Easy for you to say

Memorial Day weekend was pretty good. We ate out a lot. Friday night we went to Chili’s with the standard gang. I spent all day Saturday cleaning the house, which was good because I hadn’t done it in a couple weeks. Saturday night, we played Settlers and had take-out Chinese. Sunday Gavin and I went to Katy to see some of his friends. Two of them have a daughter named Savanah that is just two days younger than our niece. Savanah is adorable. She “commando-crawls” all over the place. She likes to play peek-a-boo, and play with books (she doesn’t look at the pages as much as she has fun turning them). It made me really, really want to go to Wyoming to see Caroline, but plane tickets are still cha-ching. We went to Chili’s again for dinner, where I paid more attention to Savanah eating saltine crackers than to the conversation. Monday I did bills, researched hikes in Hawaii, walked the dogs in a T-storm break, and went to a BBQ.

It’s no secret that Gavin and I are ready to have kids. I had always intended to get certified and work a couple missions before adding the complication of children. If the Shuttle fleet hadn’t been grounded for 2 1/2 years, we’d probably already be expecting and things would be working out exactly as planned. Because things are the way they are, we’re waiting and getting impatient as the launches keep getting delayed.

Since all this is common knowledge, people have started dispensing advice. “Just have a baby” seems to be the most popular one. This laissez-faire attitude has started to irk me a bit. It’s so easy to say, but would people think it was such an easy call if it were them? Yes, I really, really wish we could just get on with it. But I haven’t waited this out the last two years to throw in the towel right before we return to flight. My career is very important to me, and I just don’t think that getting a jump of a year on our first-born is worth the potential of a) putting off my first flight for 1-3 years and b) causing a shake-up in the flight control team that’s been training for return to flight for a year now. Because it could mean that. Yeah, sure I hope that I’ll have an easy-peasy pregnancy and be able to work right up to the stage when I’m about to pop. But that may not be the case. I could get really sick at the beginning, which would make working 10 hour shifts in the control center real fun. Wouldn’t you love to see the TV feed of me tossing my cookies in the waste-basket under the FDO console? I could end up needing to stay home for the last couple months for medical reasons. And once I take my maternity leave and come back, I’ll probably have to go through some sort of retraining, even if it may be minimal.

I think that even though people realize that women have been waiting longer to have their first child, they attribute it to women not wanting to have children in their 30’s. That may be true to some extent, but in my case I’m just trying to work the best balance between career and family into my life that I can.

My point is that it hasn’t been an easy course for me to take, but I really think we’re doing the best thing all-around. Having people tell me they think I should “just get pregnant” like it’s no big deal is making an already tough wait seem even longer. Because part of me wants to give in to the impatience and the emotion, but when you get down to it I’m a rational person and logic tells me that I’ve already waited 28 years and having a baby at 29 is not that different than having one at 30.

We're Going to Hawaii!!!!!

I am sooooooo excited! I just bought two plane tickets to Kona, HI. We're leaving June 23 and coming back July 4. That's 9.75 days and 10 nights in paradise! Happy 5th anniversary to us. :) Now I'm too excited to work.

Seriously, the rest of this day is going to be totally fruitless. I can't concentrate.

Suds

Our washing machine is broken (again) and the repair company told us a fix would cost ~$230 (again). Since the machine is usable, we opted not to fix it. This means that when doing laundry, we have to set a timer to go off when it reaches the spin/rinse cycle and manually move the dial off the wash cycle to the rinse and spin mode.

Anyway, the point of telling you all this is that this cartoon is funny.

Insane in the Brain

At 8:46AM, I am usually just dragging into work. This morning, I’ve been here for 2 hours already, and I’m 44 minutes and 53 seconds into a 8 hour sim that will likely not include a single thing for me to do. Can you tell I’m still in my grumpy morning mood?

This article is pretty interesting. I never liked biology in school with all that kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species stuff. However, I’ve always been pretty fascinated with the human nervous system. When I was in college, I had a job running movie and slide projectors for classes. It was pretty cool because I could usually just set the machines up and then read or whatever. Anyway, once I was setting up a reel-to-reel type projector for a psych class. The movie turned out to be about brain function centers. I ended up watching the movie because I thought it was really cool. They showed how they could pinpoint which parts of the brain were controlling different functions by anesthetizing different sections and observing reactions.

