Shakin' It in Seattle

This weekend John and I are up in the Old Pacific Northwest for Mona and Shaun's wedding Saturday. We flew in Wednesday and had a great view of Mt. Rainier from the plane which was great because it's a nice big welcome back from the big Texas. Wednesday night we hung with the parents and had a nice dinner.

Thursday was the big night for all Mona's fabulous and eclectic crowd of girls to go out on the town. Noelle put on an awesome night and did all the party planning including drinks and apps at the Can-Can for the show, dinner, and more drinks at Barrio (fabulous lamb chops included!) at a VIP table/section, and then the die-hards (a.k.a. people that didn't have to go work in the morning) headed over to Neighbors for some dancing. Ah memories of college dancing at Neighbors. We were also hits of the club looking all fabulous and we even made a new friend "Marissa", which was most definitely an assumed name. ;) Here is Mona with Noi and Noelle and me with Mona's BFF from high school Heather. Good night with some way cool girl's, some old and some new friends.


There was also some minuscule 4.5 earthquake this morning at 5:30, but I think we were all way too tired to notice something like that. Tonight, rehearsal dinner and wedding tomorrow.

What Century Is It?

See I thought we were in the 21st century, but then I tried to install our old printer on the new laptop for use. First, I thought I was crazy because I had to put in the "cd" to get the drivers. Wait a minute doesn't the internet do that stuff? Oh but then I did it and it still didn't work.

So back to aforementioned internet to find in 15 seconds of google, that the Lexmark 3100 series all-in-one printers will not work with the Vista 32 or 64 bit systems. hmmm... so I'll ask again, are we in the 21st century? Because this sure feels like a problem I had back in the 20th century?

Seriously, I was willing to give Vista a chance and now I want my XP back.

On Top Again

My Saturday Gilruth soccer team tends to do pretty well... when we get a full team to show up. This season the games were played on the mini-field they call a soccer pitch at Gilruth and played 9 on 9 to accommodate. Anyhow, we made it to the playoffs (top 4 teams) like we normally do but played the back to back playoff/championship to two wins and the Championship. This season for some fabulous reason, Gilruth decided to give us a big, honking wood-soccer-ball trophy as the champions instead of t-shirts because this is a totally more reasonable item that one person needs in their house. At least I'm NOT the manager and don't have to feel obligated to keep this around. Here is us posing after the game with our prize.

Stats

I already felt pretty good about just finishing the marathon, but for an added boost I looked up the stats on my finish today.

My official time: 4:28:44
My finish was ahead of 50% of the entire field and 62% of the entrants in the Female 25-29 division. So hey, I'm still above average for even what I consider, on a personal level, to be a sub-par run. I'll take it!

Miles in the Rearview Mirror

YAY!!! I finished the 2009 Houston Marathon this morning!! My first marathon and something anyone reading this blog knows I've been training for. Good news from the race, I FINISHED!! This was really my backup goal, my primary being under 4 hrs which I really tanked on.

The recap, I intended to stay with the 4hr pace group (9:10 mile splits) for the race. However, I just could not settle in during the race at this pace and never really got my breathing right which is a sure sign I am going too fast even though by all normal measures I shouldn't have been. In any case, I dropped from the pace group at mile 11 conceding on my time goal at that point. The rest of the race turned into a 'keep moving' event. At a slightly lower pace, I was pretty comfortable up until mile 17 and then everything started to go. My legs didn't want to work and things were cramping. So the last 10 miles was done rather slowly in a jog-shuffle-walk-repeat fashion. IT HURT!! BADLY! But the point is, I kept moving and eventually crossed the finish line in 4 hrs and 28 min. So good enough.

As for what I think happened to my race since I've run longer than 17 miles 4 times and not had these problems, I don't think the taper was as good for me as they say. Its supposedly recommended to really cut back on the running the last three weeks before the marathon to be fully rested. Unfortunately, I think my body goes "oh cool, we're not running anymore" and just drops fitness a little faster than most. Not the first time I've suspected this, but if I ever do a marathon again (and the jury is still out) I will keep this in mind. I could just tell after a couple miles this morning it "felt" like I hadn't run in weeks rather than just being rested and ready to go.

For now, I'm just happy to be done with all 26.2 of the miles. And thank you to everyone who contributed to the Gulf Coast Hurricane Relief Fund in support of this run!

Also congrats to Charlie, Erin, Todd, and Tarik for completing the half marathon!! Josh and Melissa for the 5K!! And thanks to all the supporters that came out to cheer me and everyone else on, it really does make a difference!


Jaime got this picture of me shuffling towards the finish in the last quarter mile.

A good start to the weekend

Last night we had some friends over for a traditional carb-loading meal before the big race Sunday morning. This year, only Nujoud is running the full marathon while Lisa, Tarik, Charles Raymond, Alicia, Erin, and Todd are all running the 1/2 marathon. Josh and Melissa Green are running the 5k. Nujoud made the pasta and meatballs and everyone else chipped in with salads and sides.

