I love heights, but I get the fear of falling off something high, coupled with a suspicion that the monkey brain is shrieking "Go for it! Jump! It'll be awesome while it lasts!" I have freaked out people I've been with re: heights.

Hubby didn't have a fear of heights till he suffered inner ear damage in a firefighter chopper crash. I've seen studies that a lot of the space-related phobias are related to such damage.

I have much more fear of mechanical failure than fear of heights. But also a large streak of fatalism, so maybe I could manage to force myself onto one of those clear thingies.

Although I actually have a stronger reaction to other people being near edges of cliffs and whatnot, so if there was a crowd that would probably be bad for me.

The Branson thing is from an April fools day missive.

Right after I posted I really did climb a ladder to hang a light and some publicity dude was shooting video of me. I hope he gets stuff more interesting than that.

One problem with buying presents online is when they arrive and look small and stupid. @@

Munroe's lurking again. [link]

That is awesome.

One of the meanest things I ever saw my father do took place on the catwalk of the big observatory at Palomar. [link]

We were walking around it with some visitors, and one of the women mentioned she was afraid of heights, and kind of freaking out about the catwalk, which at the time was unpainted metal grating.

My father's response was to lean down and pick up a piece of the grating to show that it wasn't bolted down.

I'm planning on taking CJ to the Grand Canyon after Spring Training in March. Now I'm looking at hitting the skywalk on the western side instead of just joing to the south rim.

Lee, your father is clearly evil.

I was going to make snickerdoodles tonight, but I might just lounge around. I'm so lazy.

Oh god, telescope catwalks. The main one I grew up with was solid concrete, I was fine. Then they built this one, ARC 3.5 m [link] - the doors on the bottom are oversized. Unpainted metal grating, not so bad at this angle, but when it is rotated 180, it's a steep drop. Grates are bad enough, the exit door ABOVE the railing? Worse. I always have to go out backwards, even now with the extra (which is recent.) However, there is a hatch on the top of the enclosure, and I've spent a lot of time up top. Just not near the edges. And I can't even deal with the Sloan platform at all: [link] (the boxy one at the front. ALL GRATING.)

I fear falling and the lure of falling as well. I have to go up the wallside more than 1 loop up from the bottom on our open stairwells (5 stories.)