This week, at the St. James Cathedral, for the first time since March 10, 2020, when a scientist walked into the bar I was at and started talking about thermodynamics, I attended an indoor event at a site that wasn’t a vaccinated friend’s residence.
Clearly, the Chen family had kept practicing during The Great Lull. Even world-class musicians might lose their edge spending 16 months just sitting around eating bonbons and catching up on old episodes of My Mother the Car.
Attendance was limited to 100, in a space that can accommodate, I am told, over 400. And masks were required, though a very few people decided that the rules didn’t apply to them, and pulled theirs down when no one, except me, was looking. Apparently these attendees were special, though they looked much like anyone you might encounter on the street, just as do the aliens among us who are posing as humans and small puppies.
I must admit that wearing a mask throughout the concert did cause me to grow somewhat sleepy as I breathed in my own fumes. Perhaps I should have brought a mask from home, rather than use one I found in the garbage receptacle on the corner.
Now that that’s all done, I have a confession to make. I ate the last cookie. No, wait, forget I said that. I meant to say that I’ve been stringing everyone along. Not in the sense of string theory, or string cheese, but rather in that I finished building the shuttle a week ago, but didn’t want to take time away from the process to write about it.
It’s like trying to get flypaper (no pun originally intended) off your hands. If you display the shuttle with the bay doors open, and the Hubble telescope in launch position, you might notice any misaligned stickers. If Hal closes the bay door, Dave might be in trouble, but everything else looks fine.
My biggest obstacle now appears to be my piano playing. Huh? Well, you see, my piano teacher privately censures me if I don’t keep my fingernails sufficiently trimmed, as if that will overcome a lack of talent. Hers are down to the knuckle.
The instructions start with the Hubble Space Telescope, which can be displayed separately or carried by the shuttle as it was when launched into orbit by Discovery on April 24, 1990. Construction is a piece of cake, but a small affront to my sensibilities. The telescope employs something other than the classic bricks to represent the solar arrays that power it. This feels like a cheat, but not mine, so I forgive the Danes their transgression, and move on, right after a nap.
The bag containing the box stared at me with its big red eyes, like a puppy that had been up all night cramming for its final obedience test. That bag had already caused me problems, trying to carry it home on a windy day. A big gust had almost torn it from my hands and sent it careening down the sidewalk.