Well, that blew almost 11 minutes. Whoohoo.

Hybrids turn people into grandma drivers

First, a note to all of you out there with movable type blogs: Your comments are slower than Nick in his Prius!

Background: Last night I was driving home and turned into my subdivision behind another car. After driving a block at 20 mph, I was starting to get annoyed with the car in front of me. At this point, I actually looked at the car and realized that it was Nick. This changed my emotional reaction from annoyed to amused. I tried calling him to tell him to quit HOGGING THE ROAD WITH HIS GRANDMA DRIVING, but he didn't answer.

It really sucks that we aren't flying the Shuttle right now. Every time I get bored with what I'm doing, I keep thinking "we'd be rendezvousing right now" or "I'd be used to the night shift by now". Instead, I'm just hoping that July works out.

Sigh. Back to coding. At least I'm still making progress.

Star Wars and Me

I grew up with Star Wars. I don’t think I saw any of the original three in the theater. Rather, they were something that simply existed for my entire life. In elementary school, the Star Wars universe was my happy place. When I was getting picked on at school, I imagined that I was Princess Leia. After all, the Princess is above all that – nobody could wound my feelings when I knew that I was destined for such a higher cause. I never really believed that one day I would discover that the world I knew was an elaborate ruse designed to conceal from me that I was in fact the future leader of a rebellion against an evil empire. But imagination is pretty strong in a 9 year old, and I was using it a lot.

We had Empire Strikes Back on video (we’d taped it off of TV). I watched that tape a million times. I think Empire would be my favorite Star Wars movie even if it hadn’t been the one that I saw most. I loved the corridor scene on Hoth. I would play the scene over and over, saying Leia’s lines and acting it out. “I’d just as soon kiss a wookie” has to be one of the best lines of all time.

A friend recently expressed a bit of surprise that I consider myself to be a huge Star Wars fan. I guess next to my husband, I’m not so impressive. It’s true that my favorite fantasy is now Lord of the Rings. I don’t play the Star Wars games, and I point blank refuse to get swept up in the superfan - fan film, serial novel, costume wearing - scene. But, I feel like Star Wars is something too precious for all of that. It’s a part of my identity because it played such an emotional roll in my childhood. I created my own back-stories for all the characters. Some of my refusal to read all the books stems from the fact that I didn’t want someone else messing with the stories I’d created.

I was incredibly excited when The Phantom Menace came out. I am not a fan of computer generated characters, and I was somewhat disappointed in the movie. I did feel like the Padme character upheld the Star Wars tradition of strong female roles. And even after the spectacle of Episode III, I believe the Qui-Gon / Obi-Wan / Darth Maul duel is the best light saber fight ever filmed. And I heartily appreciate the plot parallels between Phantom Menace and A New Hope.

Attack of the Clones was a complete disappointment to me. Mostly because I saw so much potential in the movie, but felt that it was completely unrealized. This is the movie that had to set up the love story. The love story that, as it turns out, is central to understanding Aniken’s fall into darkness. I liked the way Padme started out seeing Aniken as the little boy she last knew. But Aniken was played too much as the whiny teen to understand how she got over that. And, all the love scenes were completely cheesy and too seriously portrayed. How I longed to hear Padme call Aniken a nerfherder!

As the release date for Episode III approached, I purposely kept my expectations (and my anticipation) low. Whereas I’d assiduously avoided seeing trailers or anything about Episodes I and II, I didn’t go to any particular effort one way or the other with this movie. One of my friends was still following the no-see, no-hear, no-spoil philosophy and I felt for her. Ironically, when I didn’t care how much I saw or heard, it seemed like I was seeing and hearing less. Yes, I saw the trailer and the news reports, but I never once heard a conversation that would have caused me to put my fingers in my ears and sing loudly.

