Spirit Sol 26

Just as I was going to sleep, a coyote attacked a neighborhood cat. I ran outside to try to save the cat, scared off the coyote, ran inside to call Animal Control to come help the cat -- and when I got back outside, the cat was gone. It seemed too badly wounded to get away by itself -- it was barely able to raise its head to croak sadly at me when I tried to comfort it -- and I couldn't find it anywhere when I looked around for it. So I think the coyote came back and got it while I was inside. Which might be just as well.

So when I wake up a couple of hours later to call the wacky morning show, I'm in a really good mood. I'm upset about the cat, and not focused on the bit, and when they ask me whom I favor in the Super Bowl, I don't even know who's playing. Turns out the right answer is: Carolina Panthers. A Raleigh station is interviewing me because I grew up in Rocky Mount. The local team is in the Super Bowl. It's the kind of thing I'm supposed to know.

I go back to bed.

The day's other interviews go better, though maybe it would be stretching things to say they go well. One is with the Pasadena Star-News, the next with the New York Times. I joke with the Star-News reporter that she's scooping the New York Times, and she laughs at that. I get along with her OK, but otherwise the interview is not especially memorable. The New York Times guy doesn't seem to be terribly interested in me; I almost get the sense that he's interviewing me as a way to get rid of me. Which seems like a strange thing to do, since he asked for the interview. Maybe I misread him.

I also have phone interviews with the Silicon Valley News, whose reporter has way too much energy for me, and with Yediot Ahronot[1], an Israeli newspaper. That one goes well, I think, except that at one point I use the phrase "exploding with joy," which is not a smart phrase to use around people who deal with suicide bombers every day. (Not that I think he cared or even noticed, but I cringe when I think about it.) He's interested in what is, for him, the local angle -- the Columbia memorial plaque on the rovers. So I make sure to mention Ilian Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut, who was one of the astronauts who died on that mission.

Come to think of it, today kind of sucked.

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Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Sol-2 NAVCAM image showing the Columbia memorial plaque on the back of the HGA. There's one of these on both rovers, as well as one on our testbed rover.

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[1] My Israeli friend, Rafi, was highly impressed by this. Driving a rover on Mars, not so much. But being interviewed by Yediot Ahronot, that made him look at me with respect.