Launch Party

Last friday night, my husband and I went to a party.  A Space Shuttle Launch party!

I never thought that I would attend such a party in my lifetime.  Gathering a group of friends together to watch a shuttle launch into space just doesn’t seem like something that is all that fun.  But sometimes fun has a way of sneaking up on to you. 

Someone posted the idea on twitter. I don’t think they serious believed that people would take up their offer, but next thing we know, we are over at a friend’s place on a friday night, armed with pizza and space helmets.  We were just going to stay for a little while. My husband had to start early shifts the next week, so didn’t want to stay out too late. We were going to miss the launch, but we were ok with that.  But the hours rolled on, and we were still there, and we were able to watch NASA’s last space shuttle be launched into space. 

I suprised myself by how excited I was by the whole experience.  There were numerous countdowns, most of them counting down to a countdown, and as we heard those numbers ticking down, the room would get quiet and the atmosphere tense.  Then eventually, the countdown was the real thing, and we saw that shuttle take off into the sky, leaving our planet far behind.

The lesson learnt that night is that anything can be fun when surrounded by the right people.

One of the funniest things about the evening was watching the comments on the Ustream feed.  People are funny. 

While waiting for the launch, we watched Hackers. This is one of my husband’s favourite movies. He made me watch it years ago when we were first dating.  In a room with computer technicians, phone technicians and web designers, the movie took on a whole new level of comedy, as they provided their own commentary for the events taking place in the movie.  I don’t know how serious the movie was at the time it was made in the 90s, but as the technology, and the fashion, has changed over the last decade and a half, this peek into our techological past is rather humerous. 

Thanks everyone that was there for such a top night. It was a blast.