The Adventure That Had a Small Misadventure at the End

I've said it before. My job is pretty cool. I'm a television producer/director for a small PBS station. As part of my job, I co-host a travel show in which we feature interesting people and places on the backroads. I was out doing one of these stories just the other day and it was a pretty big one! I had the opportunity to tape the world's largest privately-owned telescope being installed right here in my home county! It's 50" and had to be lifted into its observatory by heavy machinery. I was thrilled to be able to watch that happen (because I'm somewhat of a "space nut") and even more thrilled to be able to do a story about it that I'll eventually bring to my viewers.

I arrived just in time to watch them load up the first of three pieces of the scope to be lifted into the observatory, which has a cool, motorized retractable roof by the way (nerd alert!)! What was amazing is once they got each piece in there it had to be bolted in, placed and measured so precisely so the mesaurements and astronomical work that will eventually take place there will be as accurate as possible. The gentleman who constructed/owns the scope sends much of his data to NASA and also works with Eastern Illinois University students for research. He's also a former magazine photographer. These are the kinds of interesting people I'm fortunate enough to meet on my job every day. Also notable is that this man chose the darkest spot in the county on purpose to live and put up his observatories. This is for maximum viewing potential far away from any ambient city light.

So, anyway, they get all three pieces in and I am filming a little more footage. I decide to text my husband because it's now 3:50 and we had said we'd keep in touch about who will pick up our son at daycare. Clearly, we hadn't done this. I shoot him a text to ask where he is and he says he's still 90 miles away (he had been at a business/golf outing), putting him at the daycare around 5:30. Well, that won't work because that's when they close. So, it's up to me. I'm still a good 20 minutes from work, then I have to put all of my gear away and get out to the daycare. I text my husband that I will take care of it. I decide that since everyone is sweaty and tired from installing the telescope that I'll probably have to come back another day to do interviews anyway. I tell them that I have to leave and lucky for me, he says, "Oh, that's it anyway! We're finished." So I lucked out on that one! I wasn't going to miss anything! I make my way back to the office and manage to get out to daycare just before 5 pm. Disaster averted! There's always the option to ask our wonderful friends whose son also goes there to pick him up, but luckily we saved everyone the trouble. Sometimes that's how it works out I guess! Life is definitely different (and wonderful) with a little guy in your life!

I'm just glad this was more of an adventure, than misadventure.