; the owner has been collecting them since the place opened, and they had carved ones, plushies, crockery, puzzles, two large Rinconada ones, jade ones, huge ones on their on shelves, tiny ones--and a biplane. Of course: it was a Sopwith Camel. :-D We even had camel-shaped biscuits with our coffee.

( Apollo 13 - Mission Control )

Greg braved the big storage cupboard under the eaves to find the family heirloom moon landing newspapers I mentioned to some people. I thought it was just the NZ Herald from 21 July going by the size--newspapers being so thick now with all the specialist sections--but it turned be five papers: the Herald and the now defunct Auckland Star for 21 and 22 July (landing and lift-off), and the Star for their return on the 25th.

Random things which caught my eye:

• 20 South Africans flew to London to watch the landing on TV there because SA didn't have TV back then.
  
• A Scottish woman who gave birth just after the launch called her son Neil Edwin Michael.
  
• A Tanzanian politician tried to reserve a seat on the first commercial flight to the moon with PanAm and was told that fares were not yet resolved. I wish.
  
• A photo of Andrew Aldrin (11) looking at reports of his father on the moon: "That's Dad!"
  
• A quote from Buzz's praying wife (who didn't rate a name of her own in those days, it seems): "God can rest now."

• Two old traditional rugs from Bangladesh which I put away when Claudia and Tessa pulled the tassels off one; it needs proper re-edging.
  
• All my artwork from Form 3 (Year 9) which had a lot of illos I did for the novel I wrote that year (three whole exercise books), set in a boarding school strangely like mine. I see that the new teacher looks just like my science teacher, complete with perm, double chin, knitted jersey, and tartan skirt. I was not subtle.
  
• Old newspaper pages giving national exam results including mine (the highest School Certificate mark for my school up till then). Ah, how far I've fallen. :-(

To celebrate the anniversary of the moon landing, we've been watching a lot of Apollo-related TV. Apollo 13 was on here a couple of nights ago, but as we have it on TV, we decided we'd watch an ad-free version. Instead we saw two episodes of From the Earth to the Moon: Spider (one of my favourites, about the engineers who designed and built the lunar module) and of course Mare Tranquilitatis. If you've never seen this series and are interested in the subject, I recommend it highly; it's out on DVD. Each ep is directed by a different person in a different style, and every one is excellent.

We've also been watching an ITN series covering each day of the mission in 10-minute segments a day as if it's all happening right now, and last night we saw a Welsh program about several Apollo wives who have an annual reunion. They were fascinating, and though most were divorced or widowed, all spoke with wonder of the experience of watching a lift-off: how the ground shook, how they shook, how even the fish leapt in the lake, disturbed by the deep vibrations and sound. The last lift-off was at night, and it lit the sky like the sun. You could see the awe in their faces as they remembered. There was some bitterness too, that they were left in Houston while the astronauts lived it up with groupies in Florida, that the widow of Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1 fire) got just $2000 on his death and little else, and that they were all expected to be perfect wives, constantly on show, well groomed etc on the service pilot salaries of their husbands. For one formal ball, they all went to a Houston thrift shop and bought second-hand gowns. One of them who had a particularly nasty divorce right after her child died of leukaemia wrote a song as therapy and played it on the ukulele: "You can be macho, you can be spotless, you can be wonderful--on your own." They called the press the "death watch" and used to use the standard phrase "I'm thrilled, proud, and happy" when asked how they felt about a mission. There was even a self-mocking picture of three of them, back then in the 60s, holding up signs: THRILLED, PROUD, HAPPY. :-)

Oh yes, and we saw a fun James May doco in which he did some of the Right Stuff tests, went up in a U2 to the edge of space (a long-time ambition) and met two astronauts: Al Bean (a very good artist who tries to convey the feeling of being on the moon in his pictures) and scientist Harrison Schmitt (astrogeology). Shouldn't that be lunageology? :-)