We're going to Colorado!

Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, naaaah!  We're going to see mountains, and lakes, and hike until we're exhausted.  :)  Can you tell I'm excited?  So, don't be expecting any blog entries until next Wednesday, because there is no internet access in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Yesterday, I had a very stressful sim.  Periodically, I guess, one needs reminding that what I do is in fact work.  I think everything ended fairly well, but I am always amazed that it seems to be harder in some ways to pretend to do spaceflight than to actually do it.  Starting a sim is a really complicated (and potentially volitile) process.  And it has nothing to do with anything that will happen on a real mission.  Yet in some sims, it's the hardest thing I do the whole time.  Go figure.

2 More Days

Some co-workers went to Colorado (Rocky Mountain National Park) last weekend. They didn't attempt Long's Peak because there's still too much snow. They did get a picture from the top of Hallett Mountain, though.

That long toungue of snow goes right up the Trough. So, we probably won't have a chance of making it to the top. I think we're going to go to Chasm lake the second day and then go up past the Keyhole as far as we can the third day. At any rate, it's going to be gorgeous!

I spent some time last night learning to use my camera. I figured out how to manually set the shutter speed. That way I can take the "cotton candy" waterfall pictures. :) I can't find my little tri-pod. Maybe I can find one at Walmart or something. It's really useful for group shots and for pictures where you want a longer exposure.

Can't wait

I am so excited for our trip to Colorado! We aren't leaving until Thursday afternoon, but I can hardly concentrate on anything today. It's going to be a long week. We haven't heard from the advance scouting party yet, but Becca called the ranger station this morning. They said that the Keyhole route is still technical, they got some snow on the mountain in the last week, and that they're starting to doubt that the route will melt out at all this summer. So, it doesn't look good for actually summitting Long's Peak itself. There's plenty of good hiking to be had in other places in RMNP, though, and I'm not at all put out. I saw some pictures from the Sky Pond hike on the web this morning, and it looks excellent!

I spent most of the weekend getting our stuff in order for the trip. Saturday I was washing my brand new punch bowl when the thing just shattered in my hands for no reason whatsoever. Maybe the water I was using was too hot, but it wasn't very hot. Anyway, it took a chunk out of the tip on one of my fingers. I now have this really dramatic looking bandage taped on it so that I can use it. I'm glad our hiking doesn't involve any honest to goodness rock climbing or I'd be in trouble.

Last night I took the dogs walking through the new subdivision. I found some really friendly people. I mean really friendly. Scarily friendly. They insisted on letting Roxy and Zoya into their backyard to play with their dog. And then they wanted to show me their whole house and all the improvements they've made on it. I had trouble getting away.

Dreams

I had a really wierd dream last night. I dreamed that I was in a simulation. The flight director decided that the sim was too boring, so he made us all change positions. I moved to PROP and the PROP moved to FDO. The flight director was doing TRAJ and EECOM or EGIL or someone was sitting at FLIGHT. The wierd thing was that apparently my sub-concious knows how many attitude control jets there are on the orbiter and how many manifolds they're connected to. I have never seen the PROP console displays, but I had dreamed up this jet matrix that was split into forward, left, and right. It had the correct number of jets on each manifold and it lit up when they failed. I diagnosed a manifold 4 failure (not that I know what that would look like), and then the flight director let me go back to the FDO console. The people in the dream were real work people, too, so I'm going to have to let them know and give them a few laughs.

The Phoenix

So, I've been a bad blogger and haven't written anything since last week.  What have I been doing that's kept me from my computer you ask?  Unfortunately, the answer is nothing.  Just same-old, same-old.  Although I did finish re-reading all the Harry Potter books.  It was only the second time I'd read the fifth book.  WARNING: the next sentence is a spoiler if you haven't read the book.  I'd forgotten that SB gets killed at the end.  I only remembered about one paragraph before it happened.  It shocked and saddened me again.  :)  You are a true Harry Potter fan if you can fill in the initials in this sentence:  At the end of book 5, SB gets killed by BL falling through a mysterious D while trying to rescue HP, RW, GW, HG, NL, and LL.  I can't wait until Prisioner of Azkaban comes out on DVD.  I really want to see it again.

I'm getting really excited for our Long's Peak expedition next week.  Becca found this great site about Sam the Wolfdog who has summitted 52 out of the 54 Colorado 14'ers.  I read many, many trip reports from this site yesterday as I was sitting through a sim debrief that had absolutely nothing to do with me.  I can't wait until they get a new timeline ready for that sim.

Tang went back home with Kennda last night.  He's such a nice cat.  If I could be assured of getting a cat like Tang, I would be tempted to get one.  Unfortunately, not all cats are like that.

Poop

We finally got to play softball last night.  We were so rusty.  I was playing second because Hillary was gone, and I got a bit beat up.  It was my own fault - if I'd have caught those balls instead of letting them bounce off my glove and squirt up into my face I'd be OK.  Nick also threw one to the elbow of my non-glove arm that hurt a bit.  Plus, I was totally robbed of a hit by the diving-rolling catch one of their outfielders made.  Honestly, I don't get so many hits that they need to make spectacular plays on me to shut me down!
 