Alicia and Brent brought Max with them, the puppy that I wanted to keep and the mean wife said "NO" to (just kidding we really have no room for 3 dogs....but man, is he ever cute). But he is my God dog, so if anything ever happens where Brent and Alicia can't take care of him....I got dibbs!!!

This morning, I played in our weekly flag football game with some friends and had a good time. I was running faster and didn't ever feel winded. That's a sure sign that the running I've been doing is paying off. Since December 26th (figured I'd get a one week head start on the rest of the New Year's resolution crowd) I've started using the elliptical machine at the local gym. I prefer this method of cardio since it is much, much less taxing on my knees. I'm now up to doing 5-6 miles each session, at a 8:15 pace per mile, 4-5 times per week. I know that doing 5 miles on the elliptical is not equivalent to running 5 miles on pavement, but it's still better than not running at all and I'm not hung up on distance ran anyways, only pounds lost. So far I am down about 4lbs with about 10 to go.

So, after lunch, Nujoud and I were discussing how my airbag warning light has been flashing in the Sentra for about 4 years now...no exaggeration. It started flashing about 60,000 miles ago and I just ignored it...until today. This is why I love the internet: I Googled my airbag warning light problem and found a computer reset procedure. If there is no real problem, it'll make the light stop flashing....if there is a problem with the system the light will continue to flash. Well, 30 seconds later and problem solved!!!! I just can't believe that I didn't Google this long, long ago and save myself the grief of people always telling me that I should have it checked out. Oh well, I figure the internet just saved me at least $100 (One hour labor for a Nissan tech to do the same thing I did at home).

Little Black Dress

This last weekend was really good, even if it felt extremely short after the long holiday vacation. Saturday involved soccer and running for me and just running on the elliptical for John who has restarted his workouts. But Saturday night, we got to get all spiffed up for a Holiday party. Weird that it was in January, but in any case my new company was having its holiday party in downtown H-town at The Houston Club. Apparently, its a swanky club type place with gym, ballrooms, and more for its members. Someone told us you have to be "invited" by two current members to be able to join the "club". Whatever, we were just having our holiday party there and the party was nice with dinner, music, and the fake casino stuff for raffle tickets. It was great especially since I thought I pretty much knew like 2 people at my new company but it turned out that we knew a couple folks from football and softball and ended up having a really good time. If anything it was a good excuse to get John in his suit and for me to pull that little black dress out of the closet.

Sunday, I went on a short cross-country with Jen over to Wharton and back. Nothing fancy but it was good to get up in the air. Sunday afternoon involved football watching with friends at our place and a short visit by Grant, my first cousin by marriage. Grant needed a place to crash before a business trip here and we were happy to have him. We also got to meet his Mom and sister and a few of our neighbors from a few hoods over who know his family. Small world. It was a good visit and we hopefully he'll get to swing by again and stay awhile some time.

Now we are back at work. I am completely swamped at work and can't figure out how. I've only been there a week, I don't really know what I'm doing, but everything has to be done tomorrow. Really, as in I worked way late today after going in very early (7am) for a meeting because I have to have this information from people to turn in Thursday morning. Quite a change since I was bored often at my last job and now everything is a mile a minute, which is a good thing.

Intelligence Recession

John is watching I.O.U.S.A. on TV and it is making me want to write something that I've been thinking of for awhile. So right now we are supposedly in a "recession", as in the economy isn't doing as well as it used to be. To get out of this we've got our wonderfully smart politicians to save us by borrowing enormous amounts of money and spending it. I don't care if you are red or blue here that is pretty much every one's solution and it only really differs on what it gets spent on.

Well, I kinda have a problem with this assessment, what everyone thinks we can "do" about it, and how we got here in the first place. My basic premise is this and I am not going to do any funky math because I think it is just going to obscure my points.

1. Since the early 1990s the country has been living on debt in the form of loans and credit cards. We've all heard the numbers from time to time about how much debt people are holding and how there is negative savings for people.
2. We all have heard of or know about people that have lived well beyond their means on said debt trying to keep up with the Jones'.
3. Our own country has been living on borrowed money and outspending its means. Furthermore, our government has in fact encouraged reckless consumer behaviour over the last 15-ish years if not more to "keep the economy going" by spending, keeping home interest rates absurdly low when they shouldn't have been, and not bothering to regulate or even just plain enforce the current economic regulations.
4. So now our house of cards has fallen, people are at least pretending to understand the idiocy of the excessive spending and may in fact be living within their means.
5. If people are in fact now living within their means for whatever reasons, THIS IS THE NORMAL STATE OF THE ECONOMY. Our economy was operating on an artificial high through borrowed cash or credit which means this isn't a recession, it's a reset.
6. All the new spending on whatever government program (again red or blue) to reinvigorate the economy is essentially throwing money down a hole. If our economy is right-sized now (my words) because people have stopped spending on the margins and credit, we can't exactly regain that fake economy no matter how much the government borrows and we have to pay back with interest later.

