Deano Watch: Day four

Our fleet has left the AO. We're heading ESE toward Fourchon at 5 knots. Our "real" work is done and it has been a day of rest, surfing and tying up loose ends, such as making up a gangway watch list and the like.

I've classified about 300 galaxies in the last few hours. so far, this has been the most appealing to the eye, though the few mergers I've had were also spectacular in an abstract way. I've also spent a an hour, or so reading the analysis forum, getting a refresher on things like red shift and learning the advanced analysis techniques the experts use. That stuff is soooo cool. All the information's available, you just need an advanced astrophysics/astronomy degree to be able to sort it all out...which leaves me fucked.

Anyway, I thought you might appreciate the galaxy as opposed to more images of Deano and it unerring track West. You know, after viewing 1500 galaxies; each containing countless billions of stars, I can't help but dwell on what insignificant and arrogant creatures we are. We live out our tiny lives in 100 years (give or take) of a universe born 15 billion years ago, surviving in only the narrowest range of light, heat, pressure, radiation and chemical composition, confined to one planet of nine orbiting a star that is only one of billions in a galaxy that is also one of only billions in the universe. I am awed at what we take for granted and appalled at what most people completely ignore-the amazing width and breadth of the universe and the wonders it contains. Instead we hunger for news of some trainwreck movie starlet's rehab misadventure as if it adds some sort of meaning to our lives. We kind of suck as a species, sometimes and I really need to quit watching Fox news in the mess at the evening meal.

So yeah, Deano is heading West and I, ESE to port in Fourchon. Anyone in the neighborhood is welcome to join me at Eddies...I wish I could bring my family down for a short visit, but I think they would kill me after seeing the shit-hole that is Fourchon.

Other than the occasional foray to the watering hole, I fear much of next week I will spend on gangway watch, guarding this rusty hull and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes-not a favorable prospect.

I'm reading a great book on the Viet Nam War, by Colonel David H. Hackworth called STEEL MY SOLDIER'S HEARTS. It's sad and tragic but a damn good read at the same time. Since the Queen mentioned that I'm proofing her novel in progress, I guess I can also say that what I've read is also a damn good read, but sad and tragic, too, in that I'm already hooked by it and have no more to read at the moment.

I also spent an hour adding everyone to my Google Reader (TM) and tweaking it to my liking. I think it's a great tool for staying current with everyone more efficiently, but I'll still read posts from your sites, though. Everyone's site is a small extension of who they are and I would miss the flavor reading from Google.