Finger Lickin' Good

And the trip has begun. I'm sitting here in the Harvey Hotel, about to choke down my vitamins. Laura and Tina are pontificating on the benefits of papaya, headily debating on whether some should be taken. The flight leaves at 8:30AM, meaning that we should technically be at that airport at 6:30AM. The wake up call has been set for 4:45, which might as well be in 15 miutes. From the ongoing conversation (regarding the reasons for the need of papaya) I can tell this roommate situation is going to be an adventure in lack of privacy barriers. The ultimate joke is that this blog has already taken care of that.

Excuse me a minute. Tina thinks she broke the toilet.

Wow. She did. I am required to not disclose the identity of the culprit to the maintenance man. Oh, Mario's here.

What are the odds we'd have a meatfest for dinner??? We went to Tony Roma's and it was scrump-dili-umptious. Tina ordered shrimp on a skewer *whoa! Mario had to go get another part! This was a major demolition job! My kingdom for a match!* and reasoned that it was totally different than our meat on a bone. I think that ribs are just pre-skewered. Laura and Carson had Filet Mignon while the rest of us had RIBS. Carson pirated a rib, as you can see:


"Did I miss any more sauce?"

Well, we're having a blast. Dang. Now 4:45 is 10 minutes away.


Happy to be on vacation

One last note. I got my new camera! It's going to take some reading and probably lessons, but I can already see a difference. Carson's picture was taken with the new one and Laura's the old. Anyway, it's fun. I'd love to sit here and take you further into the room's psyche, but now it's 4:45.

Uhhh...

The French aren't just weird, they're FREAKY weird.


???

She gets a shower and a candy treat.

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time...

One of the things I'm most geekily excited about on this upcoming trip to Cozumel is that the night sky will be slightly different. The island is far enough south to see some constellations that are not ever visible from the United States. I suppose what thrills me the most is the Southern Cross (Crux). No other constellation in the sky has so many bright stars, except Orion. I guess you'd liken it to the Big Dipper in its fame. The Southern Cross is featured on several nations' flags.

Here is the region I'm interested in:


Click to enlarge

The Alpha Centauri system, which includes the star closest to us (four light years away) is also something I've never seen. This yellow star to the left in the picture is much like the Sun. It's only bright and notable because it's hundreds of times closer to us. Also of note is the Great Nebula in Carina. Hidden in this nebula is the star Eta Carinae. Eta Carina is a wildly unstable, enourmous star of at least 100 solar masses that is at its life's end. It could go supernova at any time and become brighter than anything except the moon. Lastly, in interest of "brevity," are the Coal Sack and Jewel Box. These are harder to see. The Coal Sack is a dark area to the bottom left of Crux. It's a dusty nebula that blocks the light of stars behind it, making an emptier spot in the sky. The Jewel Box is a tight cluster of stars gravitationally associated with each other. To see these last two phenomena more clearly, I'll have to use binoculars.

If I don't forget them...

Break the bubble, break it up.

Of course, I finally jumped on the bandwagon and started my own blog. Who can resist? I'm just writing this initial post so that I can see what it looks like and in turn, change the settings as anally as possible until I like what I see. The odds of a finality in that area are astronomically against.

I got a picture of Tina as she realized I'd be blogging on about whatever inanity pleases me:


"He blogged what???"

On an even more exciting note, we (Allen/Shannon/Carson/Tina/Laura/me) leave for Cozumel in three short days! Maybe after sunning on the beach, snorkeling, waverunning, eating, drinking, (but no karaoke and no dancing), I'll have time to figure this thing out...NOT! If the camera store would ever get their new shipment in, I could at least do one of my favorite things: Share the candid photo. We'll see.

*fade to black*