Happy Thanksgiving!

This morning I did the 10k Turkey Trot with Charlie, Carey, and John W. Good race and everyone finished at or near their goal times which is always great. Then we headed over for a Thanksgiving feast at Jaime and Charlie's mmm..mmm..good. Now I am at work but it's not so bad because its only a half shift and I sent Aaron home for his own Thanksgiving. I will mostly try to stay awake and since I can't fall prey to the post Thanksgiving meal nap!

Hope every one's Thanksgiving is a great one! Gobble, Gobble!

Catching up

Realized I hadn't posted in a bit, weekend was busy. Since my parents are in town we had quite a few things going on including a day trip to Lake Charles for some losing of money at L'Auberge du Lac's casino, Saturday went to the Univ of Houston - UTEP football game (which was great) and had a BBQ with friends Sunday. Now I am back on console (read too boring to post anything about) and my parents are off to Arkansas for Thanksgiving with the extended family.

Yesterday it became official that the mission was extended a day, which makes it official that I am working Thanksgiving. MMM... MER coffee for the holiday, what a treat. Actually, it won't be that bad. We will be going over to some friends for a turkey meal and then I will work a half shift (Thank you Aaron for taking the first half!). Happy Turkey Day to all!

Ponderings on Space and History

I have added a link to Wayne Hale's NASA blog here to mine. Even though the category is titled "People we Know", I have never met Wayne but, I don't care, the link stays. Wayne has been around NASA for a long time and was a Shuttle Flight Director until recently when he started working on Constellation. He always writes really good memos and I come across reprints of his blog post on various other websites and think they are always very interesting. So for any other exploreers out there, read on to his blog for whatever interesting story he has lately.

Wittle Baby ISS All Grow'd Up

Today is the 10th birthday of the ISS, Happy Birthday to our own man-made star! On Nov 20th, 1998 (when I was still in college) the first element of the ISS launched which was the FGB (a.k.a. Functional Cargo Block in english, a.k.a. Zarya in PR speak) from the Baikonour Casmodrome. The first element was little more than some basic avionics and some large gas tanks, but all the same you have to start somewhere. Here is a picture of the ISS today (or rather Sunday when the Orbiter arrived) and I marked the FGB so you know just how much we've grown.


Also, here is a picture of me on console from Monday. I may look busy in this photo, but don't be fooled, we are very good at posing for the photographer! In our world, boredom is a good thing because it means all our planning and work up front is right and nothing has yet broken. So I'll take boredom on console any day and hope someone else is too for IM or email.

STS-126 Launchapalooza

Last night we got to watch one heck of a sight in the launch (on-time in perfect weather) of STS-126. What an amazing sight to see a night launch and from only 3 miles away where we were. The pictures I have don't do it justice, I just snapped a couple to say I was there. For good pictures refer to the NASA official photos that are taken with cameras slightly more sophisticated than my point and shoot. I don't know what images captured, but the two best moments in the launch were 1. Ignition (of course and there are pictures of that) and 2. when the Orbiter passed through a thin layer of cirrus clouds. As the orbiter passed through these clouds, we could see the shockwaves ripple through the cloud and cause them to dissipate (all illuminated by the light from the engines). That was the simply awe-inspiring part of the launch and all the better because we certainly didn't expect something like that.

The other cool part of the evening and the whole rest of the SFA trip for that matter was that our good friends Brian and DeAnn were also there. DeAnn got an SFA for her hard work on the ATV program, Congrats DeAnn! So we had a great time just hanging out and talking while we waited for the launch.

After the launch it took 4.5 hrs to get from KSC back to the hotel in Orlando, that is normally an hour or so trip. We were pretty beat and tired of being on the bus by the time we got back but it was certainly worth it for the launch.

...Now to console tomorrow for docking to "work" the mission.

Canaveral Carnival

John and I are in Florida (as John said, didn't expect to be back here this soon) for the STS-126/ULF-2 Launch. I got an SFA award so it's a pretty nice semi-vacation to be here on the company. Last night we had the company banquet and actually received our framed certificate things, John said it went on forever and included thanks to the floor, the walls, and just about everything else for all their hard work. It wasn't that bad and we at least had a nice dinner with all the other 3 ISS Avionics and SW recipients, spouses, and the VP of the ISS.