Gavin's parents are coming down tonight to stay at our house.  The Lunar Rendezvous fun run is tomorrow, and all the crazy people who like running are going to get up really early and go.  I'm going to sleep.  I'm still a bit behind from last weekend.
 
And now for productivity killing web links.  Didn't get a chance to see Spiderman 2?  This will give you the best points.
 
PLUS... Jo had some of these on her web site, and I picked my favorites.  For the whole list click here.
 
You know you're a dog person if...

• You have a kiddie wading pool in the yard, but no small children.
• You have baby gates permanently installed at strategic places around the house, but no babies.
• You can't see out the passenger side of the windshield because there are nose-prints all over the inside.
• Poop has become a source of conversation for you and your significant other.
  You have little songs that you sing to your dog, and she always wags when you sing, even though you can't carry a tune.
  Your dog eats cat poop, but you still let her kiss you (but not immediately afterward, of course).
  You like people who like your dog. You despise people who don't.
• You talk about your dog the way other people talk about their kid.
• You get an extra-long hose on your shower-massage just so you can use it to wash your dog in the tub, without making the dog sit hip-deep in water.
• You have your dog's picture on your office desk (but no one else's).
• Your parents refer to your pet as their granddog, remember her birthday, and send her greeting cards and gifts.
• Your dog is the star of your World Wide Web site!

I know that was a rather minor point to name my post after, but come on!  Poop is just a funny word.  Kind of like bunny...

Needles

Gavin and I went and got shots for our trip to Peru this morning. As it turns out, we got off pretty easily with only one shot each. The clinic ended up not recommending the yellow fever shot, so that was nice. We have some pills we need to take for typhoid before we go, but all else is set. I'm going to have to go back and get the second Hepititis A shot next Jan, but that's probably a good deal anyway. Apparently, they don't recommend adults with, shall we say, settled personal lives get Hep B.

I don't know why I freak out about shots so much. They don't really hurt. I know that. I haven't had a bad experience with an injection for many years. I did have a bad blood donation experience about 5 years ago and haven't done it since. And I almost passed out a couple years ago when the clinic at work drew blood for my flight controller physical. But I think that has a lot to do with the fact that they make you fast for 12 hours and then take 3 vials of blood pretty quickly. And I'm nervous for no reason.

Kennda's cat Tang is staying with us right now. He's such a sweetie. He went to sleep with us on the bed last night, purring contentedly. If all cats were like Tang, I would be tempted to get a cat. Unfortunately, most of the other cats I've gotten to know well in my life have been mean. Yasmin, Butter, my friend from high school's cat who's name I don't remember. I think I'll stick with dogs.

Saving the Planet

In Sarah's blog today, she linked to this quiz. This quiz tells you how many "Earth's" would be needed to support your living habits if everyone in the world lived like you. This was quite depressing. Not because if everyone lived like me, we'd need more than 6 planets. I mean I was expecting that - I live very very comfortably. Not that even when I was in college and much more environmentally friendly (took public transportation, lived in an apartment) I still needed almost 5 planets. What was depressing was what I had to do to get the answer to come out to be 1 planet. Here is the best solution I found.

Living in the USA, Houston (> 1,000,000 weather like Atlanta)
27 years old, Female
Become vegitarian
Eat all local food
Produce less garbage
Find 2 people to live with Gavin and I
Move to an apartment with under 1000 sq. feet
Not have electricity
Never use personal vehicles, public transportation, or fly
=1.0 planets

You cannot get to 1 planet with electricity. Now I have to ask, how are we ever going to live within our means if we have to give up electricity? I think most people that have ever lived with electricity consider it to be a basic necessity and wouldn't give it up for anything. So, either the quiz is wrong, we're screwed and we're going to kill the planet, or so many people are living in absolute squalor that the average works out. The last one may be true, but it is just as depressing as the one that says we're all going to die.

Niece on the way...

Well, I'm finally back from my trip to Wyoming for my sister's baby shower. It was a rough trip back, as flights from Denver to Houston seem to be plagued by bad luck this summer. (This is better than having flights from Houston to Denver plagued by bad luck as I'm usually tighter on the front end of a vacation.) Today, they needed to replace one of the tires on the airplane. The only problem was that they didn't have a spare for that kind of plane. And only two other airlines in that airport fly those kind of planes (next-generation 737 for the engineers). It took them about an hour and a half to find a new tire, and then an hour to replace it. So I didn't get back to IAH until 10PM. Lucky I was traveling light this weekend. I think I sneaked back through downtown just before the flood of people from the Home Run Derby mobbed the highways. Whew!

Anyway, pictures of Jessica's shower are here. I'm going to bed now.

A little prick

For our trip to Peru this summer, we're supposed to get yellow fever immunizations. I've called about 10 places so far, and nobody yet has actually been able to provide this shot. I'm finding it rather ironic that I'm calling all over Houston trying to convince people to give me a shot. I hate shots. I can't think of anything that I'd rather do less than beg for one. The last answering machine that I got actually said "travel medicine" on it, so I think I may be getting close.

