Tank You...Tank You Very Much

Congratulations are in order for David Ortiz, Mark Loretta, Manny Ramirez, and my boy Jonathan Papelbon. They were chosen by the fans(except Papelbon; he was chosen by Ozzie Guillen, the AL manager) to represent Boston in the 77th All-Star game in Pittsburgh next week. Despite the great showing of Red Sox on the AL squad, I can't help but feel like we were snubbed. No Curt Schilling or Josh Beckett on the team!?! Com'on now, Ozzie. I have heard that Francona has talked to Guillen recently in hopes of convincing him that Schiller belongs on the team. Sticking with the All-Star theme, David Ortiz has elected to participate in the homerun derby the day before the mid-summer classic. I hope he tears the cover off the ball.

Slight scare today in the space world. During a checkout of Discover and her related parts last night, a piece of foam fell from a support strut on the External Tank(ET). Here's a high-res shot of the missing area:

That light area is the part of the foam that fell off. To give you an idea of scale, that area of foam loss was about 4 inches wide.

The Mission Management Team(MMT) met twice today, and thanks to some clever engineering they were able to examine the foam loss area without actually crushing the foam or having to bring in an external platform, which would have added another day to the launch. After much review, it was determine that the foam less presented now aerothermo problems, no ice threat, and it didn't shear surrounding foam. In short, Discover is GO for launch tomorrow at 1:38pm CST. Should be exciting, as the weather presents only a 40% chance of delaying the launch tomorrow, according to the weather military dudes over at the cape.

My body is wondering what the HELL I think I'm doing. I sleep shifted last weekend in preparation for the mission. Then we were delayed, and I had to shift back for work this week. Now that there's a good chance to launch tomorrow, I'm having to shift AGAIN tonight. That means staying up until 4:00am after being up at 7:00am this morning for work and getting only about an hour of sleep after work. Eyugh.

Richard has had a tough week this week: England gets ousted from the World Cup in the quarters, Beckham resigns his captaincy, his boy Agassi is defeated at Wimbledon at the hands of phenom capri-wearing Rafael Nadal, Ben Wallace is leaving the Pistons for Chicago, and today he found out that Steve Yzerman is retiring from the NHL. If you don't know who Steve Yzerman is, SHAME ON YOU. To give you an idea of this guy's affect on hockey the past 20+ years, go HERE. Everyone say a private prayer for Richard, haha. I'm sure I'll feel the same when Joe Sakic(who is also #19) retires one day.

One more thing: Sharapova advanced past the 4th round at Wimbledon today :)

Another one-more-thing: Jose Canseco is a fuckin' idiot. And he can't throw a knuckleball worth crap.

There. I'm done.