Me and the shuttle
I'm sick. Spent most of yesterday cycling between feeling completely fine and having severe stomach pains, on about a five- to twenty-minute cycle. Went in to work for a couple hours, but eventually realized I ought to be home. Feeling somewhat better this morning, but still not completely better. I think it was something I ate on Monday afternoon.
Last night, Kam and I were going to watch the Branagh Love's Labour's Lost, but the DVD turned out to be broken along one radius, snapped through. Returned that to Netflix. (I'm interested in seeing it partly because I don't think I've ever seen or read the play, though I realize this may not be the most faithful adaptation ever.) Went out and rented Phantom of the Opera instead. Fun, melodramatic, over-the-top, and even had one moment (near the end) of real emotion. I linked to these way back last December, but it can't hurt to link again: a review of the movie version by Suzy McKee Charnas, and her Phantom Phragments, which are essentially fanfic.
In entirely unrelated news, today's shuttle launch was scrubbed fifteen minutes ago, according to the Live Launch Countdown Coverage page. Sadness! I gather tomorrow is the next opportunity for launch.
The launch seems to be plagued with problems; I can't tell whether that's just normal or not. The scrub was because "one of four low-level fuel cutoff sensors is not functioning properly." Earlier, fueling was delayed "due to an improperly functioning primary heater." And a cockpit window cover fell off and damaged two heat-shielding tiles. Is it just that there are so many small and potentially fragile parts that some of them are bound to run into problems? I haven't followed a luanch closely in a long time, so I'm not sure whether this is par for the course.
There are also concerns about weather. We'll see. I hope that they manage to launch tomorrow—but I hope even more that they'll do so safely.
Edited to add: I've been trying to articulate exactly what the connection is between me and the shuttle that made it make sense to put us both in this entry. And finally the answer occurred to me: we're both under the weather!