Today was the tour of KSC. I've been on a tour previously, so much of it was something of a repeat but it was pretty nice. I didn't take a ton of pictures but the slide show covers everywhere we did go. We did get up pretty close to the pad with 126 on it and that was nice. The best part of this is that since I am the lead for my team for this flight, I've now seen the bird on the pad, may get to see the launch (cross your fingers for good weather tomorrow night), and then am going to make it home to work the docking shift Sunday. Not a normal occurrence to pull that off. Anyhoo, will post an update after the launch. I am really hoping this thing flies on time so we can see it and its a night launch so that should be really awesome to see.



P.S. The random seeming car picture in the middle of the show, isn't really. As we were going between two stops on the tour, we just happened to look over at the car waiting to turn and it held none other than "Spock" himself, Mike Griffen the NASA Administrator. I had the camera in my hand and just snapped one. Can't really see anything, so you'll just have to trust me on that one.

MUDD-E and Proud Of It

Saturday was the Mud Run 10k Race in Ft. Worth. Our team MUDD-E had a great time and certainly qualified under the "muddy" category. It is a great race and is lots of fun even if it was a little slow waiting in line at obstacles and stuff. This though is definitely something we'd go do again and are already planning for the April event when Melissa will be all healed and able to run with us. Since she was sidelined on this race though, we did end up with some fantastic photos for you to enjoy.



Update: After the race Saturday, Melissa went to stay with some friends but the other four of us girls headed out for a nice big post-race dinner. We went to the H3 Ranch in the Ft. Worth Stockyards for some fat steaks and table-side prepared guac (mmmm). We also celebrated with a round of Mudslides which are super-yummy. Cheers!

Sad Cookie News

I just found out Mother's Cookies declared bankruptcy earlier this year. I'm very sad about this because these were always the special cookies when we were little. Everyone loved their white and pink sprinkle covered circus animal cookies and how are kids going to play with their cookies now? What kind of world is it when their are no sprinkle covered animal cookies anymore?

Are We Done Now?

Tuesday was the election as everyone knows. Wednesday slightly more than half the country was extremely happy and slightly less than half was extremely unhappy and many of whom spread some vile hate-speak. Understanding that passions were high because its politics and for some reason that makes it "ok" to lie, cheat, and steal on both sides, now that it is Thursday how about we all go back to just being Americans? To quote the oh so wise Fatboy Slim "Stop the hate, forgive each other."

Haiku for Houston Drivers

too lazy to walk
rolling in big cars too fast
rudely block runners

First Flights

Today I wanted to get a tryout in the Tampico from the aero club so I can go get checked out in it later to fly on my own. The plane is a little different and involved curses to the French a couple times for having a few wacky features, but is otherwise a great little airplane. Becca was PIC, I co-piloted, and since its a 4-place, Alicia came along in the backseat. Jen and Carrie also took out one of the Warriors and we all flew up to Brenham for lunch at the dinner on the field. Good times.

This was also Alicia's first time in a small aircraft and I think she enjoyed it. We also enjoyed her because she didn't get motion sick at all even though we stayed below the clouds in the bumps and a lot of first time fliers do. We even got cleared through class B around Hobby so she got a great view of downtown Houston going by. As proof of the flight her are the pics.

H-town Halloween

Halloween 08 has come and gone. We went over to Beth and John's for the evening to meet up with several other couples and have a pretty chill evening. We handed out candy at our haouse before we left and thankfully didn't come home to toilet paper or eggs later on. Since neither John nor I are super big into costumes, my last minute what's easy but still decent costume idea was 'Mac' and 'PC', as in from the Apple computer commercials. So here we are, I had to be PC since I own a brown tweed jacket. John lucked out getting to wear jeans and a polo, what a champ. And here are also all the girls from the evening, under the sheet is Alicia as Charlie Brown's ghost costume in Great Pumpkin.

From Halloween 08