I've seen Revenge of the Sith twice now. Yesterday after the second viewing, we were talking about the movie. I liked it. I’m glad that Lucas made it. I agree with much of the criticism about the dialog and the plot holes. I hate it that Padme, who I thought was the savior of Episode I, turned into such a weepy, clingy, indecisive, throwing-in-the-towel character by the end. I can think of a hundred little things that I wish had been done slightly differently. But, the bottom line is that I mourned for Aniken as I watched him lose his soul. I sucked in my breath in horror as he drew his lightsaber on children. I spent 24 hours after my first viewing in a completely dark mood. I want to walk around in a robe that billows out behind me with a hood and a total bad-ass walk that says “I can kick your ass any day of the week, you weak-willed Jedi”.

I remember seeing Return of the Jedi on TV after a few years of mainly watching Empire. (A few years being an almost indescribably long amount of time for a kid my age.) I didn’t remember the whole plot, and it was like watching it for the first time all over again. I remember getting very sad at the end. Why? It’s happy, right? Because it was OVER! And now, it is. And although George Lucas may not have made the best movie possible, I think that he did finally finish the story. My imagination is quite up to taking care of the rest.

Golf

I’m playing hookey from work tomorrow to play in the annual golf tourney that some of my co-workers put on. Since I am not the type of employee that ends up with use-or-lose leave at the end of the year, this puts me in a quandary today. The longer I stay at work tonight, the fewer hours of annual leave I’ll have to use tomorrow. This is good - it may result in actually ending the year with enough time to take a Christmas vacation. I am SO sick of coding today, though. So I’m having trouble forcing myself to stay here late. :P

Star Wars quizzes abound today, and since I’m procrastinating…

Star Wars Horoscope for Libra

You are on a lifelong pursuit of justice and determined to succeed. You convey the art of persuasion through force. You always display your supreme intelligence. You have a great talent in obtaining balance between yourself and your surroundings. Star wars character you are most like: Obi Wan Kenobie

What is Your Star Wars Horoscope?

Dreaming

I had sooooo much trouble getting up this morning. I had to be at work at 7am for a sim, and I was not a happy camper when my alarm went off. To add to my annoyance, I was dreaming about work right before the alarm rang. Now I have a pretty cool job. If I’m going to be dreaming about work, I’d like to be dreaming that I’m saving the Shuttle from almost certain disaster by coming up with a brilliant new procedure or remembering some obscure bit of data that makes the difference between success and failure. But NO, what I was dreaming about was that the trajectory server (a computer we use to compute trajectory data) had failed during one of my sims and I was having a big pow-wow with the software guys about how to fix it. BORING, BORING, BORING.

Apparently, my subconcious is aware of how the day-to-day issues of my job are not as sexy as shown on Apollo 13. If you made a movie about a typical day at my work, it would not sell a single ticket. However, I’d like to think that I do get to do things a bit more exciting from time to time. My real sim was slightly more interesting than my dream version. Still nothing to make a summer blockbuster about, but better than “why did the computer crash”.

Space Cowboys

Yesterday, dooce wrote about running away to Wyoming for vodka and made an analagy between a lamp and space shuttle boosters. I think there’s a very real possibility that she may be channeling me in a small way. Admittedly, she probably is only talking about running to the western part of the state where the Morman cultural overflow from Utah is clashing with the more mainstream but hickish Wyoming culture. Every 3rd family is still Morman, but the liquor stores are open on Sunday. However, the mention of Wyoming and the Space Shuttle in the same post is too much of a coincidence, there must be a supernatural explanation.

So, as it turns out I didn’t see the last episode of Everybody Loves Raymond six months ago. The episode that I did see was funnier than the actual final episode, though. The series finale last night was more touching than funny. I guess maybe that fitted the mood better. Anyway, the episode I saw in January was actually a re-run of the first episode of this season. It is called “The Home” and is the funniest episode I’ve ever seen. So, that’s the reason for the curtain call - first episode of the last season. If you ever see it, you’ll see why I thought it was the end of the show.

Goodbye, Laptop

Gavin is going to JPL for the next three days. He took my laptop with him. :( I’ve gotten fairly attached to being able to play around on the internet from downstairs. For one thing, it is now summer in Houston and it is much cooler in our living room than upstairs in the game room where the desktop computer is. For another thing, I can watch TV while I’m messing around, which is really nice. Now I don’t want to give the impression that I’m going to miss my computer more than my husband. But I will miss both.

