Today was a very busy day, because not only did I have to pack for the trip to Athens Greece where I would be co-hosting the webcast, but I still had errands to do, and my daughters to pick up at their school.

After breakfast with my daughters, and dropping them off at school, I took a quick trip to my office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to pick up more Venus Transit sun viewers. My wife, Susan, works at the Library of Congress, and my talk there several weeks ago had created a huge demand for these plastic viewing glasses! In fact, these glasses were the talk of the Library of Congress staff, and became prized keepsakes. The Science and Technology Reading Room needed several hundred every day to keep up with the demand. I also grabbed a few hundred more because I planned to pass them out at my daughter's school parking lot when I picked them up at 3:00 PM.

I then scooted up to the Best Buy store in Rockville Maryland to get fresh camcorder tapes, and a digital tape recorder. The recorder, the size of a cell phone records up to 5 hours of voice commentary. I hope to use it at the time of the transit in Greece to record our comments, and my rambeling thoughts for this web diary each day. When I get back fron Greece on June 11th, I will try to transcribe these recorded notes for this web site, assuming they add anything new other than 'Wow! Look at that!!!' and other transit-related comments.

After my shopping spree, I grabbed a lunch at Chevy Chase Market - a turkey sandwich, coke and a pack of HoHos - and drove home through our cicade-infested neighborhod, sat down in our sunny dinningroom, and read the daily Washington Post newspaper while munching on lunch.

I still had to put together the pictures we would be using in the webcast in Greece. I had accumulated over 100 transet-related pictures, and I now had to decide which of these to store on a thumbdrive so that I could hand them over to the producers of the program. It was a tough job. I finally decided it was hopeless to do this right now. So I packed up the laptop and decided to bring the whole collection with me to Greece.

I originally wanted to pack very light, but my collection of must-haves was now growing fast. I would bring my laptop after all, along with my digital camera and camcorder, and my new digital voice recorder. The power cords, plug adaptors for Greek electrical outlets, and other hardware turned out to be very bulky, and I had to leave out of my suitcase several changes of clothing. I would bring shorts, long pants two shirts and 3 pairs of socks, plus toiletries. If I needed anything else I would just buy it in Athens!

At 1:00 PM I logged onto a web chat with Earth and Sky Radio. They asked me to do an hour of question and answers for their program as a supplement to the several radio spots I had done with them which would air on June 4 and 7. I advertised this event to many people and schools that I work with, but in the end only about 10 people joined us in this session. The questions were not too stimulating - mostly basic ones about when and where to look, and where the webcast would be on the web. But it was a welcomed respite from the morning's frantic pace of driving around, shopping, and worrying about details.

When I arrived at Holy Redeemer Elementary school in Kensington, the cars were already starting to appear for the usual afternoon pickup of children. I walked from car to car handing out the Venus glasses and giving a short chat about where and when to see it. I had gotten up this morning and driven around Kensington to find the right spots. Sunrise was at 5:45 AM, and by 6:00 AM you had a clear view of the sun from the parking lot of the Kensington 7-Eleven Store at the corner of Connecticut Ave and Knowles Ave. I'm sure that store will be surprised to see 100+ people on Tuesday morning standing in their parking lot squinting at the sun - and buying coffee! Many of the parents had already read the front-page article in the Kensington Gazette newspaper where I had been interviewed about the Transit, so they had lots of questions and compliments. My face appeared on the front page wearing a pair of these glasses. The Reporter that had interviewed me, Matthew Smith, thought this would look cool, and he was right. I looked like 'Cyclops' from the X-Men movie! It was a very fun and spirited half-hour at the school parking lot, and quite a send off for what I hoped would be an exciting journey to Greece - and clear weather!.

I then retured home with my daughters, and continued packing and making decisions about what to bring and leave behind. Also, I had a phone call from Wade Sissler who is the NASA TV and Public Affairs Officer at Goddard. He said that he has received over 50 media requsts for information and interviews - and he was predicting a massive media promotion of this transit next week. We are all hoping that it is covered by CNN, the Today Show and Good Morning America at the top of their programs on Tuesday. Hopefully, there will not be any pressing international news to conflict with the cosmic event.

At 6:00 PM I got my hair cut at Noggins in Wheaton, Maryland by 'Pat'. She was very excited about seeing the transit and wished me luck in Greece.

For dinner, we decided to have a breakfast meal of pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon. Sometimes we decide to do this just to break the routine of big heavy dinner meals, plus there was too much going on tonight to spend time preparing meals!

We finally went to bed around 11:00 PM. For me, however, I was already thinking about how it will actually be 7:00 AM in the morning in Greece. How in the world am I going to adjust to the 8-hour time difference, and still be crisp and ready to go for Tuesday's webcast?