Training Update

Just a quick note, I did a 21+ mile run on Sunday which is officially the last long run in my training for the Houston Marathon on Jan 18th. I will still be running between now and the race but I get to start the taper so I am fresh for the race. I'm really looking forward to the race and know at this point that there is pretty much nothing left to do but run it. I'm not sure if I will make my time goal. I have done ok on the previous long runs for time, but you really do start to break down towards the end and that is still 4 something miles short of the marathon finish line. Here's hoping race day adrenaline does its job!

Still not too late to make a difference in my fundraising either. Thus far with your help we've raised $385 for the Gulf Coast Hurricane Ike Relief Fund to help meet the needs of those most affected by the hurricane. Donations are tax deductible and can still be made for 2008!! Let's try and get over $500 before the marathon!

Slicing and Dicing

One of the things I've wanted to upgrade around the kitchen for a long time now is my knives since I've been using the same set of serrated blades since college. Since buying actual real knives is a "lifetime" investment since any good knife will never need to be replaced, we went and got the real deal. I had been looking at a set of Wusthof's but ultimately went a different route. BTW, for anyone who cares the Grand Prix, Classic, and Culinar Wusthof lines all have the same blades but the price difference is based entirely on the handles, being plastic, wood, and stainless in that order and price.

I did a bunch on Internet research and, I guess ultimately unsurprising, several Japanese knife makers came up repeatedly for their quality knives. I say unsurprising since the knife makers are also the makers of samurai swords which any kung fu film clearly demonstrates the sharpness of those!! :) We got a set of the Shun Classic knives (right handers, so any lefties that try to cook in my kitchen are going to have to use the old crappy knives) and they are phenomenal!! I can actually cut through a tomato without any pressure and crushing and that's with the less then perfect factory edge. They actually get better once I really sharpen them! It makes me want to do a whole infomercial demo cutting through onions, carrots, and a shoe, but no I'll resist. They should hold up to the shoe, but really I'm not going to be the one to find out otherwise.

Woo Hoo! More nifty cooking tools!

Happy Christmas!

John and I had a great morning with just a few presents between us and a nice relaxing morning. I made mannaesh for breakfast which we ate with moroccan mint tea, which seems to be a growing tradition for us since I think I made this a couple years in a row now on Christmas morning. We also had the obligatory "A Christmas Story" on TV while we opened presents and made phone calls to all the family. Right now we are getting ready to have several people over for dinner, a bunch of TX transplants who also aren't making back to the real world this Christmas holidays.

So from our house to yours, Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas to all!

Rustic Ravioli

This weekend was pretty awesome. I used a little of my sick time I am otherwise going to lose Friday and it was also John's Friday off from the 9-80s he's working. We used that day to finish Christmas shopping for each other and cleaned the house a bit. We had my work party Friday night, good times telling stories till late. Party attendance also didn't disappoint since it was the usual suspects, all of the Operations team shows up, only two of the Systems and Analysis team shows up. Most people, don't realize there is a great divide in personalities of engineers between who is fun and who isn't as my soon-to-be-ex team most definitely exemplifies.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing not much of anything which was enjoyable. Watched movies and football, played video games, etc. But Saturday night I made my second attempt at homemade ravioli. It tasted way good with a spinach-ricotta filling and came out great, better than last time. I also whipped up a homemade tomato basil sauce for it, so it was yummy all around. Visual appeal, however, was still lacking and it still has to be categorized as "rustic" or perhaps more like "primitive". I am still trying to figure out how people can hand make ravioli that resembles something other than ragged, lopsided shapes that look all funny when cooked. Those Italians know something I don't.

I'm Blue Over You

John talked to Dell yesterday. Want to know why it is going to take two months to get our new laptop? Because it is blue... as in the color... as in, if I knew it was going to take two months I would have just ordered black. And we would, except they seem to be completely incompetent and can't just switch the color on the order for a computer that hasn't even been built yet but has every other component sitting on shelves in stock. Now I know why we get a good discount.

Dell-usional

John and I were going to do our part to help the economy this winter by replacing our ancient computer at home with a shiny new laptop. Not really, but it sounds like a good excuse to upgrade to a real computer. After doing loads of research and whatnot, we decided the best deal was on a unit from Dell with my Boeing discount code. It was going to be sweet with upgrades to a bunch of components, 4GB of RAM, and a blu-ray installed. We ordered it online with the Black Friday sale and it was supposed to ship on 12/9.

On 12/9 I received an email saying it was delayed until 12/16. No big deal, just a week. Today (being the aforementioned 12/16) I received an email saying it won't ship until 1/19!! That's right, JANUARY 19th. WTF?!?! The email also said we had to call and confirm we still want the laptop with this ship date or the order would be cancelled for us.

Well guess what, we want you to cancel the darn thing!! Two months for a laptop? In this economic climate, this is your customer service? Recessions cause bad companies that can otherwise get by to fail and you're well on your way.

Needless to say, I'm super annoyed with this outcome. More so because now we have to start the laptop search all over again, only this time there aren't any Black Friday sales and I don't know who's running what sales anymore that we already missed. Maybe your competitors at HP or Toshiba will hook us up with a deal through Best Buy. Way to go Dell, pretty sure you lost me as a customer for more than just this 1 laptop sale.

Hey Hey 30k

After a 2 Christmas Party evening last night, I got up early this morning for the Lakes of Williams Ranch 30k, part of the marathon warm-up series and my training. Wowie, so I finished and I am really happy with the time of 2:48:11. This means I finished on my marathon goal pace even if it did hurt quite a bit in the last couple miles.

