That was Jane Austen, in a letter to her sister of 18th September 1796. I suppose, though, that to Miss Jane "dreadful Hot" was not what we've been having the past month or so -- I am reminded of that headline of some years ago, "England Swelters in 75-Degree Heat". Hah! I used to dream of 75-degree heat!
So this is my knitting lately, then,
Pathetic, really. This one is a little better,
but not much. A cowl-scarf thing, for an easy Christmas present, and a doll cardy. Not yet, anyway.
Today was a day off of school, so we all watched the tree service as they swarmed over our giant stone pine in the back yard.
There are in fact three men in the tree in this picture, some thirty feet up (9 meters?) into a fifty-some-foot tree. It was fascinating to watch them, actually -- they couldn't get any machinery to the back yard, so they climbed the old-fashioned way, with ropes.
About half-way through the morning, we thought, "let's go see the shuttle!" David had heard that it was going to fly over Disneyland, so we thought we'd get a good view from the top of the big parking structure. We were not the only ones with this idea.
The whole top of the structure was like this. But although there were a lot of people, it is very big, and away from the main escalators, it was not such a crowd. The nice thing was that everyone was excited to be there, so those with radio or internet access were giving updates to those without. Around 11:20, we got the news that it was over the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, so those of us who were sitting on the shadier stairwells came up, and not long afterwards the hum of the crowd could be heard. "There it is! I see it!"
The 747 flew literally over our heads. There were two military escorts -- you can see one not quite in a direct line from the wing on the left, and the other escort about the same distance again, towards the bottom left.
David didn't take any photos of it directly overhead -- he said later, "well, there was a point at which I thought I'd rather be watching it with my own eyes."
It was rather amazing, really. You think you're getting all blasé about stuff like this, but then it's right over your head, and you think, "wow." It's been in space. Amazing.
