MigroG, MacroFun

I volunteered as a mentor for the NASA microgravity science flights. Really that means I spend some of my personal time translating NASA speak and documentation requirements into plain language for a team of college students doing an experiment onboard the "Weightless Wonder", a.k.a. the Vomit Comet. As a part of spending my time on it, I also get to fly with the team. AND IT WAS AWESOME!

Their experiment was to try and capture the energy of capillary flow. It didn't work so well, but I gave them a lot of ideas for tweaks to try for a second attempt if they apply again for the program. As for the flight, I opted to go without the meds since I needed to go to work that afternoon and couldn't deal with the gnarly side-effects. Since I went without meds, I anticipated and actually did vomit, but not until the 22nd and 29th parabolas and even then not too much since my stomach was already empty. I had a great time and it was amazing, we did 32 parabolas with 1 of those lunar and 1 martian. I am definitely volunteering again because getting to do something like this is well worth the time spent helping the teams.

As for the experience, I think I was most surprised about how much planning goes into moving around. You have to decide where you are going and what you are going to grab onto to get there. If not, you just end up floating away and grabbing at air. Of course that always happens right when they yell that gravity is coming back and you better get down now or get reintroduced to it the hard way. If I go again, hopefully I can concentrate on having more fun and less on trying not to upchuck, but all the same I still loved it.

K&K Attack

Last week, John's cousins Kirby and Kassie came to visit and get a vacation between spring semester and starting work for the summer. We had a great time and Zara really warmed up to them after a couple days. We packed in a lot of activities including a baseball game, NASA tour, beach, Schlitterbahn, and a trip to the outlet malls for some shopping. Everyone had a great time and it was good to get to hang out with them for awhile. We also got to see Brian and DeAnn with the kids down for a work trip from Colorado. All in all a great week with great people. Some pictures from the week below.

Mountain High, Oxygen Low

This week I had to go up to Denver for a few days work, always a nice place to be sent for a few days since we have so many friends in the area. I stayed with our good friends John and Jen and we went hiking Sunday evening after I arrived. I got a good set of pictures even though I was using my point and shoot and the album is below. There are a few pictures from a second hike organized by a coworker Tuesday after work also.

Otherwise, in my full schedule of the trip Monday night I had a long dinner with my cousin Anna at a place called Root Down which had some pretty awesome food. Beet gnocchi and sweet potato 'falafel' are definitely good alternates to the standards. It was also really nice to get to talk for a long time and catch up. We usually only see each other in the midst of 50 relatives at Thanksgiving and our time to gab is somewhat limited.

Fish Tales

I downloaded the couple pics the boys shot on the boat. Here is one of Shaun and one of his catch. The lineup is boat wide, not just our boys.

Adventures of Aunt and Uncle

My sister Mona and brother-in-law Shaun were visiting us here in Houston for a full 9 days last week and it was great to be able to have them here for an extended period. Long weekends just aren't long enough sometimes. This was a big visit, so big blog post. Our Memorial Day weekend got semi-derailed as I ended up working a bunch for the mission but we still had a good time at things like the Dynamo soccer game and outlet mall shopping. But with the mission, they were here for the crew return ceremony, so we went over so they could see that at Ellington.

Then John and Shaun headed out for a two day offshore fishing trip. While the boys were gone, Mona and I had an awesome girls day at the spa and lunch after. For the locals, we went to the Garden Spa at Memorial Herman on 59 South and they have much better pricing than typical spas and excellent service to boot. All of our treatments were great and I'd totally go again. On Saturday, we took Zara to the beach and it was her first time at an age and weather conditions that allowed her to actually play in the water. SHE LOVED IT! We know she likes the water but I have never seen her so dedicated to any activity for that long. I could just sit in the shallow water and she played with her buckets and splashed for hours. Definitely on the "must do again and often" list.



Then Saturday evening the boys returned from a pretty epic fishing trip where they combined to catch over 250lbs and Shaun caught the most on the boat. The pulled in king mackerel, bee liner, black fin tuna, snapper, and (my fav of the catch) yellow fin tuna. They had a great time and we have a monster freezer haul after a late night assembly line breaking the rough prepped fillets down to meal size steaks and fillets. Here are the boys with the haul and HALF the catch in the freezer as the other half made its way up to Seattle Sunday. We were sorry to see them go, but glad we all got to spend so much time together.

