I keep crying about the Opportunity rover today.

It's been a stressful and emotional day otherwise too, but more than once, something about Opportunity has sent me over the edge; I'm writing this out in a little phone-booth room at work to try and... something.

When Opportunity landed, I was still in college. I knew that. But I looked up details. It was a Sunday. I was at a furry convention. I had just met up with Elanna for the first time in meatspace, a day or two before. I went back to school with some degree of clarity about my life. I was going to graduate, and move out there to California, spend more time with the folks I met out there (Elanna included).

Opportunity's mission was supposed to last 90 days. Before I graduated. I remember being in my dorm room hearing all the cool new things from the Mars rovers, hearing about them continuing on past their original missions. It feels so fresh. I wish it wasn't so long ago.

I graduated. I moved to California. It was okay. I met a lot of folks. I finally started missing New Mexico again after a few years, and in 2007, I visited. We went to a space museum, saw a movie about the rover missions, and their already-unprecedented mission success.

In May 2011, we moved to Seattle. It was pretty good. Less than a month later they called the end of the Spirit rover mission. (I didn't notice at the time, I just saw it when I was researching it today.) Opportunity was still going. Had been going all that time, through so many life changes.

I didn't really pay much attention or think much when they last contact with the rover last summer. For some reason it only hit me now. Now, in the midst of winter, with a myriad of life stresses, when I keep having these bouts of "I wish I could go back to when life was simpler." And then this. For some reason it feels like now I can't. I was in college then. I was working out what to do with my life. Trying new things. And now I keep feeling like I just have to to grow up.

I'll miss you, little rover.