The sun is shining this morning! And I get to wear jeans to work. Life is good.

I stayed up last night to watch the CNN Mir Fall webcast. Despite my proclamations of geekiness, I had never watched a webcaast before. My old computer was just too slow and I didn't think my dial-up connection would do it any justice. The feed was a little jumpy at first, but then it smoothed out and the audio was fine. So, I sat and listened while I played computer games. What I would have given to have been able to see Mir fall from the sky last night! The space station was an oustanding accomplishment on the part of the Soviets:

Once the crown jewel of the Soviet space program, Mir racked up an impressive number of accomplishments in the sky -- longest time in orbit for a space station, 15 years; longest time in space for a human, 438 days; and the heaviest object ever to orbit Earth, except for the moon.

Mir survived the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, as a stranded cosmonaut watched the events unfold below. It hosted U.S. shuttle astronauts, a Japanese reporter and a British candy chemist who won a contest for the trip...

..."Overall, Mir did a wonderful job for far longer than its design lifetime and it ought to get credit for it," said Norm Thagard, a NASA astronaut who visited Mir in 1995.

"Mir could have continued to serve a useful function. The problem is the Russians don't have the economic wherewithal to support both the Mir and their role in the international space station. So in this case, my head overrules my heart. I think the Russians are doing the right thing."
[from CNN]

The opportunities Mir presented for a US-Russian partnership, at least in space, were very significant for me, having grown up in the shadow of the Cold War. Dosvedanya, Mir.