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Cute Little Bunnies & More

I haven’t gotten around to uploading and posting pics of my vacation … yet. I will get to it eventually. I promise. In the meantime, until that actually happens, I wanted to share another vacation-related pic.

During the whole Michigan road trip extravaganza, one of the stops we made was in Holland, MI. There was a little fair trade store there called The Bridge that had the cutest stuff. As soon as I saw this little set of whitewashed terra cotta bunnies, I knew I had to have them. Aren’t they just adorable?!!

They are made in Bangladesh and are distributed by Ten Thousand Villages. They came in a little jute bag which I plan to put to use in the future in an exchange or as perhaps a little gift bag. I know it’s difficult to tell what size they are from the photo, so I took another photo which included a US quarter for scale. You can see that photo here if you are interested.

If any of the other bunny lovers out there are interested, the set is available via the TTV website. Here is the direct link to the bunny set.

I also picked up this Inspirational Paperweight they had in the store. These are made in India and are also distributed by Ten Thousand Villages. I got the word Strength as a reminder to myself that I AM a strong woman and can do anything to which I set my mind.

They sold them individually at the store, but they are available as a set via the TTV website at this direct link. The set includes stones with the following six words: joy, strength, hope, wisdom, love and peace.

In stitching news, I do have a finish but can’t share the photo yet. It’s for the summer round of the Fair & Square exchange. I still need to stitch the second square with my name before I can mail it off to April. Once that’s done and she receives it, I’ll post a pic.

Lastly, I’m doing pretty well getting myself back on track at Weight Watchers following my vacation. I went several weeks without going to a meeting and it definitely showed when I got back home. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and got myself back on track though. At my weigh in on Sunday, I was down 4 pounds.

Lastly, as I know many of you are aware based on the emails I’ve received, I’m still having issues with my online photo albums. I did manage to get about 90+% of the photos restored, but there is still clearly some sort of corruption going on with the database. Rather than continuing to try and troubleshoot the problem, I decided this is definitely the time to take advantage of moving everything over to my thedailymel.com domain as I’d been planning to do anyway. It’s definitely going to take some time, so the old albums won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. From this point forward though, all the photos I upload in the future will be going into the new albums. Here is the link for that:

http://www.thedailymel.com/pics

Oh, and this would be the perfect time to remind others to do as I say and not as I do. Back up your files … OFTEN! My last backup of my photo albums was late February of this year. Accordingly, all of the photos I had uploaded since that time had to be recreated. Please don’t make my same mistake. kthx!

I guess that’s it for now. Until next time …

21 July 2009

Misc., Stitching, Travel

3 comments

bunnies, Cross Stitch, Exchanges, Fair & Square, Geeky, knick knacks, Michigan, vacation, weigh in results, Weight Watchers

One Small Step

To those of you who know me well, you are likely already aware of that fact that I am someone who not only works in the aerospace industry, but that I am an absolute space geek. Accordingly, this blog post probably won’t surprise you. For those of you who weren’t aware, please pardon my indulgence while I take a day to blog about something space-related.

Historically speaking, today was a major milestone in space exploration. At 10:56pm EDT on July 20, 1969, man first set foot on the moon. Accordingly, I just wanted to send out my well wishes to Apollo 11 Mission Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., and the entire ground crew at the Mission Control Center on this 40th anniversary. Thanks for all the risks you took for the accomplishment of that really big “one small step”.

I wanted to share a couple of photos as well. The first is a photo of the Apollo 11 crew. The second is a digitally restored photo of the “small step” which is today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA.

From left to right: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the landing, NASA has also released digitally restored HD videos from the Apollo 11 mission. If you are interested in seeing them, here is the link.

In addition to the amazing achievement of safely landing a man on the moon, the Apollo 11 lunar landing was also a technological triumph in another way. Television was still somewhat new as a common household item in the 1960′s, yet it is estimated that approximately 600 million people (one fifth of the world’s population at that time) watched the live video transmissions of the lunar landing. To date, it is still the most watched space event ever televised according to the folks at Guinness World Records.

I have very vivid memories, even though I was just a very small child, of sitting in our living room watching the moon landing. Like myself, my father and two of my uncles also worked in the aerospace industry. Pretty much all space launches were a big deal around our house, but I was always particularly enthralled with the Apollo missions. Forget all the Sci-Fi movies & television shows, I was amazed by the real men who walked on the moon! All through my childhood, my dream was to one day work for NASA, preferably in the Mission Control Center.

Even though I don’t work for NASA, I actually am working in the industry that has captivated & enchanted me for so many years. Ok, so I’m admittedly working as an IT weenie and not as an astronautical engineer as I’d hoped, but at least I’m still in the industry that I love so much. One of my greatest professional thrills came several years ago when my employer sent me down to Houston to work for a couple of weeks at Johnson Space Center. The first couple of days were especially surreal as I was basically living out my childhood dream, even if it was for such a short time.

Ok, enough space geekiness and trips down memory lane for one day. Until next time …

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”