I gotta make this quick. It's 20 to 2:00 and I want to go to bed. I'm still up and at work because I came in to write an article, got distracted by some games of Magic and only now just finished the article and sent it off. Ah, well, the games were fun and the article wasn't difficult.

Friday I went out with some friends from work to a bar in Ballard called "The Old Pequiliar". It was, um, well it had a good band. (I didn't notice their name.) The bar itself reminded me, in a couple ways, of a frat house. Even so, it was okay. The roommate of one of my co-workers brought some friends from work, one of whom thought I was pretty cute apparently, so we talked a bit and even traded numbers. She seems nice, but I don't know too much about her yet. We'll see.

Saturday I got a call early in the morning from Scott (sorry, I didn't hear it ring) and Seth. Both of whom called to tell me about the Columbia breaking up. Seth spent most of the day blogging like a madman and did an excellent job of culling a lot of good information. If you want to learn more about what happened you'll definitely find something there. (Look down the page a bit, he's resumed some "normal" blogging since yesterday.)

If you read any of Seth's blog you'll notice that it really affected him. He's a big fan of space exploration and this touched him pretty deeply, I think. For me it didn't so much. I knew it was a horrible thing to have happened, but I didn't have an emotional response to it. Until. Until I started to do some reading on various sites (via Seth's blog). It's amazing to see the amount of information out there about the Columbia already. From satellite pictures, to radar shots, to news stories in India, to international outpouring of condolences, to Presidential speeches, to eBay auctions, to national news stories, to commentaries by public figures, to aerial photos, to local newspapers, to websites of people in Nacogdoches with stories and pictures of actual debris, to artifacts of the event including wreckage and the story of a drawing made by a boy who survived the Holocaust, to condolences from friends of the astronauts, to statements from familes, to a recounting of how (at least) one of the astronauts had reached a lifelong dream to get into space...right before she died. And every step gets you closer and closer to the astronauts and their lives. It was amazing to take all those steps, from the event itself, down to the people it affected most. It got to me, but mostly it allowed me to empathize with everyone directly involved. It's...unfair that this happened, but these people knew the risks, beleived in what they were doing, and had worked their whole lives to get there. It sounds silly, but I'm really proud of them and I know they'd want us to continue. They didn't dedicate their lives to this for fame or money or for the hell of it, they really beleived and they worked like hell to get there. For us to give up on their dreams would be irresponsible, unintelligent, weak, and cowardly. We take what we can from them. We learn. We improve. We go on.

I've gone on too long (mostly because I want to go to sleep), but I wanted to say something about that. Today things were back to normal. I went to the gym and then hooked up with Heather to go to the Experience Music Project. Wow! Very, very cool. I really liked it and I'll definitely go back. There's a lot of stuff to check out there and I want to spend some time in the instrument room. It'll be fun!

Going now. I should be rested for my first meeting with the trainer tomorrow evening. 'Night.