What could be better than a nearly two months around the world trip, mostly flying, but also including three different cruises, plus six days in New York City?   I called it OMG Adventure, for Our Momentous Global Adventure.  The journey was, indeed, monumental and mostly enjoyable.  We were most thankful, however, for maintaining good health throughout the circuit, as we caught 11 planes ( where I more recently reported that  this is dangerous regarding COVID-19 ) and two out of the three cruises had covid outbreaks.  There were days when I thought, boy, wouldn't it be nice to avoid all this stress by staying home. Home is 15 Craigside,  a senior's community in Honolulu.  We go on trips because we're getting old, for every one could well be the last.  We do have a major adventure coming up this fall/winter, with two cruises, one from Seattle all the way through the Panama Canal to Southampton (UK), then a second being on a European Christmas...

But first,  Odysseus , with difficulty, but safely, landed 186 miles from the South Pole of the Moon.  The first American touchdown in more than 50 years, and by a private company from Houston, Intuitive Machines, with  $118 million of NASA money .  While Odie is vertical ( 14 feet tall ), and sent one signal back to Earth, it was weak.  However, the company later did say that data was streaming in.  The intrigue is that this region might well hold frozen water, which can be split into oxygen and hydrogen, serving as a space station for a future Mars project, or mined for Helium-3. Another U.S. firm, Astrobotic Technology, gave a shot last week, but the lander crashed back to Earth.  NASA is trying to kick-start a lunar economy, this being a $200 million gift to the company.  Well, not quite what was intended, but one spinoff so far is that the gold fabric protecting parts of Odie from extreme cold being marketed as  Omni-Heat Infinity  ...