Home again...

There's an old joke that (with a couple of minor modifications) goes something like this: A traveler at a ticket counter in Denver asks the ticketing agent, "I'm flying to Durango today. Could you arrange for my luggage to go to Chicago?" Shocked, the agent replies, "I'm sorry, but that's not possible." Unflustered, the passenger points out, "Well, you did that for me the last time I traveled with your airline, and I didn't even ask you to do it!"

The thing is, though, in my case, it's not really a joke. One of my bags (happily, the one with dirty laundry) was routed to Chicago after getting my ticketing straightened out in Denver.

Apropos of getting my ticketing back on track, after first being told that I could not have a confirmed seat without individually confirming all three legs of my ticket, and then being told that all three legs were good and that I had a ticket, the agent at the check-in counter at Sheremetevo told me that, for some reason, the last leg was still dated somewhere in mid-August. When I got to Denver, it turned out that not only was I still scheduled on that mid-August flight, but I also had a reservation yesterday on a Denver-to-Durango flight that left a couple of hours before my flight from Frankfurt actually arrived. Go figure.

The official reason for the baggage mixup was pretty lame: Apparent dyslexia on someone's part (ORD, the airline designation for O'Hare, being the reverse of Durango's DRO). So much for DIA's vaunted "fully automated baggage-handling system." Hopefully, my bag'll get here before I climb on the plane for the "reunion tour" of the launch campaign. In the end, catching the 5:25 pm Mesa flight out of Denver worked very well (better, at least, than having to wait until the 8:30 pm flight).

I went to sleep around 9 pm last night; got up around 5:30 am. So far today, I've sent off two new (small) translations, and am working on invoicing the launch campaign and those small translations.

More later, as the mood strikes me.

Cheers...

Back in space...

Discovery took off this morning, marking the formal Return to Flight of the Shuttle, the first since the loss of Columbia. I tuned in to the NASA channel this afternoon to see if there was anything going on, and mostly there wasn't, except for a press conference where the questioners tried very hard to squeeze some news out of some preliminary indications of a bird strike on the Shuttle before the stack cleared the tower and some possible damage to Discovery's tiles as seen by a camera on the external tank. The preliminary indications will not affect the procedures worked out for this flight to enhance safety, if my experience working with NASA is any indication, so the preliminary data - Phil Engelauf described it well during the press conference, calling it "serendipitous" - is not going to drive or affect the Shuttle tile checkout procedures.

Life is slowly getting back to normal, though if everything works according to plan on the satellite fabricator's side, I'll be back on a plane in just a week. Apropos of travel, and not terribly surprisingly, my luggage did not arrive today.

I made a batch of kvas, using some concentrate that I picked up while shopping with Alla the other day. I'm not sure I made it correctly, but time will tell. It's fermenting right now, and it occurs to me that, if everything does go according to plan, travel-wise, I'll probably not have time to drink all 5 liters before getting on the plane, unless someone else around here develops a taste for the stuff.

Cheers...