Vatican Flag on the Moon

As we were wandering through the Vatican museums the other day, Rick saw this small display. It has the Vatican flag, a small sphere with a few specks of rock, and the following inscription:

Presented to the people of the
Vatican City
by
Richard Nixon
President of the United States of America

This flag of your state was carried to the Moon and back by Apollo 11, and this fragment of the Moon’s surface was brought to the Earth by the crew of that first manned lunar landing.

I think that’s the first time I’ve seen anything Moon-mission-related outside a science museum.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.

Had an Injury, Going to the Doc

Backing into Bonifacio, Corsica

I’ve been in excruciating pain for the last couple of weeks.

It started innocently enough: I got an awesome Thai massage, which loosened everything up.

Loosened everything up enough that I managed to later torque some muscle in my hip, a rather critical muscle/muscles for balance. This was bad the day we were in Sardinia, meaning I wasn’t able to see the rather awesome caves there.

Walking was excruciating. Climbing up and down stairs was excruciating. Rolling over in bed was excruciating.

The last meant I wasn’t sleeping, so I had a persistent fibromyalgia flare on top of everything.

We’d picked this cruise because I’ve always wanted to see Corsica, and one of the places I wanted to see was Bonifacio. The photo above is one of the last pics I managed to take. We were up early that morning (and I’d climbed the stairs to the Top of the Yacht bar) to see the sailing into port. Bonifacio’s kind of weird: all the ships have to back in, hence we went in flag first. (The odd flag is actually two flags: Bahamas, for the ship’s registry, and Norway, for the Captain’s nationality.)

I got off the ship, only to discover that I really couldn’t walk more than 100 feet without breaking into tears from the pain. Given that, I declined to go on the day tour I’d hoped to see. Instead, I hobbled down to see the shops, literally going from bench to bench. I spent the rest of day in bed.

The next day, we were using tenders, so I never got off the ship. Rick says I didn’t miss much, but it looked to me rather like an awesome place we went in Costa Rica—kind of a small beachy place with a small town, but not too much. I love those places.

I don’t need to say how much of an idiot I was for trying to go through all the Vatican museums, but I lasted through two hours of that idiocy. We had a nice hotel in Rome near the Vatican. Except for the slow waitstaff and the three steps up and down to get from one side of the building to the other, I really liked the place.

Had enough emergency meds to last through today, but I’m not better enough to function without more than my usual, so I’m going to the doctor.

I’m still really bummed about missing what I wanted to see in Corsica, and about not being able to see St. Peter’s Basilica.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.