We had a great vacation in Ocean Grove, NJ. Wonderful laid back place. Clean and well maintained beaches. The whole family did some good boogie board and body surfing. The girls are really into ocean swimming. They've become strong and confident in the surf--but that doesn't keep me from staying close by with a watchful eye on 'em.
Writing
The final edit of Skimer has been very difficult to get through, especially as I'm attempting to squeeze a novel's worth of ideas into novella. I'm still working on it, might have to do some drastic reductions. Maybe save some ideas for a sequel. I've promised myself that I get it submitted to Analog by Sept 10th.
Rocketry/Hobbies
Well we had a real blast in Pine Island, NY at the NERRF Rocket festival. Extremely hot at 95 deg each day. Tons of cool people and rockets. My first time at this venue, very scenic and they have multiple racks on two sides to keep things moving, I still miss Higg's farm in Maryland..That venue re-opens after harvest in October ;)
My friend completed his Lvl 1 certification on a very nice Binder Design Galaxy. Guy did an outstanding job and really took it to max by going dual deploy..practically a Lvl 2 flight. Way to go Steve, now for Lvl 2 this fall!
The girls launched their cool Performance Rocketry Little Dogs on Fast Black smoke motors as well as the visually stimulating CTI skidmarks. The launch control officer made some cool comments regarding their rockets. They also launched several ESTES rockets with their friend. The frien's sizzler(which is a small minimum diamter style) did a real high flight on C6-5, was lost but returned by a very nice boy scout.
I did the maiden on my custom fiberglass Binder Design Devastator. Flew perfectly and did 2200 ft on a nice Aerotech J570. Our Rocket club, MDRA will be running fall's Red Glare in October and I have some cool, high power engines planned for the Devastator most likely high power K's and a huge Mogave Green L1390G-P if I get the rocket's GPS tracking stuff all set up.
SCI FI
Saw the sci-fi alien movie, District 9, this month. Was Ok but had some really huge, unforgivable logic holes. Start's off with a huge alien ship getting stuck but the end contradicts some very basic plot premises. Finally the documentary-style part was very cornball. The visual effects were top-notch but those don't equal a good movie for me.
Still holding out for a nice ground breaking SCI Fi flic this year..
