I'd probably drop my colander, too.

 Just as a change from all the attention on November 5th.

- Sid

Bigger on the outside, too.

I paid one of my infrequent visits to work last week, and to my surprise there was a box on my desk with a prominently placed Post-It™note that said FOR SID.  I wasn't expecting any deliveries - in fact, we had been requested to avoid personal deliveries to the workplace for the duration - and closer examination revealed that the box was originally addressed to one of my co-workers, Damon, but that address had been crossed out.

Curious, I opened the box, and voilà - one gigantic Doctor Who mug.  GIGANTIC.  6.5 inches/16cm in height - for some perspective, here it is beside my usual work mug*.

Understandably curious, I trotted around the building until I found Damon.  Apparently one of his daughters had ordered a large joke mug for a friend, and when it arrived, it was packaged with the Doctor Who mug, at no additional charge.  What with one thing and another, the Doctor Who mug never made its way back to Amazon™, and Damon finally decided that it should go to a good home.

I warmly thanked him for his consideration, and brought the mug home.  Since then, I've actually used it during a number of online meetings, and you know, so far I haven't received a single comment - so if you've been wondering if people are noticing whether or not you've vacuumed during Zoom™ sessions, good news, it looks like they're not paying that much attention.

- Sid

 

* Astonishingly, at some point I accidentally forgot the mug on the left in a meeting room, and when I realized my mistake, I finally found it mixed in with the other public use mugs in our kitchenette.  Seriously, could they not figure out who it belonged to?

"Whoa, oh, living on a prayer!"

(With apologies to Jon Bon Jovi.)

I'm constantly impressed by NASA's efforts to engage the world in the exploration of space.   Not only do they set up a system where people can have their names on a Mars probe, not only do they let you make a boarding pass for the mission, but they set up a site where you can track the probe's progress on its way to Mars with an active counter for every kilometer or mile that the probe has covered, its speed, the percentage of the trip completed, and the countdown to its landing date.

Today, they announced on Twitter that Perseverance had reached the half-way mark on its journey to Mars - 146 million miles or 235 million kilometers, 98,411 kph, all is going smoothly, and counting down to February 18th.

If you're interested in following Perseverance's progress, you can keep track at:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

- Sid