Tue Aug 9 –

The shuttle lands safely. Whee!

When my radio alarm went off at 5:00 am, they started using the Star Wars opening theme as the bumper music before the news announcement that the shuttle was about to land at Edwards Air Force base. I grabbed a few remote controls, turned on the TV, muted the sound, and watched the shuttle while listening to the radio discussion. It was so incredibly facinating to watch by infared camera, to distinguish the shuttle in an almost black sky, or to see the shiny bright fast-moving version when the nose first hit the atmosphere. It was all just so incredible.
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Thu Aug 11 –
That’s all I wrote in my drafts folder on Tuesday and now it’s the end of Thursday. Sorry about that. *grin*

Tuesday night’s band rehearsal went really well, and it was another one of those “Oh my goodness, I stood for two hours, singing and performing 100% non-stop” moments. The new music for our 3rd CD hit another new high, and our “set” for whenever we finally set up a live show is also really sounding cleaner than before. It was fantastic.

Wednesday was a mundane day filled with great projects at work, errands and laundry after work, and collapsing tired and satisfied at night.

And today I had taken the day off work to just move everything finally from the old apartment to the new. I picked up Lilya in the morning, we picked up lunch, and then we started packing and prepping. I spent about an hour in the garage, finally shifting the boxes that had sat (dust covered) all year, and getting them lined up and ready to go. She spent the time packing all the rest of the loose items in my old bedroom. Then we filled my car up and hauled lots of little things to the apartment.

I think we did two trips alone in my tiny car, and then Raphael (Rafe) was able to join us for the evening—with pickup truck! Yippee! Well okay, truck and muscular young man with lots of energy, long arms, and long legs. It was astonishing to watch him pick up incredibly heavy boxes and just easily hoist them around.

We did two loads with the small car and the truck, then stopped for Tony Roma’s (my treat, of course, in gratitude for all their hard work). We were also celebrating Lilya’s birthday from Tuesday. Since her husband is away and missed her birthday, she’s making it a little game to see how many birthday celebrations she can enjoy, to make up for missing her husband so much. Turns out we were birthday meal #4 of either 7-9 planned activities. The waitress was a ham, and did the funniest enthusiastic rendition of “Happy Birthday” when presenting the free sundae.

It only took two more trips to finish getting all the boxes from the old place, leaving me only about 3 small boxes and all my cleaning and vacuuming for tomorrow and/or Saturday morning. I just saw the two of them off to hit the road—fortunately Rafe lives only about 3 miles from Lilya’s place, so he could take her home and I could just park my car and collapse.

And catch you up on all my adventures, of course.

I am so blessed to have such amazing friends as these. Or, as Rafe says, “Yay me.”
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Recently Listened to: Gravity Willing “Requia“