State of the Union

As we are still in the very early stages of this blog and I try and feel my way out on it. Here is the current situation for me and John just so everyone is on the same jumping off place.

John, clearly already a rising star at his job (only 9 months in), has been assigned for his second rotation in the Engineering Development Program to the Florida gas pipeline construction project as an environmental inspector. This means he has to at least pretend to hug some trees and save the critters that happen to be caught in the way of the big bad bulldozers. I'm trying to convince him that the world would be better off without venomous snakes and alligators, but so far no luck, he has to protect those too. Wildlife Sherriff John to the rescue. This project is supposed to last until August which means, we'll be doing as much shuttling between West Palm Beach and Houston as we can to see each other.

As for myself, work and school. As previously posted mission 1J/A is up and our team is supporting from the ISS Mission Evaluation Room (MER). So a few longs days and nights for my team for now. The other big thing going on for me right now (at the detriment to pretty much any social life) is school. What school you ask? Why Flight School, of course. I am working on getting my private pilots license. The ground school is 3 nights a week of unbelievably slow teaching for how airplanes fly (duh, might have learned that before), what all the weather can do to you in the air, and how not to end up in San Antonio instead of Dallas, otherwise known as navigation. But needless to say, I am super bored in the classes and have complained endlessly about the teaching. As for the fun part - THE FLYING!! I am flying out of Ellington Field and am probably a little more than halfway done. The added bonusat this field is getting to see T-38s, F-16s, C-130s, AV-8Bs, and many more military aircraft taking off and landing right around me, the person in the puny Cessna 172. But in any case it is super fun and I'm good at it. My remaining flight training includes night flying, cross-coutries (as in going 50+ miles to another airport) and solo flight. I am really exicted for the solo stuff but following the "lesson plan" means I have another SIX flights before then, ARGH!

Anywho- back to the console non-fun at work.

The picture was me having snuck into the Flight Controller Picture alongside ADCO Kevin and HAWKI Jeff since our front room actually like us enough to tell us to come up for the picture.