Sauntering Vaguely Downward

Picture of a metal box with frames for PCBs (printed circuit boards).

I realise this may not be the most thrilling photo ever, but I'm not ashamed to say that I almost cried when I saw this metal box. This box represents 18 months' worth of work on my part (and others', but a lot of it was on me to coordinate) to get A Certain Space Agency to approve our soldering qualification plan for our flight electronics for the JUICE mission. The existence of this box means that we have been allowed to manufacture actual physical hardware rather than just endlessly iterating on bits of paperwork describing the hardware. It's not just spreadsheets and Word documents any more! There is a METAL BOX, and we will Put Things Into It, and heat them up and freeze them repeatedly, and shake the box around violently to ensure that bits don't fall off of it.

I may shed tears when the PCBs arrive and we can put them into the frames.

METAL BOOOOOX \m/

Autumnal or vernal, depending on your hemispherical orientation.

Also, it is my birthday and this morning I opened my gifts with two eager assistants. We were all very pleased by the cuddly Jupiter which arrived without sender designation. Mystery sender has since been identified as Dear Friend Josh. \o/


Me, Humuhumu and cuddly Jupiter. Two of the three of us sporting some outstanding bedhead. Photo processed with the "Saturn" filter in Google Photos.

Humuhumu in an astronaut outfit, with Telstar.

Meant to post this on Caturday, but there was no time, what with the parkrun and going to look at bicycles and gardening and general parenting of one very active toddler and one baby who's just learnt to crawl and has markedly more suicidal tendencies than his sister, including a blatant disregard for the spikeyness capabilities of the cat.

There was a dress-up day for charity at Humuhumu's nursery last week. Every girl in the toddler room was a princess.

Keiki and I spent two part-days visiting Smithsonians in Washington DC whilst we were staying in Silver Spring, MD, for dizzykj’s wedding. I’ve wanted to go to a Smithsonian (any of them!) since I read about them as a child, and I was as thrilled to be able to go this May as I would have been thirty years ago.

On our first expedition, we rode the Red Line from Silver Spring to Judiciary Square, and walked from there to the Air and Space Museum. Judiciary Square was eerily deserted. I got the feeling it was a bit like being in the City (in London) at the weekend: places that are absolutely heaving Monday through Friday are completely empty on Saturday and Sunday.

( +15, Air & Space Museum )

After all the tech, I wanted to spend a little time appreciating nature so we headed for the nearby Botanic Gardens. I was hoping to get a cup of tea there, but it turns out to be pretty much the only place on the Mall that doesn’t have a cafe. I had a quick spin through the glass houses and then went back to the Smithsonians.

( +5, Botanic Gardens )

I chose to have my late lunch and very delayed cup of tea in the National Museum of the American Indian. I later discovered that I’d chosen one of the best of the overpriced Smithsonian cafes to eat in, according to the locals in the wedding party. I did think my enchiladas were pretty good at the time, but it was still nice to have my unintentional good judgment validated!


The very beautiful internal architecture of the mostly harrowing National Museum of the American Indian. I didn’t take any other photos inside, just experienced all the exhibits, which apart from the modern ones designed by Native Americans, were pretty unremittingly depressing. It’s kind of hard for them not to be when the treatment of native peoples by the US government was (is…) appalling for most of the US’s history.

Keiki sat with me and quietly watched a fifteen minute film about the tragic nineteenth century removals of native peoples from their land, so when he took a shine to a rattle in a Navajo design in the shop afterward, I got it for him. It’s now one of his favourite toys.