Thursday, April 14
Brent is in Colorado Springs for a Space symposium, so I take the day off, rent a car, and drive down to this quasi-famous upscale hotel complex at the south end of town.
I stop at the Garden of the Gods along the way and take badly exposed pictures of some rocks.
The last time I was at this hotel, I was helping some florist set up for an overpriced wedding for like ten bucks an hour. This time when I get there, dudes in suits and uniforms are milling around. Northrup Grumman seems to be running a shuttle bus with a big printed wrap on it that says "Providing Affordable, Integrated Space, Air, Surface, and Cyber Solutions" in huge letters.
I feel kind of out of place in my knit cap with the polar bears on it, but then we leave to go get Chinese and the feeling recedes. At one point, the waiter has seen Brent's NASA shirt and tells me that he (the waiter) has a satellite. I don't really register this, in large part because because I have not mentally filed him as a guy who might plausibly have a satellite. I feel kind of bad about this. Lately I've been meeting people who're putting things in space and it's like oh, yeah, of course that's something people do. Go waiter guy at the Chinese place in Colorado Springs. If you're reading this I apologize for not properly engaging the conversation, and for the record, I'd like to say the service was pretty good and I enjoyed my sesame chicken.