Three Things

There are only three things that made the cut for documentation today.  The first will be a familiar sight, since once again I captured the Anacostia sunrise with the ex-USS Barry "front and center."

Anacostia Sunrise with the ex-USS Barry as the Centerpiece

I discussed briefly yesterday that one of the reasons I take pictures of this view is because I routinely get pretty good results from my efforts. This reason was wearing a little thin, so today I invented a further justification. Sometime in the next several months the ex-USS Barry is going to depart the waterfront of the Washington Navy Yard permanently. Capturing relatively frequent photos of the ship in the lead up to the ship's departure for the scrappers may prove to be an interesting pictorial history of the ship's last days.  If printed, it would probably sell at least twelve copies.  In all seriousness, I suspect that I'm the only one doing this documentary of sorts, and it may prove to be of some interests to a very narrow group of Barry aficionados.  Since it's not out of the way that the pictures turn out pretty good, I'll continue this quest going forward and document the results here.  I'll probably leave out the commentary going forward because it is making my writing fall into an anti-creative rut so it's probably not as useful to me to continue to lean on this crutch.  Pictures only from now on with limited commentary unless something truly extraordinary catches my attention.

The second point is that today I learned that NASA is accepting applications through the USAJobs Federal hiring website for a position as an astronaut candidate (ASCAN).  I am going to apply. If anyone else reading this is interested, here is the link to the application. It's a crazy notion really and I'm on the old side of the age bell curve for this type of thing, but as soon as I learned the positions were being advertised and the timing lined up with another life event or two I knew it had to be done.

Space is one of those frontiers (not the final frontier I don't think, but one that beckons more urgently with every trip of the earth around the sun) that begs to be explored.  Manned spaceflight dovetails nicely with walking in my mind due to the exploratory and persistent nature that it takes to progress in such activities. The last time NASA picked an astronaut class was 2013, and they had over 6,000 applicants.  They made 8 selections. I suspect that given the heavy PR push that's accompanying this announcement that the number of candidates will be even higher this time around.  The odds of success are vanishingly small of actually being selected, but I know that I'll regret it if I don't throw my hat in the ring.

Finally, on my evening walk I noticed that the top tiers of the scaffolding on the Capitol Building had been removed.

Moon over the Capitol as the scaffolding surrounding the Statue Freedom being removed

I knew that the external portion of the restoration project to preserve and repair the iron dome of the Capitol Building was scheduled to complete sometime this winter, but the shrouded dome has become such a feature of my walks in Washington, DC that the realization of this progress caught me by surprise. I've looked forward to seeing this happen and now that the process has taken a visible step forward, my anticipation is growing to see the building without the gauzy accoutrements I've become familiar with.

All in all, another fantastic day.