7/16/19-Tues.-Experiencing a bad asthma exacerbation. It's been continuing, getting worse despite treatment, for a couple weeks. Bother. Apollo 11 blasted off for the Moon on 7/16/69. Fifty years ago this week, Lance Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon. They say most everyone alive in July, 1969, remembers what he or she was doing at the actual time (on 7/20/69) Armstrong stepped down to the Moon's surface from the Lunar Module, called Eagle. I was in the summer of 1969 again a student at the University of Texas in Austin, finishing up an undergrad degree begun in the fall of 1961. (I would not graduate until 1972.) On that day, July 20, I was in a small restaurant near the campus "Drag," just north of the intersection of Guadalupe and 24th Street. They had a 19-inch analogue TV on. While I enjoyed my meal at the counter, I watched, fascinated, as the unprecedented event was occurring, apparently broadcast to the world by NASA in real time. A few years later, I was more settled and completed a two-year masters degree in rehab. counseling with all "A's." Despite my slow start, my wife and I would successfully retire from our regular jobs when I had just turned 58 and she 45.

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