However, it may not matter too much because Gavin ordered the new Star Wars soundtrack from Amazon.com. It arrived yesterday along with seasons 7 and 9 of Friends that he ordered for me. :) So I have a lot of couch-potatoing to do.

Mondays suck. I can’t ever get my motivation back up after our group meeting which ends at 4 or 4:30. However, since I’m also usually not capable of getting my lazy butt out of bed in time to get to work before 9am on Mondays, I can’t leave yet or I’d start the week already behind on hours, and that really sucks. (I know, serious run-on sentence, but I can’t care enough to fix it.)

Humor

Humor for the day...

I managed to get in to work by 8AM today since I took off early to go to the shelter with Sarah yesterday. This turned out to be a good thing because I had a team talk with the director of MOD at 9AM, but didn't remember until my reminder came up. Phew.

Slobbery Monsters

I got to go sit in the simulator for a couple hours today. This is fun, and I don’t get to do it very often. (Like practically never.) It’s nice to get that perspective that there really are people on the other end of that comm link.

I’m going to look at dogs with Sarah again tonight. I sort of wish I’d gone yesterday; they went to the shelter where we got Roxy. But, that one is a ways away and I couldn’t take the time off work. I think Sarah’s going through a bit of a cold feet stage with her dog acquisition. We were waiting since before we got married. Gavin says that he made sure to ascertain my stance on dog ownership early in our dating stage. I don’t really remember that conversation, but I’m sure it went something like

Gavin: “Would you be open to owning a dog when you settle down?”
Jen: “Yes, in fact it’s a given.”
Gavin: “Oh OK, good.”

Gavin has recently pointed out to me that I have a habit of making declarations about how things are going to happen. I guess I just think that he’ll speak up if it’s a problem. Then, depending on his reasons I may change my mind or not. If he’d told me when we were dating that he was deathly allergic to dogs and we could never have one, I probably would have been extremely disappointed but we’d still be together. If, on the other hand, he’d said “Ew, dogs? I don’t know how anyone can stand living with those hairy, slobbery monsters…” Well, let’s just say that I’m not sure I could ever love someone who thinks of dogs without longing. Good thing he does, huh? :)

In other news, the Houston Chronicle is very pleased with themselves for installing the software required to actually make their “blogs”, well blogs. And the people that write the blogs are already complaining about how difficult it is to post. Can you imagine having the job of approving comments for a blog in a newspaper with a circulation like that? I’m rather glad that I have a modest readership. As long as I don’t get myself fired for writing about work or become otherwise suddenly and inexplicably famous, I should be OK.

Hotel Rwanda

Last night we watched Hotel Rwanda with Becca and Cari. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is really, really good. I had trouble getting to sleep last night because I was still thinking about it.

I read the local newspaper most days, but if the story isn’t being covered by the mainstream media I’m not too likely to see it. I hate the idea that someone else is deciding what is “important” enough for me to see. These people are in the business to make money, and they won’t print what they feel won’t sell. But I can’t seem to work up the interest to sift through the reams of data available out there for myself. I was still in high school when the story of Hotel Rwanda played out, but I wonder if it would really be any different for me today.

I like to believe that I’m not one of those stereotypical Americans. You know, the ones that don’t pay attention to or care about things that are happening in the rest of the world. But sometimes when I see movies or documentaries like this, that self-image is called into question. One of the lines from the movie, which I thought was particularly potent: ”When people see this, they will say ‘Oh, my God. That’s terrible.’ and then they’ll go back to their dinners.”

That is, after all, what we do. At the end of the day, I’ve never gone any further than thinking about writing to my congressman about what I feel we should do about some issue. Some of that is probably due to the fact that I believe such an action would be ultimately meerly symbolic. At most, it may net me a form response and make a tick in some statistic tracked by a Capitol Hill staffer. And yet, that’s a self-defeating attitude because those statistics are ultimatly just the result of the decisions of many individuals to make that symbolic gesture.