STORRMs of All Forms

I posted this on Facebook awhile ago but not here. This is the overview for the STORRM project I've been working on (yes, you can play Where's Nujoud in the video too). It is the rendezvous and docking sensor for Orion being test flown on this shuttle flight (STS-134 currently 11 days into the mission). This is just one of the things I do, but I've been a part of the team for almost a year and a half. Personality conflicts have been a major factor all along and that plus real-time ops has been fairly tiring this week. I'm supposed to be doing this and my "regular" work but regular work has now been essentially dropped until at least next week.

But even with all that, it is almost getting lost how PHENOMENAL the data was on rendezvous Flight Day 3 our sort of warm-up day. Our prime objectives will all be hit on Undocking and Re-Rendezvous Flight Day 15 (yea, Memorial Day weekend) and expectations are really high. I will definitely post some data photos when they get released publicly later. Right now you can find images from the camera (which look like all the other photos of ISS) on the MPCV-Orion Facebook or Twitter pages. The real meat of the experiment, the flash LiDAR, have not yet been publicized.

Bad to Good in 4Hrs

This weekend Zara started sleeping extra and didn't seem as hungry as normal, but still drinking plenty of fluids. It seemed like maybe a growth spurt or just one of those things toddlers go through. But Monday at school she was even sleepier and was full on asleep when i picked her up which was very strange and durign the evening she went downhill and was just lethargic. That got a call to the pedi and a first thing Tuesday morning visit to the doc. By that point though she stopped putting out any sort of liquids or for that matter taking them in until the massive antibiotic shot dose kicked in during the afternoon.

It was, as suspected, a urinary tract infection but man what a difference a few hours can make. Seeing your kid with that little amount of energy is not fun at all, but seeing them start laughing again so quickly is amazing.

Eye Can See!

Ok, I really could see all along, but it is pretty decent again. I had my post-op follow up yesterday and given all the growth back over my eyes, I'm still not perfect. The right eye is 20/30, left 20/40 which makes for a weird visual to be unbalanced. But they are both way better than before and should get better little by little over the next couple weeks until they are fully healed.

All in all, I'm already pretty happy about my vision so I can't wait until I am fully healed. This morning since I had to come in super early to the MCC, I drove in the dark for the first time and wow what a difference. Before I had to wear my glasses driving at night because that was a total mess (daylight I was okay without them). So it was pretty neat to do so (safely) this morning with just bare eyeballs.

As for the MCC, STS-134 launched and this is the mission we are test flying the Orion Flash LiDAR rendezvous sensor on and I've been training the crew to operate. It is kinda nostalgic to be back on-console for something. Awwww... Mission ops, *tear*.

Eye Update- Day 3

No more burning or dry eye sensation (nice surprise when I woke up) and they feel fine. But I have full on bad vision as predicted today. I am totally using old man size font on my computer, but can comfortably work with the brightness turned down otherwise. My eyes aren't getting tired in seconds like they were if I was looking at anything bright. I must say this is the weirdest part of the whole experience thus far. I have always had really good near vision and can read minute details, so not being able to read large font clearly is kinda scary. Preview of old age and the eventual need for reading glasses I presume.

Eye Update- Day 2

I found out what those pain meds were for. I still haven't taken most of them, but I did wake up at 1am and had to go drop in some of the eye numbing ones. My eyes just felt like they were burning and I couldn't sleep anymore like that. Downside of those meds though is they made my eyes so tired even after I woke up I could barely keep them open while awake.

The pain is back down now, but everything is a lot fuzzier today. Hopefully that means the healing is going quickly. I think I am a lot more light sensitive today too. Dumb thing was I put off a paper review for my microgravity college team I'm mentoring and had to do that *very slowly* just now with lots of eye breaks. Even now I'm glad I am a much better touch typer than I used to be and can do this with my eyes mostly closed.