Sabby Ann

Well, vacation planning is finally coming together. NASA delayed the shuttle launch, pushing back the target launch date by almost a week, to 10:19 PM on Tuesday October 14. I guess it’s a good thing we decided not to buy airfare!

According to Google, it’s about 1200 miles and 18 hours of driving, each way, from Novi to Orlando. We will probably leave either Friday evening or Saturday morning, and spend the weekend winding our way down to Florida. We’ll definitely take the camera gear with us, and we’ll likely make a few stops along the way… though I’m not sure if we’ll stick with local/scenic stops, or if we’ll hit up any of the big tourist attractions (cave tours, museums, the Nashville scene, etc.).

At any rate, we’ll have at least four full days in the Orlando/Cape Canaveral area… which gives us a day or two to visit the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape, and another two full days at Universal Studios. I’ve been to Universal a few times now, and I loved all the behind-the-scenes movie stuff. I’ve never been to Universal’s Islands of Adventure, but I like roller coasters so I’m sure it’ll be fun. Oh yeah, we’ll also be able go to to Univeral’s Wet N’ Wild waterpark, … if I can convince Eric to get into his swim shorts!

Eric’s cousin is getting married in Atlanta, on Saturday Oct 18th. Since I’m limited on time off, and because we’re spending a lot of money on house renovations, we figured we wouldn’t be able to attend. But with the delay of the shuttle launch, it now turns out that we’d be driving back to Michigan that weekend. Atlanta is a 6-7 hour drive from Orlando (and unfortunately, still 11+ hours from home!), so the timing works out perfectly for us to attend the wedding and still be able to get home for work on Monday.

I mentioned the possibility to Eric, and he indicated that he’d like to attend… so I called Eric’s mom to find out if we could crash in their hotel room (and of course she said yes). Hooray for parents!

I’m excited for this vacation, it’s been quite awhile since we’ve been able to get away for an extended period of time… especially with just the two of us! A leisurely road trip down, a couple days of space geekiness, a few days of theme/water parks, and the chance to spend some time with out-of-state relatives. Definitely fun.

Recently I came across gDiapers, a company that makes environmentally-friendly disposable diapers. The make diapers that are plastic-free, and are supposedly safe to flush in the toilet. They can also be thrown away or composted, since they break down in 90-150 days… compared to several hundred years with a conventional disposable diaper.

gDiapers has a video showing how “easy” it is to flush the diaper. You have to tear the flushable from top to bottom, pull it open, drop the absorbent liner into the toilet, stir it with the “swishstick”, drop in the outer liner, and flush. They even claim that the National Sanitation Foundation (I never knew it existed!) performed a rigorous independent flush test on these diapers!

If I were a parent trying to decide between the convenience of disposables or the eco-friendly (or cost-savings) of cloth, I think their video would dissuade me from trying these out. While I’m drawn to something that breaks down so quickly, it seems like these take just as much effort as cloth does… but at a significantly higher cost!

This week’s TechAlum newsletter features yet another photo out of the MTU archives… Eric & I ‘pretending’ to read some blue prints at the CILIT, while it was under construction a few years ago.

And yes, I know I’m wearing my hard hat incorrectly. They just don’t work well with my usual hairstyles…. I either have to smush my ponytail/barrette into the “top” of the hardhat (so the hat sits back on my head), or wear my hair down. My hair is now long enough that I can wear the hard hat properly and still tie my hair back, but I don’t remember why I wore the hat like that in the photo though. Good thing MIOSHA wasn’t there…

Detroit Metro Airport (DTW) has been under construction for several years now. Back in 2002, the McNamara terminal opened, and it looks great! McNamara is principally used by Northwest (since Detroit is one of their hubs), but is also used by the entire SkyTeam Alliance. In all, McNamara has 3 concourses, with 122 gates! And of course, dozens of shops, restaurants, and a people mover.

But the Wayne County Airport Authority didn’t stop there… they’ve kept going and just finished the new North Terminal. The North Terminal only has 24 gates, but there are plans to add two additional wide-body gates once they demolish a portion of the old Smith Terminal.

Metro airport will be hosting an Open House this weekend for the new Terminal. The public event is on Saturday, from 1-5 PM. Their website indicates that there will be a lot of giveaways, including free gas and roundtrip airfare. It’d be neat to win something, but I’m excited to just get a chance to check it out!

A couple of weeks ago, Eric snagged a pair of Launch Transport Tickets for the upcoming shuttle launch, STS-125. The launch tickets are for the closest public viewing area, and usually sell out in under 5 minutes. I agreed that we could take a mini-vacation if we can figure out how to pay for it (without using the credit cards!), and as long as we’ve made decent progress on the house renovations.

If we end up going, we’ll probably take about a week off from our respective jobs…

We’ll definitely have a day or two at the Kennedy Space Center (I’ve never been there, but I’m interested to check it out and see if I enjoy it as much as Eric does). The launch tickets also include 2-day admission to the KSC.

We talked about going to Disney World, but ticket prices have really gotten expensive! For a 1-day, 1-park ticket, it would be $75/each. If we want to make it a Park-Hopper, the price goes up to $125/each. It’s slightly cheaper if we bought multi-day tickets, but it’s still a pretty penny! Since Eric & I spent four days at Disney in 2006 with my family, we’ll probably opt to skip Disney this time.

We’ll probably spend some time at Universal Studios, since neither of us has been there in quite awhile. A 1-day ticket at Universal is still pretty expensive ($73/each), but they have an “Unlimited” 7-day ticket that offers admission to both Universal theme parks, plus the Wet & Wild waterpark, for only $100.

The big question at the moment seems to be whether we should fly, or drive…