NOT A NAVY THING BUT INTERESTING:

we had been excitedly talking about my ‘realistic course of action’ that would result in me becoming an astronaut. dad said ‘did i ever tell you about the astronaut who put his thumb—’ i smiled and nodded and made a ‘squinched-out’ thumb gesture. dad continued ‘well, so i guess he became some kind of preacher after this. he has a following. after he figured out you can do that thing, blot out the earth with your thumb, it’s just this tiny dot.’

a little later dad said ‘this story is a little embarrassing but i’ll tell it anyway. so, the astronaut who did the thumb thing, he apparently grew up in chicago in this poor neighborhood where the walls were paper-thin, and his bedroom—he lived next to the mcmanus family—his bedroom was right next to mr. and mrs. mcmanus’ bedroom, so he heard everything. this might’ve been another astronaut, this might’ve been neil armstrong. anyway, so one night he hears mrs. mcmanus [looked away and sort of chuckled], mrs. mcmanus from the bedroom, she says ‘i’ll put that thing in my mouth the day they send a man to the moon!” dad laughed and i laughed a little less. i said ‘oh noooooo. no way. you’re making that up, that’s not real.’ dad was still laughing. he said ‘no, it’s really real—they asked him what he was thinking about when he landed on the moon, so that’s what he [continued laughing].’ i laughed a little more.

10:34pm: throughout dinner waiters added tables to a maybe seven-table ‘spread’ of high school-aged girls in the center of the room. a waiter added a table connecting the seven-table spread to the booth behind dad. the girls were loud. at some point after we had finished eating i was telling dad about how astronauts exercise in the international space station (which was built by people adding onto it, like how the waiters were adding tables, didn’t realize this). dad said ‘how do they do it without weights?’ i explained something poorly about a video i watched, think i was gesturing a lot and saying things like ‘they harnessed the vacuum, it’s negative resistance, they use the space vacuum.’ a waiter added another table and dad and i noticed and i took advantage of the moment to say ‘these bitches are annoying, can we go? plus i have to pee.’ dad made a face like he was also annoyed by the bitches and relieved to be relieved of them.