It looks like it's raining pretty hard in downtown Houston right now. It's moving away from us, though, so maybe we'll get to play softball tonight. (Knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood.)

Tang the cat came over last night. He's staying with us while Kennda is in Iceland for an astrobiology conference. How cool a place is that for a conference? I was just reading about this "Fire and Ice" tour in Iceland - volcanos and glaciers. Awesome! Anyway, he spent most of the night in his room because the dogs were disturbing him. I kind of wish he'd just let it out and swat Roxy in the face. That would teach her. He does bat at them, but I haven't seen his claws out when he does it.

Boo

Excel sucks. I spent hours this morning trying to figure out how to get it to return a 0 instead of #N/A from the lookup function if it didn't find the value. In the end, I gave up and manually deleted the #N/A from all the cells that had it. This was very tedious and fustrating. :P

He He He

All American Day

I'm going out on a limb today. After unsuccessfully trying to get someone to recommend me a hair stylist for years, I made an appointment with a salon near my house. The only thing I know about it is where it's located. This is not how I'd like to find a new stylist, but I really want to find someone that I will go back to every time. So I can just come in and say "do it" rather than having to explain what I want. I always find that difficult, because I don't know exactly what I want. Plus, once you trust your stylist, you can do things like say "Do it different" and trust them to not give you a mohawk or something. We'll see how it goes - I'm a bit nervous.

The 4th of July was cool. Becca, Jo, Jo's cousin, and I went to a baseball game in the afternoon. It was the biggest blowout I've seen in a long time: the Astros lost 18-4. Stupid Rangers. Plus, we were under the air conditioners, so we got rained on all game. I was still really glad to get out to the ballpark, though. Beforehand we went to Empire Cafe for brunch - YUMMY!! It was my first time, but it will not be my last. :) We then put together a picnic for the park in the evening, and watched fire works from Nassau Bay Park. It was a good location. The dogs had a great time, although there were too many people to let them roam. Zoya didn't like the fireworks too much, but she was OK. I think she was getting tired and grumpy. Bennett was lying in my lap during the fireworks, having a great time, and putting my leg to sleep. It was really cute, though. What a great day - Baseball, BBQ, Dogs, Fireworks.

I've got a late sim tonight, which should be good because I'm taking next Monday off and I could use the comp time. All our exciting travel is looming in the near future, and it's getting hard to wait. I love traveling. :)

Pink

I don't know what's scarier. The amount of money I spent shopping today, or the amount of pink I bought while doing it. Yes, folks, pink is in this year. And I'm jumping on the bandwagon. I bought no fewer than three pink shirts (four if you count coral as pink) and one skirt that the pink shirts go with. That's a lot of pink. It made me feel like Elle Woods or something.

I was in a shopping mood today. I also bought: a new pair of sandals, a bra, four more shirts, a new telephone, and 4 DVDs. I think Gavin's sorry he let me out of the house. :)

Kaboom

So, I came into work this morning and the first thing I noticed is that the parking lot is half empty. This made me feel sad that I'm not going anywhere exciting this weekend. It did, however, allow me to get a pretty good parking spot. Not really a great trade.

I did 1350 steps on my stepper last night. I'm starting to get to the point where I really have to work on myself to get all the way to my goal. Not that I'm so tired I really need to stop, but I'm getting to that point where it would be really, really pleasant to stop for about the last half of the exercise. I was watching a tennis match while I was doing it, and I kept trying to tell myself that they were working harder than me and they were outdoors in the heat to boot. I'm not sure how well that worked. I don't notice as much when I'm playing a game as when I'm climbing stairs in place in my living room. I don't notice as much when I'm hiking in the mountains, either. I think in both places it's because I have a goal byond just making it to some number on the counter. Scenery definately helps. Someone needs to invent a VR machine that has a moving 360 deg 3-D mountain scenery scene that only advances when you climb. There should be bunnies, too. That would motivate me.

That's a funny word - bunnies.

Anyway, happy 4th of July!

Your vote counts!

My friend Chris has a friend who is up for the Espy award for best disabled athlete. Vote for Cheri here.

Play Ball

My work day is really full today. Over the last two days, meetings have been coming out of the woodwork and they're all scheduled for today. Thursday seems to be a popular meeting day, in general. It has always been my fullest day of meetings, ever since I started work. I wonder why? I mean, Monday and Friday are obviously unpopular because of the proximity of the weekend. But why don't Tuesday and Wednesday take more of the share? Maybe this is because people forget to schedule meetings until the beginning of the week and then they want to give as much notice as possible without slipping to the next week? Could be.

It is remotely possible that we might end up playing softball tonight. I think we've had three rainouts in a row now. I don't even remember how to play softball. (That may be an exageration.) Anyway, it would be nice to get five games or so out of the money we paid for the season.

The Mariners were on TV last night, because they were playing the Rangers. They lost. As they were trailing in the 5th 3-5 and I have stopped expecting miracles from them, I didn't feel the need to stay up real late to see if they'd come back. As it turns out that was a wise decision.

Both the station EVA and the Cassini orbit insertion maneuver came off without a hitch. It's nice when the paper can't find anything to critisize.