Mostly quiet days of late, trying to shake this chest cold for once and all … they never used to linger this long, did they? Donna’s recovery is as protracted as mine, and now of course Polly has it too. Anyway, I’ve been logging lots of time in the tilt-o-matic easy chair, which the girls love as well (that is until I turn on the massager, at which point they depart for calmer pastures).
I’m better this morning and plan to take the pups out for a sniffari as soon as our neighbors finish walking their own dogs. Fritzi and Lulu are what they call reactive dogs, which is to say if they see another human or animal outdoors they bark at it furiously. In other words, dachshunds. We miss our old guy, Mister B, who could keep his shit together when we’d encounter strangers.
I remember vividly the feeling of stepping back onto land after spending days or hours at sea, the way my feet would slam against unyielding ground, thud thud thud. I imagine it’s something like that for the Aretmis II crew, returning to Earth gravity after nine to ten days floating in zero G, and I hope they recover quickly.
Like everyone else I followed the entire mission from liftoff to splashdown, my heart in my mouth at almost every moment. Would the launch go okay? Would the engine fire for trans lunar injection, course correction burns, and the final adjustments for re-entry? Would the cabin seals hold? Would the waste dump mast ever unfreeze? Would the heat shield hold up? Would the goddamn parachutes deploy? Would Orion stay watertight while Reid, Christina, Victor, and Jeremy waited and waited for the Navy divers to get them out of it? Were they throwing up a lot as the capsule bobbed and swayed?
See, the thing is, this was both a working mission and a test flight. This was the first time Artemis had gone into space with a crew aboard … its one previous flight was unmanned. One couldn’t help thinking of the Boeing Starliner and all the troubles it’s had, stranding those two astronauts aboard the International Space Station because NASA decided it wasn’t safe for them to ride home in. What a gamble NASA was taking with Aretmis II, that this tested-only-once (and that without any humans aboard) vehicle would work, and work flawlessly. And speaking of first-time test flights, would it have been imaginable there’d be a woman aboard back in the Apollo days, and moreover that that woman wouldn’t be a passenger but a full, working crew member, an equal among equals?
That’s one of many reasons I love science fiction: the depiction of near futures or alternate presents in which women and men and members of all races and nationalities live and work together as respected equals … the societies I dream of, where we’ve put all that racist, jingoistic, and sexist crap behind us and are getting down to saving the planet and humanity. The Expanse. For All Mankind. Shit, even Starship Troopers. If you’re not watching those, you’re probably not getting what I’m saying. If you can’t stand science fiction, then try The Pitt. Now you’re getting it.
Thanks, NASA, Reid, Christina, Victor, and Jeremy, for contributing something inspirational and positive to a spectacularly suckacious 2026!
My dad’s first new car was a 1951 Nash Statesman. Like father, like son. This will make sense when I say I own a Torgoen wristwatch.
Three years ago I bought my first GMT wristwatch, a Torgoen T9 Lazuli with an extra hour hand on a 24-hour scale. It’s the one with the cream-colored dial in the photo below. Torgoen, a little-known American company, markets its watches to aviators, and I love their bold designs. You don’t often see one. Better yet, they’re in my price range, and last October I bought a second one for my birthday, this time a T10 Kingfisher, an orange-and-blue knockout. Both watches have Swiss-made quartz movements … Torgoen makes a few watches with mechanical automatic movements, also Swiss, but those are a lot pricier, and I’ve come to appreciate the convenience of quartz, not having to wind and set a watch every time I put it on.
My Torgoens are favorites and I wear them often. Dad loved his Nash, too, and I remember it as a big, solid car, special because you didn’t see one every day.
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As mentioned, my most recent Torgoen purchase was in October 2025. I recently visited the Torgoen website and was surprised to see that every single watch and strap they make is marked “sold out.” A little digging unearthed the Wikipedia entry for Torgoen’s parent company, the E. Gluck Corporation, which, it turns out, filed for bankruptcy in December 2025. Gluck, which also owns Armitron, another American watchmaker, apparently took a gamble on smart watches but couldn’t get a foothold in Apple’s market. Now Torgoen (Armitron, too) is an orphan brand, no longer available for purchase. I’m sure both companies have large inventories of unsold watches and accessories, but legally can’t sell them while creditors seek financial restitution from the Gluck Corporation.
Individual sellers list lots of new and used Torgoens on eBay, and I’m tempted to snap up one or two more. I don’t know if they’ll ever be more valuable, but I like the brand and am not worried that there’s no longer a company behind it, since the movements inside are common to other, still going, watch brands. It’s also possible that Gluck’s affairs will eventually be settled and Torgoen will find another owner and start selling watches again.
So … we meet at last, Mister Bond.
Please forgive the paucity of recent blogging. I’m working to get my groove back.
Meanwhile, stay fresh, cheese bags!