Sunday, December 10, 2006

Picture Post, Sunday December 10, 2006

First of all, there was an awesome night launch of Space Shuttle Discovery last night.

I woke up yesterday morning at 4am, nauseous and my back hurting really bad. I moved to my recliner, but things got worse and not better. I ended up with fever and vomiting and other intestinal issues all day Saturday.

So last night when the shuttle was about to go up. I crawled out of bed, waited until the countdown got to 1 minute left, and went out into the front yard with Lovely Wife to watch it go up.

Even 40 miles away like we are, it totally lit up the sky. It is almost impossible to believe that something man made can light up an area of a 50 mile radius.

I watched until it winked out of sight behind a few thin, high clouds and came back inside. At that point, the shuttle was 67 miles up, and over 300 miles from the Atlantic Coast of Florida.

About todays photos, I haven't been this sick in a long time, so I'm just going to post some old Masters's family slides that I've been scanning and color correcting. Sorry, but that's all I have the energy to do this morning.

This is Younger Brother in 1975, just after we had moved to Monroe, Louisiana from Vidalia, Louisiana.


This is my Dad and Younger Brother coming out of an old country church at Silver Dollar City in southern Missouri. The whole back side of the church is glass and you can look out over the Ozark Mountains. This was 1973 or 1974, I think.


These next two are Big Sis and Big Brother playing with a wagon, around 1961.


This one is so cute, Big Brother leaning his head on Big Sis's shoulder.


These last two are of Me, Big Brother, and Big Sis in 1966, on a trip to Florida. These were both at Cypress Gardens, I think.


Check out my knock-knees, or knot-knees, however you say that, in those last two photos.

5 comments:

Barb said...

Sorry you're not feeling well.

When I lived in Melbourne we had a good view of the launches. Not shuttles though.. those wouldn't be around for a while. It was amazing to see.

Is Cypress Gardens still around?

JAM said...

Thanks, I'm feeling a bit better now. Yesterday was such a nightmare, that today, although I'm not going to run any races, is a different world.

Lovely Wife and I went out Thursday night, to Satellite Beach to watch the Shuttle from beside the ocean, but that one was scrubbed due to cloud cover. I felt too bad yesterday to try again, and just watched from the front yard.

I think Cypress Gardens is still alive, but I do know that five or so years ago, they had closed temporarily due to lack of money. I think that either someone bought it and re-opened, or they just put some money into it so it could run. After Disney's arrival, many of the old school Florida attractions have suffered. I'm pretty sure it's still open though, I think it would have been big news for it to close. Marineland in Daytona closed, but then was converted to one of those high dollar thingies where you can go and play with dolphins, one on one. Weekie Wachee is still going too, so it's kinda cool that some of the old-school attractions have found ways to stay afloat.

Anonymous said...

I love to see those old pictures! Keep them coming! My haircut right now has my bangs as short as the ones in the pics! He went a bit far in my haircut last week. I turned into my mother before my eyes in a split second! Waaa Waaaa

Emily said...

Dude, those are awesome statues. You'd have a ball in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. It's like, "Dinosaur Capital of the World" because it's in the badlands and so many fossils are found around there.

Anyways, the town is so awesome, because there are honestly, dinosaur statues everywhere! Including 'The world's largest dinosar' which is a huge t-rex statue. You can actually go inside it and climb up stairs and look out of its mouth.

Actually, this has not too much to do with your post, but seeing the dinosaur statue just reminded me of that.

Check it!

JAM said...

Marsha, I'm trying to get all of the Masters's slides done, so I can bring a CD with them all when we come after Christmas. It's slow going, so many of them need lots of work.

Emily, that looks like a cool place to visit. That's just the kind of thing I'll pull off the road to do. Plus, how can you resist driving through a place called Drumheller?