Bits of my day

It is interesting what can be dredged from the depths of a psyche. I was reading a book today about a character who was regaining consciousness after an unexpected and unauthorized surgery. I had … I don’t think it qualifies as a flashback, but it was certainly a very vivid memory of a post-surgical recovery that I had about 8 years ago. It was vivid enough that I just spent an hour writing down all the things I remember about it in an attempt to purge it from my head. I’m not posting it here though because Howard reads this journal (Hi honey!) and I know it was as unpleasant for him as it was for me. I don’t want to fill his head with angsty thoughts while he is away from home.

Instead I intend to ramble about how the house got cleaned. I bribed the kids with brownies. It worked too. In the afternoon Kiki & Link ran off to a friends and Patches went down for a nap. I sat down with Gleek to watch Annie. She’d never seen it before and I was pretty sure that all the singing & dancing would appeal to her. I was right, she was riveted. Or at least she was until my backyard neighbor called; both she and her husband had come down sick. Her toddler was not sick and they weren’t able to keep him out of stuff, so I got him and brought him over to play. Gleek would rather play with people than watch movies so the rest of Annie only got sporadic attention, but it was enough that she was singing and dancing through the credits.

This morning was unusual as well. Kiki spent the night in the Christa McAulliffe Space Education Center. (www.spacecamputah.org) as far as I know it is the only facility of it’s kind in america. It is located at an elementary school and runs 6 space ship simulators. (Yes that is right, 6 different space ships and each of the ships has 3 or more possible simulations it can run. New simulations are added for each ship each year. This center is an enormous undertaking.) The simulations are based on the star trek universe, but each simulation has educational purposes in teaching kids skills and information. We got to tour the facility and it was amazing. Each simulator was set up like the interior of a space ship with task stations. Each station had a computer and there was a veiwscreen at the front. One ship was wired so that the floor could rumble. The largest ship was even set up with bunk spaces and a kitchen so that they could run multi-day simulations for a crew of 10 without leaving the “ship”. The simulators are primarily available to local schools, but they also run simulations for private groups. Howard went through one once and described it in a convention report. Now that I’ve seen the center I find that I’m spinning plans in my head so that I could go on one. I’ll bet we could round up enough local schlockers to pay for a private event. hmm…

Anyway, Kiki loved it. She wants to go back. I wish we could afford to send her back as often as she’d like to go. As it is, her school class will be taking a day trip there in the spring and maybe we can save up money for her to attend one of the camps in the summer. Link, Gleek, & Patches all got to tour too. Perhaps fortunately for me, they can’t go until they are 10, so I don’t have to listen to that begging yet. They had never seen anything so cool. I just think it is wonderful the way that the visionary behind this center has a whole school district converted to the idea that LARPing can be educational.

And now I need to make kids go to bed.