The truth is that even if I were selfless enough to consider leaving the safe, stable 9-5 job I have to join a relief organization, I don’t know that I would dare to go to the places where these things are happening. So what can the average person do to motivate herself to take steps that feel real? How can we break the cycle of apathy and denial that allows us to calmly eat our dinners while millions are losing their lives in violence? We cannot do everything, but how can we start taking personal responsibility for doing something?

Friday Night

Tonight I’m going to go to dinner with the gang and then not going see Kingdom of Heaven. I find that I’m just not into going to the movie theater these days for just any film. It has to appeal to me at least more than average in some way. Usually, this means that it is either a romantic comedy, a Pixar movie, or one of the Jen-approved blockbusters. (Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings have been topping the Jen-approved list for several years now.) Besides, I feel sorry for my doggies when we go out all Friday night. I’ll do it if it’s something I really want to do, but not otherwise.

I spent most of today looking at plane tickets to various places. I need a trip. I’ve been in town since the first weekend in April! Way too long.

This morning, I got the crap scared out of me because Gavin turned to me and said "It feels like it should be Friday already". My mind started racing - "Holy crap! I thought it was Friday. How can it not be Friday? I was counting on that. I NEED IT TO BE FRIDAY!!!" Turns out, Gavin actually said "It doesn't feel like it should be Friday already." Guess that pretty much shows the difference in how our weeks went.

Dogs

God, it’s not even 10AM yet! Gavin and I carpooled home last night, so this forced me to come in to work at a decent hour instead of dragging in at 9 like I usually do. But it also means that there’s more time between arrival and lunch than normal. Since I’m in a “working through code somebody else did” in my project, I’m not enjoying the extra time in my morning.

We went with Sarah last night to the Harris County Animal Shelter to look at dogs. She wants a small dog because she lives in an apartment. She put her name down for a dog that still has some time before he’s up for adoption (picture on her site). This dog was soooo friendly. He really wanted to come out of his cage and play. I hope she gets him, because I will probably end up dog sitting a few times and I like him! He looked pretty well cared-for, though, so there may be a decent chance that his owners are looking for him. We’ll see.

Going to animal shelters is fun (see lots of dogs) and very sad at the same time. There were so many cute, friendly dogs there and many of them won’t ever find homes. There were also several that looked like they had been starving for quite a while, poor things. I will never understand people that don’t take care of their animals, or worse abuse them. By the time we got Roxy into our car at the shelter, I was completely protective of her. And Roxy doesn’t exactly need a lot of protoction…. Unless she’s being attacked by the evil new cell phone which she’s sure will suck out her soul instead of taking her picture. :)

Bad Day

Last night, I got to work, logged into all the machines I needed to, got data from the places I needed it from, sat down, and was informed that the single thing that I was in to do wasn’t going to happen. I knocked around for two hours and the flight director let me go back home around midnight. What a waste of time.

Today I feel off. I feel detatched from everything. I wonder if maybe I’m still a bit sick but not enough to really notice. Oh, and I spilled an entire glass of cola all down my front at lunch. :P

Boo

Just before the end of my work day, the code I was working on all day broke inexplicably. That's so lame. Plus I have to go back in and work tonight. :P

We're watching Star Wars. Gavin and Jo have been trying to interest the rest of us in reliving Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. There hasn't been a lot of interest in the 12 hour marathon, so I think they're trying to sneak them in one at a time.

Boo for going back to work in 2 hours.

Celeb Dogs

I just spent an hour playing with my new cell phone. Can you believe that this is the first phone I've had with a color display?! Whoohoo!

I'm watching "The Fabulous Life of Nicole Richie" on VH1. She has a dog that looks like Bandit, but not as goofy. (Sorry, Jo, but it's the truth!) I tried to find a photo of Nicole's dog, but I could only look through so many google entries like "nicole dog sex blowjob" etc. I hope that sentence doesn't put this blog on the block list from work for a week. :) Anyway, they were showing the spa that she sends the dog to for pedicures. Seriously. They painted the dogs toenails purple. I think I'm lucky that my dogs let me clip their nails once a month with the bribery of Milkbones.

Tomorrow, I have to work all night for basically no reason. There's not going to be anything for me to do, but nobody feels comfortable without having someone at the FDO console so... Lucky me.

Becca and Sarah both got sick. Whatever this is we all got sure is contagious.