So forgive me for being a little but of a downer about all this, but I'm in the generation that gets to pay for all this junk in the future and my retirement age is increasing by the minute (or dollar spent). So if you want my opinion on what we should do, and do you really expect that I don't have one, start slashing the federal budget so that if is actually in the black. If we are going to borrow money, then I think it should all go straight to either research and development programs (in any arena NASA, energy, biology, anything that could drive the cutting edge) and maybe infrastructure. R&D is real trickle down economics, you pay a whole lot of white collar educated people salaries, which drive the need for education, housing, and every other service industry to support the base. Money spent on R&D is all money that stays in the country and actually works to develop some real "thing" which advances the country and helps keep us on top.

That's it, that's what I think. So in my pessimistic opinion, get used to it, because this is reality. But please don't start spending on credit, it was never a smart thing to do in the first place.

Proto--Rover

Today before an all-hands meeting on site, the new prototype for a Moon Rover was driven around in a short demonstration. The demo occurred right in front of the building I now work in so it was easy for me to run downstairs and watch. Gotta say it was pretty neat. The rover demo they did was a short practice run since NASA is going to be represented in the Inauguration Day Parade by the rover. The rover can drive in any direction, crab, and raise up and down. The thing is part of the Constellation program and would be able to take a couple astronauts around on the moon completely independently for a couple of days. The suits on the back are entered through the back directly from the inside of the rover so you can go do science and stuff without bringing the nasty moon dust back in side. That is very important because, as they found on Apollo, the dust is very fine and sticks to everything and can wreck equipment and seals and everything.

In any case, be watching for NASA's little PR moment during the parade!

Holiday Photos

Here are some of the photos from the holidays, mostly New Year's. Happy 2009 to everyone!

Dell Pulls Through

YAY!! So several good things happening today, first the hurricane fundraising hits the goal, and second, our new laptop ordered on Black Friday arrived today and so far it's pretty sweet. I was pleasantly surprised to find it that it does NOT have a bunch or crap trial programs added on it and is a very, very clean setup. Having not actually used Windows Vista before, my first impression is also positive on that. I'm not quite sure if it will hold up but we do have the upgraded 32-bit Vista to run on the dual processor which is supposed to have a lot fewer problems. Although, as we have been reading in the news, Vista is being abandoned by Microsoft already for Windows 7 to be out in a year or something. Oh well. We'll see what happens there. (CUE: all the we heart Mac comments here) But also, I always sick John on any Customer Service people when we have problems because he is persistent and gets results. Our laptop also comes with $100 knocked off because of the delay and because they had to do something to get John off the phone. Hooray for John!

I am also going to try out the new SD card slot and finally get the New Year's Eve pictures off of my camera later. Also have some cool pics I took this morning at work to post. Will be doing so later tonight.

Hooray for Givers!!

As of today, we passed the $500 mark on the fundraising for the Gulf Coast Hurricane Relief Fund!! YAY!! I would like to extend one BIG THANK YOU to all those that donated. It's a small way of helping out those less fortunate and many of the contributors were from right here in Houston who already had their own hurricane related issues to deal with. So THANK YOU again! For those that haven't donated, there is still time. Just head on over to http://www.active.com/donate/ike09/nujoud and throw in a few bucks.

The race is just over a week away and I am as ready as I ever will be. Nothing left to do but carb-load which is easily the best part of the deal.

Phone Challenged

It is now my third day at my new job. For anyone that doesn't know, I am now doing avionics integration, specifically the Command, Control, Communications and Information (or C3I) Architecture for the Constellation Program which includes making sure all the new vehicles and buggies that get to orbit, stay in orbit, and roll around on the moon can talk to each other and all the folks back on Earth. I'm still really trying to figure out what exactly I'm going to be doing on the job but it is mostly going to be coordinating changes across the various teams and making sure no one goes and does something to mess up someone else.

Right now I am on-site, hot-desking it and squatting at a table at which I can plunk my temporary company laptop down. The really sucky part thus far has been that I have no NASA email, no NASA computer account or laptop, no access to pretty much anything including the phone directory, and most importantly no PHONE!! Of all things, I am not a fan of the phone, never have never will be, and anyone who knows me knows I don't really use it and just call people to talk. I'd much rather talk in person and actually be with people than on the phone. But since I am working with people all over the country, I don't really have a choice and need to get in touch with people since I've started getting tasks and I am having to borrow the use of someone else's phone. It's already kinda aggravating because, guess what, I can't leave a call back number and I'm not about to drain my personal cell phone minutes by leaving that one.

I'm supposed to be working but I haven't exactly gotten a running start. Hooray, for new jobs!