It was nice at the beginning when I hooked up with two other runners that were running around my pace and the three of us stuck it out for awhile. But, the girl pulled away around mile 10 and ended up finishing 10 or so minutes in front of me as my pace was slowing by this point. She said she had previously run a marathon in 3:40 so this wasn't unsurprising. The guy we were running with dropped back from me around mile 12, so that felt good for me at least. But he said he did half marathons, the 18 miles was a strech for him. So all in all, good running buddies to have for as along as we stuck together.

As for me, I will be spending the rest of the day on the counch most likely and taking a nap since I am already rather sleepy. Good night... zzzzzzzzz.

Tough Day at Work

Today the 747 carrying Endeavour back to KSC flew over JSC. It doesn't do this often since we aren't exctly in the flight path from Edwards to the Cape. Neato though, so now I saw this bird on the pad, launch, dock (TV), work the mission and all associated activities (TV), and now fly over my work no its way home. What a month. It circled JSC a couple times, but out here at Ellington Field it made "missed approaches" if you will twice shooting Runway 35R twice at low-altitude. Heck-yea, this is one amazing day at the office when all I have to do is run outside for a view of this. Here is my not so great pictures from my point and shoot. I should be able to get some really great ones from a guy here that was using a SLR with a zoom lens.

City Dawgs

The snow made it through the night since the temperature managed to hover right around freezing but by 8am it is already starting to rapidly disappear. However, before I left for work I wanted to try and get some pictures of my huskies in the snow. This is the second time they've seen snow in their lives (yes lame fact for these SIBERIAN HUSKIES!!), again however, I wasn't in town the last time it snowed so still doesn't count.

What is really sad though is that my wussified, city dawgs don't want to play in the snow because it is clearly too cold. Lotus I got to run around in it a bit, but she ran away and went inside when I threw some at her. Yasha, who doesn't really like being on even warm grass, was a no show on the cold snow. So I have one quick picture of Lotus standing in the half melted snow and that's all I can get. I love my dogs, but if they were human I'd be telling them to "suck it up."

Global Snowing

After work I hit up a work party on Clear Lake and left to find SNOW!! Holy crapola, honest to goodness SNOW!! in Houston on Clear Lake. WTF?!?! I know if snowed here like 5 years ago but I wasn't in town that week so it doesn't count. So really this is my first snow in Houston and I am still quiet incredulous. So here it is proof! Our neighbors and their kids were out throwing snowballs when I got home and right now someone is running around the neighborhood yelling "Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!". Wow, Washington is 0-12, Cougars win the CrApple Cup, and now given that hell hath frozen over, it's snowing in Houston.

Our Backyard!!


Our House and Cars!!

Tree-mendous

Last night John and I got our Christmas Tree and I got all the decorations on it. We were a little light on tree decorations previously, but our tree is a little bigger than normal this year at a full 7ft. So now it is a little bare I think. If anyone know of any good deals on tree ornaments, let me know. I'd normally wait until after christmas sales, but if there are pre-Christmas sales I'll pick some up sooner for the tree.

Hello Goodbye

I guess when there are any big changes in your life it leads to a lot of mixed emotion. I am changing jobs at the end of the month and its pretty radical as I will be changing companies to make this come about. I will start on the Constellation Program on Jan 5th doing Systems Avionics Integration and I am really excited for the change and the new experience. So that is all something I'm looking forward to and happy for.

Except everyday I have left at my current company is another sad goodbye, as if any goodbye wasn't, to be leaving what I've been doing and the people I've worked with for the last seven years. Today was my last day on-console in the ISS MER. We've been through a lot in there bringing this bird to life and I wish everyone the best in the future for all that remains to be done. Kevin had the Flight Director give me my send off and the go ahead for my final on-call which was nice. It is very strange to have that happen though, it just feels rather abrupt. This morning I was there and now I'm... not.

"I say high, you say low
You say why, and I say I don't know"

Weekends in Winter

This was a busy weekend for us but in all the right ways. Friday night we went to El Tiempo in the Heights for dinner with Kim, Lia, and Eric. I haven't gotten to see Kim or Lia in awhile, so it was super-nice to be able to catch up. I didn't realize quite how long it had been though and we had a year plus worth of catching up. Sad, but hopefully we won't let that happen again.

Saturday was the Metro Invitational Pool Tournament to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. We got double eliminated after the two games, but that is fine by us. Neither of us have played pool in awhile, so it really just meant we got to hang out with everyone.

One thing we hadn't gotten updated on the Blog was our house status. Right before Thanksgiving we finally got all the repairs completed from the Ike hurricane damage. So we now have a house with a brand new roof that doesn't have two holes in it, new chimney, and the study has been completely drywalled, textured, and carpeted. John and I are going to paint in there ourselves, that is if we can agree on a color...

MERT

Since I am changing jobs at the end of the month, I have to start saying goodbye to some of the things I've been doing for an awful long time now. One of those is the MERT (Medical Emergency Response Team) at work. We get trained to respond to emergencies at work and come help out with medical stuff until the paramedics arrive. I've responded to many calls over the years, but the best part of the team was our training and our awesome instructor Rebecca. I'll miss this part of my job which really had absolutely nothing to do with my job. But usually, the best things are, right? We had a BBQ lunch today at work for all of the MERTs from the all the buildings in appreciation (unrelated to me leaving). Good times and I'm glad I got to say goodbye to Rebecca in person and not by email.