Nick is in space. That sounds fairly simple, until you spend a few days really comprehending what it means to put your body inside a man-made vessel, strap it to a couple of rockets, and blast it into the earth's orbit in about 8 minutes flat. Discovery STS-116 blasted off last Saturday night from Cape Canaveral, and we and at least 1000 others watched it go, the first night launch in 4 years. It was a spectacular experience.

The weekend began with a reception at Kennedy Space Center on the 7th, where Nick's reception, which included every member of his family and about 100 friends, but not him, since he was in quarantine, was combined with that of fellow astronaut Sunny Williams, who will stay on the space station for six months. The KSC has a full visitors center, tour of the property, a couple of IMAX movies and such, where we spent most of the day Thursday awaiting launch attempt #1. They postponed for weather, at five minutes ... talk about suspense! We were able to see my aunt Jane and Uncle Howard in Stuart Friday before we spent another day waiting, along with everyone else, for attempt #2 on Saturday. Our watching spot was on the causeway, about 6 miles from the launch pad, but we had a clear view as it fired up and blasted skyward, disappearing about 8 minutes later over the horizon. Nick was conducting his first mission about an hour later, operating the robotic arm to inspect the craft for damage once it reached orbit. Back at the hotel, one of the guys had a laptop over which we were able to tune into radio communications between the shuttle crew and mission control - we could hear Nick talking to them about his task - amazing! Moving too, to be able to witness someone you know actually achieve a lifelong dream -- he's been waiting for this for a long time, and now, he's one of just about 460 people to ever experience spaceflight.

From Cocoa Beach we headed over to Disney World and stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge - beautiful hotel - and had some fun hanging around the parks with our respective silver passes. (The new job is going well for me at DIG by the way -- I'm happy to report). A former fellow MIT student, Dave, and his wife Cheryl, a historian of American Decorative Arts, including -- yes, that's right -- bungalows! -- joined us at Epcot where the food was impressive (we tried the Bistro in "France" one night, the Morocco restaurant the other).

Florida was more fun than I remember it. What a great week! Now we're back home, the tree is up, and we're getting ready for our first holidays here in L.A. Looking good for '07! But how did it sneak up on us so fast?