An old college friend of mine, Dr. Stan Love, was scheduled to blast into space this week on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. I wasn't able to fly out to Florida this week (my dad and brother did) so I've been watching from afar via the web and biting nails. Now the launch has just been delayed until January. Maybe I'll be able to go watch it after all.

I met Stan when I was a chem major at Harvey Mudd, where we connected because (1) we're both
from Oregon and love the outdoors, (2) we both loved to dance to the same crazy 80's music and (3) both of us shunned alcohol, so we spent lots of time at college parties dancing while other people were throwing
up. We once went to a Nexxus dance party in Seattle and danced crazy for hours until he blew out his knee and spent the rest of the evening with a bag of frozen strawberries on it. We never dated, probably because I
was already dating a friend of his. But anyway, he's a real good guy. I'm a little worried about his launch, of course, but mostly just think it's way cool to have a friend go walk in space. Go, Stan Go!