jimsjournal
| Summer Solstice -- 06/21/04 |
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The first commercial spaceflight took place this morning. Mike Melvill flew Scaled Composites' rocket SpaceShipOne to 100 kilometers above the Earth (the altitude defined as passing into space) and became the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings. Adam, my eldest, was just short of being ten months old when Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. Samuel, Adam's son, is just short of being eleven months old as Melvill sets this achievement. At long last, private initiative is going into space; we can only hope that the dead hand of government bureacracy does not block these private ventures. It's certainly a wonderful way to mark the Summer Solstice! Jeremy drove the truck to an auto salvage facility (i.e., junk yard) this afternoon. I had called around; the interest was quite undewhelming. I didn't even bother to check the possibility of a charitable donation. They just aren't interested in old vehicles. Last year, when I donated our old Honda, I had to try three different donation sites before I found one willing to accept it. If that was the way they felt about a '92 Honda in 2003, you can imagine how uninterested they would be today in an '88 Mazda truck. So, no tax deductin, but at least I didn't have to pay them to accept it. Then we went to pay for his car and get all of the needed paper work to record the change in ownership tomorrow and pick up a set of license plates from the motor vehicle registry. So, tomorrow we'll take care of paying Rhode Island the sales tax on the purchase and the registration fees, etc. -- and then Jeremy can go back up to Warwick and pick up his car. It's really a rather nice 1995 Honda Civic. I've been meaning to add a link on my index page to Smart & Sassy -- and finally got around to it tonight -- and figured I'd reproduce that here and add one of their larger linking-images just for fun. If you ever find yourself reading any of the popular advice columns in your daily newspaper or on the Web, you understand the kind of thing these three women are doing, but they do it with wit and humor and a bit of a bite. Try them, you just might really enjoy their page.
And, while I'm putting in links, let me add two more...
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