Lila Perry Steinhoff Archives

February 8, 2015

SpaceX Launch Disappointment

Wife Lila was in the kitchen constructing one of her incomparable chicken pot pies with the news on to keep her company. Suddenly, she said, “There’s going to be a rocket launch in two minutes.”

We made our usual mad dash out to the fence where we used to look over “Helen’s House” to see the shuttles go up about 11 seconds after liftoff off at Cape Canaveral.

There were some clouds scudding by, but we were pretty sure we’d see the bright trail of flame any second.

You can click on the photos to make them larger, but I wouldn’t bother. There’s not anything to see.

Minutes go by

When the two minutes went by with no joy, then three, then five, we decided that either the launch had been scrubbed or we had missed it.

A bird on a wire and a jet departing Palm Beach International Airport was it for the evening.

When we got back inside, I saw a bulletin from Al Stern, a radio buff in Satellite Beach: “Tonight’s SpaceX Dragon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral AFS has been scrubbed due to a Range Tracking Station problem.”

Looks like it’ll be Monday

An NBC news site elaborated: Radar tracking is a critical part of operations for a space launch, because range safety officers need to be able to destroy the rocket in case it goes off course during ascent. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the launch team was also dealing with a problem that affected a transmitter on the rocket’s first stage.

If they get the problem fixed, I guess we’ll be back at the fence at 6:07 p.m. ET Monday. There is a 40 percent chance of acceptable weather.

February 8, 2015

Birthdays 2 and 4

In another of an infrequent series of posts about how living in Florida in the wintertime isn’t bad, I invite you to a birthday party for Son Adam and Wife Carly’s boys this weekend. Both of them have birthdays in February – Graham is 4 and Elliot is 2 – so they have a combined party for now.

Back up to September: Wife Lila’s niece, Laurie Everett of Annie Laurie’s Antique Shop fame, had a toy tractor that had come in from an estate sale. Lila said I should pick it up for the boys and haul it 1100 miles back to West Palm Beach.

Tractor made it to Florida

We decided that Christmas had so much going on that we’d hold the tractor until Birthday Season. It was well received.

Is this a good idea?

Graham was all about the bounce house, but he wasn’t convinced that going down the slide was a good idea. I remember that feeling the first time I climbed onto the high dive at the Capaha Park Pool.

Dad comes to the rescue

Dad Adam was a little more sympathetic than the pool lifeguard who growled, “Kid, those are one-way steps. There’s only one way back, and that’s off the end of the board.”

Graham remained unconvinced. He’s going to be the conservative kid in the family. I remember him complaining at last year’s party “That music is too loud.”

I’m alive to see 5

THERE’S a kid who is limp with relief that the experience is over and there’s a chance he’ll be alive to see his fifth birthday.

Here’s trouble

Elliot is going to be the one who, like his dad, will try anything at least once. As soon as he figured out how to climb up to the top of the slide, he was beating feet to do it again and again.

A gift of love

Lila is a quilter. Not one of those machine quilters, but an real old-time hand quilter. She made a snowman quilt for Matt and Sarah’s Malcolm, and a similar one for Graham.

She presented Elliot’s to him today. When you are two, it’s probably not as cool as a tractor, but he’ll appreciate it over the years.

Graham and Elliot are expecting a brother to come along in a couple of months, so Lila better get busy.

Graham with his quilt

Graham knew right where to find his quilt in his bedroom. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

January 24, 2015January 25, 2015

Odyssey Beginning to End

It is said that the happiest two days in a boat owner’s life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. That was the kind of day Saturday was for me.

Kid Matt shot this photo of me taking a test drive in my new 2000 Odyssey van on November 26, 1999. The sales guy was trying to tell me where all the bells and whistles were located.

Less painful than expected

When Kid Adam said he was trading up and that his 2010 van was going to be available at a good price, I wasn’t looking forward to unloading my 2000. You caught part of that the other day.

I started by driving down to Car Max for an appraisal that would give me a floor price. They offered a number lower than what I was hoping for, but wasn’t insulting. There was a guy with a spinner sign down the street saying that HIS company would meet or beat any other offers.

A. He was lying and
B. His offer WAS insulting.

Adam had some friends or friends of friends who expressed an interest. A batch of them drove up from Miami Saturday noonish to look it over.

I was brutally honest about all the little quirks and foibles the vehicle had, but when we got finished with the test drive, they came up with a couple items that I dismissed as no big deal.

Negotiation is on

They shot me a price lower than I would accept, and I countered with one a hundred bucks higher, conceding that the noisy brakes really would need to be fixed and that my offer would split the difference on the brake job.

They wouldn’t budge off their offer, and I wouldn’t budge off mine, so we started to go our separate ways.

Before I could get to the house, they came back with an envelope of cash and we did the deal. In the long run, I think we were both OK with it. It’s just that crazy dance you have to go through when you buy or sell a car.

While we swapping license tags and going over little details, I left Wife Lila filling out the paperwork so there would be half a chance that someone would be able to read it. (As it was, I dated all my signatures 2014, and had to scratch over them)

They got the title and seemed to be happy. A camera aimed back in my direction would probably have captured a smile that big on MY face.

[Editor’s note: you’re going to have to take my word for their smiling faces. I got a text asking that I remove the photo. I cropped out the top of the photo and blurred their license tag to insure their privacy.]

Waving goodbye

When it pulled away from the house for the last time, I have to admit having mixed emotions. One of them was relief when it made it all the way to the corner and disappeared from sight. I honestly believe it has lots of miles left in it, but if it was going to die, I’d rather not see it.

That corner has bad car karma associated with it. It used to house a car dealer whose business model was to sell to people with lousy credit. As soon as they missed the first payment, he’d send the repo wrecker out to recover the car so it could be sold again and again.

I think his warranty was 30 feet or 30 minutes, too, based on the amount of shouting that would come over the fence.

I wish the new owners good luck. I have their address if any of the Road Warriorettes want to pay it a visit.

January 7, 2015

Patches from the Past

Wife Lila was shuffling some stuff around this afternoon and ran across this pile of patches. (You can click on the photo to make it larger.)

When the Kid Matt and Kid Adam were in middle school and early high school, they had denim jackets that Lila would decorate with patches we had picked up from our travels and from Scouts. The ones on the left are mostly Scout patches; the ones on the right include a lot we got from our Great Family Vacation Out West in 1990.

When the kids outgrew their jackets, their mother would painstakingly take off the old patches and either move them to a new jacket or replace them with newer souvenirs.

The kids got T-shirts from me

When I was on the road, I’d look for custom T-shirts. If there was any kind of big event going on, some entrepreneur would come up with a design, run off a couple hundred shirts and skip town before anybody came around checking if he had a license. I saw a T-Shirt guy get rousted by a couple of cops in Key West during the Boatlift. After a few minutes of conversation, the cops walked off with shirts and the guys were given two days to get out of town (by that time their stock would be gone).

They were usually cheap – $3 or $4 apiece – they were easy to pack, and they were unlikely to be worn by any other kid in their classes.

In that category: Cuban Boatlift; the Whigham, Georgia, Rattlesnake Roundup; Wheeler’s Bar’s Million-Dollar Log; the Pope’s visit to Miami; all kinds of hurricane commemorative shirts; Don’t Mess with Texas, and one from Two Egg, FL. I have two large plastic containers of shirts in the top of the closet just waiting for a quilt or something to spring from them.

That’s Grandson Malcolm in a Bunny Bread T-shirt picked up in Cape at the Used Bread Store. He’s a lot cuter nowadays. His father, Matt, is, well, older.