The year was 1993 and my parents gave me a choice: I could go to Space Camp or the whole family could go on a cross-country camping trip to California and back.

Not much of a choice, really. When you’re a good kid, as I was, you end up volunteering to test your family bonds for weeks of travel in a minivan. You let the idea of Space Camp, which you’ve dreamt of attending since you were eight years old, go.

Fast forward a little more than a decade and you’ve become an adult, you have a job, you’ve found the love of your life and get a new job in the big city. The world is looking pretty good and you’re content. You then find out that your betrothed is going to Space Camp for work. You then become more jealous than you’ve ever been since you were a child.

Amanda wears her NASA flight suit at pretty much every opportunity.

Jump forward another decade and you realize you’re closer to retirement than you were to being eight. You’re thinking about summer vacation plans when you see a tweet track by in your Twitter stream and it’s someone talking about Adult Space Camp. You immediately forward that tweet to your nerd of a wife and suggest going. She says yes. You are so happy you find yourself dancing like Snoopy when you tell your boss you’re going.

I guess the whole point of this somewhat rambling post is that I will finally be living a childhood dream this summer. (Amanda notes this is becoming a theme; we fulfilled my dream of learning to sail this past November.) We will have much more information about the trip as the the date gets closer.