It is one of those interesting little quirks of life, when living with human beings.

That we might find at our dinner table on Saturday a woman who headed up one of the crews searching the Texas landscape for fragments of the Space Shuttle Columbia. With the tale of the strict rules employed on the search, including a complete ban of photography, and a requirement that any indication of a missed piece of search line, according to the GPS, called for immediate repeat of the line.

And of her discovery of a moderately-sized piece of that space vessel. And the subsequent thank you letter, not from a generic "NASA", but from the head of the team that designed said piece.

And, unfortunately, the fear that said document, and all assorted official NASA and Columbia trinkets, may not have survived a move.