Needless to say- I couldn’t sleep.
It was more like a nap by the time my mind took a break from its marathon of thoughts and the butterflies in my stomach settled from hours of anticipation. Or was it indigestion from the really bad Chinese food I had the night before? No. Anticipation. I was like a kid who wasn’t allowed to leave the dinner table until I ate enough of my veggies. Three hours of sleep enough? good.
Up and in the car well before the sun, drinking really awful hotel coffee, I drove back to the Kennedy Space Center for what ended up being the last time. We had been waiting for this day for weeks. Others had been waiting  for months, years! This was Launch Day!
We had to arrive by 6am. Again, most of us arrived early. Few slept at all. I was excited, but it didn’t hit me until I saw the clock on and counting down. Weather permitting, this was happening.
Launch Day - The Countdown Clock.
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posted by Cathy Razim at 2:53 am
What a day. What an amazing long day. Seriously. And the official NASATweetUp events haven’t even started yet!
Today I and a few other Tweeps opted to use our free day pass to the Kennedy Space Visitor’s Center. I woke at 7, having slept abou 4 hours (again) and got to the park at 9 when they opened armed with my tri-pod, camera, and lappy bag of organized chaos. yes. But to quote a new friend who quoted an XKCD comic “We are the Internet.” I wasn’t the only one bogged down with tons of stuff. And as I walked to the entrance I remembered the last time I was there. I think that I had more child-like wonderment now than I did when I was 10.
Welcome to the Kennedy Space Center!
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posted by Cathy Razim at 1:20 am
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Sorry. Residual stress from DRIVING TO FLORIDA FROM NEW YORK  WHATTHEHELLISWRONGWITHME!? It was fun. Seriously. No. Yes, I am crazy. I don’t think I was ever sane.
In case you haven’t heard me rant excitedly like a school girl for the last month- I’m here in the sunshine state for the #NASATweetUp of the Mars Space Laboratory dubbed “Curiosity”. I’m going to see and experience SO MUCH that I decided to blog about it.
First off. What is a NASATweetUp? Well, I suppose I should break it down even further to “What is a TweetUp”… A TweetUp is a gathering of people, specifically with at least one thing in common – they use twitter. The only way to enter is to use twitter. And if you win, the organization assumes you will tweet about it, and then tweet some more when you are at the gathering. In a way, it’s like unofficial publicity. NASA has seen this power of publicizing through twitter and figured out how to use it. NASATweetUps- using social media to gather people, with another thing in common (SPACE) and plan something amazing and fun that they’ll share with their friends and followers to help “spread the word”. Awesome for them. Awesome for us!
Now, about this Mars Space Laboratory… We are sending a new rover to Mars. The planet. No, I don’t think it is made of candy (no M&Ms on Mars… Cheese on the moon, however, is still debatable.) This SUV sized robot of awesome is going to to drive around the Gale Crater and “investigate the area’s past and present environments”(MSL press release. Seriously. Everyone should read this.) Basically, it’s going to observe and analyze what’s on the surface and below the surface (up to 6cm, I believe, with a laser!) and run other tests because it is a mobile laboratory on freaking MARS. (Well.. not there yet…)
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posted by Cathy Razim at 12:15 am
…. So I was chosen among 149 others to see the Mars Curiosity Rover Launch down at the Kennedy Space Center this Thanksgiving.
HOLY FREAKING EXCITED, BATMAN!!
expect more posts on this… Gotta go jump around and be all giddy now. Heheheheheheheheh
posted by Cathy Razim at 9:47 pm
