264) There's Water on Mars!

July 31, 2008
Thursday

El Milagro: I am here on time and it takes staff about 15 minutes to get to poking me. Jo the Nurse is here today and we kid around... "You just had a birthday..." "July 2nd." "Wow. Mine is July 3rd!... but I'm a lot older than you..." "Old of spirit, young of body... wait a minute... (LOL) I mean, Old of body young of spirit..." "What do you know about my body?" Meanwhile she is setting up my BP and doing my nursing eval. Rosie the Tech comes up and joins the fracas and we are having a fine time... which keeps Rosie from hooking me up for 5 more minutes.

I wonder why the Newsletter hasn't been copied yet and Rosie reports that Susanne the Administrator has been out of office for a few days. I wish there were someone else I could give it to... since now the July Newsletter will be handed out in August.

Rosie and Jo are also discussing a new edict from Jay the Boss that they can't bring folks in early on Saturdays... and I wonder what the reason is and they guess it is a control thing... he supposedly doesn't want the staff making decisions on their own. Of course, he isn't here on Saturdays. Staff have taken it to Susanne because they argue that patients and staff both like getting out early on Saturdays. We'll see how this one turns out.

Oh, and the big news is --> there's water on Mars! According to project manager Barry Goldstein, "Our excitement is not so much that ice is made of H2O," says Peter Smith, the Phoenix lander's principal scientist. "It's what we're going to learn about the impurities that are associated with this ice — salts, minerals and all of the things that are going to tell us about the history and the chance that this is a habitable zone on Mars."* Water on Mars. Takes me back to Whitley Strieber's 1997 fantastic accounts of being transported to Mars to attend "the secret school"**. This could be the beginning of learning about life outside of the confines of mother earth... and who knows where that research might lead.

I ponder the possibilities of water on Mars and try to read my Bush Book at the same time... basically skimming the pages until it is time for the ABC News. Then I briefly nap until Texas Monthly Talks on KLRU and end up watching all that PBS fare until I leave at 9.

Notes: In at 77.2 and out at 74 kgs.
*Palca, J., Nasa's Phoenix Lander Confirms Ice Exists on Mars. Retrieved online from NPR at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93148447
** Streiber, W. (1997) The secret school: Preparation for contact. New York: Harper Collins Publishers