[X] My Assistant

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And a cool banner it is, Doug! (Frosty the Spaceman? )

[mars loon]

Well my roots are from Germany, grew up in the US and we always celebrate with opening some presents on Christmas eve. Attending the church service of christmas carols. Then we await the overnight arrival of Santa, leaving out cookies and milk for Santa hoping he will bring some goodies.

Ustrax, last night on Christmas eve my favorite Uncle passed away in Germany after a long illness. He loved nature and the country side, hiking and biking. I enjoyed many trips with him and his family to many great places in Europe. And they all know my love of astronomy and space every day, since you asked if there is any room.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all

peace be with you

ken

[DFinfrock]

ustrax:

I do have a small "space link" to this year's Christmas celebration.

My father died of heart failure in January 1999, while undergoing a dialysis treatment. I was with him at the time, and in the moments before he died, we were enjoying a National Geographic book on Mars, featuring some of the Pathfinder photos. Since he was a geologist, (and didn't have internet access) he really enjoyed the photos in the book I had given him for Christmas the week before.

Since his death, my four siblings and I keep him in our Christmas celebrations each year by joining together and making a donation each Christmas to a charity in his name. This year it was my turn. I chose a donation to a nearby nature preserve of the Audubon Society, because of his love of the outdoors. And I also made a donation to the Planetary Society, and added his name to those destined to travel to Mars on the Phoenix lander next year. My mother, brother and sisters were thrilled by the printed certificate from TPS identifying "Papa Frock" as one whose name will travel to Mars.

Merry Christmas!

David

[ustrax]

This year it was my turn. I chose a donation to a nearby nature preserve of the Audubon Society, because of his love of the outdoors. And I also made a donation to the Planetary Society, and added his name to those destined to travel to Mars on the Phoenix lander next year. My mother, brother and sisters were thrilled by the printed certificate from TPS identifying "Papa Frock" as one whose name will travel to Mars.

Merry Christmas!

David

David...
I'll hug you when I see you...
Thanks to everyone for sharing their Xmas views...
mars loon...Talking about room and hiking...If by any chance tou pass here...Just ring!

[hendric]

Ended up in Wichita, KS all week, which is about as bad as it sounds. There were two highlights:

1. I rewatched my "From the Earth to the Moon" set. I still love the "Spider" episode the best. Probably my most-watched DVDs in my whole collection. (Well, Thomas, Bob the Builder, etc. don't count. )

2. Got to drive out to Hutchinson, KS and visit the Cosmosphere. Kinda surreal driving to this town in the Middle-Of-Nowhere, surrounded by wheat fields, and seeing a building with replica Titan and Mercury-Redstone launch vehicles standing outside.

Cool items:
-Learned that Odyssey was exiled to France because NASA was too embarrased by the accident on Apollo 13.
-Saw an Apollo White Room signed by Gunter Wendt.
-The large amount of Soviet hardware present, including a Lunokhod rover, and several of the capsules.

www.cosmo.org
http://tabletumlnews.powerblogs.com/posts/...132039214.shtml <-- Not mine, but has some pictures. The quality can't be blamed on the poster, since they keep the museum so @#$% dark. Just once, I'd like to see a space museum where stuff is *lit* so people can take decent photos!

[dvandorn]

Hmm... this is a question that, for me, has several answers, depending on the epochs of my life.

When I was a child, it was unbearable weeks of waiting, helping Dad find and trim a tree, being as good as I possibly could, listening for reindeer paws on the roof on Christmas Eve, being forced to eat *something* (I usually managed to choke down a piece of toast) for breakfast before opening our presents on Christmas morning, the smells of baked ham, candied yams and pumpkin pie making me hugely hungry as I played with new games, assembled new plastic models, or just read a new book, helping my Mom make ham salad out of the leftover ham the day after Christmas...

When I was a young man, fresh out of college and married, it was rushing to get all the presents wrapped, going to my Polish mother-in-law's for a Christmas Eve dinner of roast goose, polish sausage and pierogi (yum!), opening presents, rushing home, trying to get to sleep early so we could get up early, pack up the car on Christmas morning, driving three hours to my folks' house, explaining we'd already eaten (if we had or not), opening more presents, sitting down for the familiar (and still scrumptuous) ham dinner, helping Mom make ham salad Christmas evening, and then rushing back another three hours home...

On one very, very dark Christmas eight years ago, it was sitting at my folks' house, staring at a hastily-raised artificial tree and wondering bleakly just how many more days my aging and ill Dad was going to live (turned out to be only another fifteen days). Getting the flu (from hanging out at a hospital for way too many hours a day for the previous six weeks) and spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day being violently ill.

During my second marriage (after I had become a confirmed Wiccan, which is a pagan religion to all those who aren't familiar with the term), it was buying Yule presents, having a pleasant Yule ritual with friends on Winter Solstice, in which we would act out the old dramas of ignorance in which men beseeched their gods to *please* let the days start getting longer again, exchanging Yule presents, and gathering around our brightly decorated Yule tree...

Nowadays, it's having about thirty seconds of private contemplation of the cycles of life on the Winter Solstice, trying to find one of my high-school-kid managers at my Pizza Hut who can run my store for two days without causing a major disaster so I can visit with my 75-year-old mother, helping her make a small ham steak for us and my brother, exchanging a few presents, and driving the 18-hour round trip between Minneapolis and central Illinois praying that no ice storms or snow storms keep me from getting back to my store in time to finish my year-end inventory, which has to be completed and logged in the computer by midnight, December 25 -- and arriving to find that the computer has everything AFU, my inventory counts are primarily set to zeroes, I can't set new closing inventory amounts, and the help desk is a recording rather diffidently wishing everyone a Merry Xmas... *sigh*...

I think, of all of them, I'd rather be a child again... Heck, between now and eight years ago, I'm not totally sure which is worse.

-the other Doug