I Did Good

I think Gavin likes his birthday present. :)

I got him a Canon Digital Rebel XT and a lens that cost nearly as much as the camera. He spent last night walking around the house, flipping lights on, and off and taking pictures to test the light levels. He then took pictures of the dogs until they got tired of the flash and walked away. He got up this morning and downloaded all the pictures to his laptop so he could see how he did.

He was very smiley the whole time.

Late Game

Last night I went to my second extra-innings Astros game of the season. Jason and I stayed until the not-so-bitter end (~12:00AM) to watch Preston Wilson win it in the bottom of the 14th with a sacrifice fly. I got home at about 12:45AM, and was consequently unable to get myself to work on time this morning. No harm - I'm just in the office today.

The high point in the evening, in my opinion, was th 4 innings of scoreless late relief that Dave Brokowski put together from the 10th to the 13th. Brokowski, who I had to look up this morning, is new to the Astros. His best season to date was 2004 with the Baltimore Orioles, when he went 3-4 in 56 innings over 17 games with a 5.14 ERA. However, given how Qualls and Gallo (and to a lesser extent, Wheeler) have been doing so far it's nice to know we have another option for long relief.

In other non-baseball news, I'm scheduled for my final rendezvous cert sim on May 25. :)

Early

It's 5:55 AM, and I'm ready to go to work. I didn't remember that I had a sim this morning until just before I went to bed last night. I guess better then than after I woke up this morning.

So, I'm off to work.

Recap

How has my week been you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

Monday: Home at 7:00, play with dogs, relax

Tuesday: Home at 5:30 to put dogs inside, Debbie's at 6:00 to go to baseball game, extra innings, home at 11:45 or so, play with dogs, no time to blog, sleep

Wednesday: Cheesecake factory after work, home at 10:00, play with dogs (who are getting mad at me by this point), no time to blog, sleep

Thursday: Up early for sim, softball after work, home at 8:00, play with dogs (who are mad and demanding attention), call my sister and end up on the phone until 1:00 AM, no time to blog, sleep

Friday (so far): Up sort of early to prep for meeting, convince dogs to go to the bathroom out in the rain, pick up donuts on the way to work, write this during 15 min of downtime this morning

The bad news... 1) I have to do laundry or I'll have to start wearing [edited for TMI] 2) I'm sleep deprived

The good news... 1) Tomorrow is Saturday 2) Gavin's coming home tonight

Me, Run?

At the risk of following Sarah and making my contribution to this blog into a running blog...

I went jogging late afternoon yesterday in Glendale, the weather was perfect, around 78 deg. Last Saturday I went jogging in Berkeley up Grizzley Peak road, which winds and goes uphill. So my legs were pretty sore. In Glendale, I jogged up a road straight away from the place I was staying at towards the mountains just to the north. My legs felt the tightest that I can remember, it was not comfortable for a few minutes. Fortunately they loosened up and I reached the entrance to Brand Park, where the mountains start. It looks like it would be a good place to run with trails and perhaps mountain lions to keep me on my toes, but I was already very tired. So back I ran. Covered about 3.3 miles in probably 27 minutes.

Land of my Youth

All my life when people find out that I grew up in Wyoming the first thing they ask is "Really? I didn't know anybody actually lived in Wyoming." This is usually followed by "What's it like there?" Well, the answer is that it's like this, and this, and this.

The guy that takes all these pictures actually lives in Montana. But the landscapes are very similar and every time I see his pictures, it always transports me back to Wyoming and my childhood. There's a wild, desolate sort of beauty in Wyoming that I didn't appreciate well when I lived there. From the distance of my years in Houston, though, I find these images of "my homeland" breathtakingly beautiful. Even that brown prairie grass looks beautiful to me compared to the swampy scrub brush that persists in undeveloped areas around here.

I think my love of open spaces is probably mainly due to growing up in Wyoming. There's nothing I love more than hiking up above the treeline in the mountains and being able to see for miles. On a clear day, you can see the Bighorn Mountains from my parents deck - they're like 250 miles away across rolling prairie land. I feel blind here in the land of the flat, where if you drive up onto a freeway overpass you can see all the way to downtown, 20 miles away.

Feast

Yesterday I went up to Mike and Meg's for Easter. I came back home with about half a turkey, green beans, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, asparagus, and biscuits. Becca came over tonight for dinner, and we managed to polish off pretty much everything except the turkey (she couldn't help much with that). So, it's turkey sandwiches for a few days for me. :)

Houston had rolling blackouts today. It didn't seem to affect anything down here where I live, but it really, really scares me that on the first hottish weekday of the year that the energy grid couldn't keep up with the demand. Houston is really unlivable without air conditioning. You sweat all day, and you can't sleep at night. Honestly, I don't know how people lived here before A/C.

Ah, Berkeley

I had a great Easter weekend up in Berkeley with my grandmother. I lazed around her house, admiring the view of the bay in between rain squalls that drifted up the hills. In the afternoon I went for a quick jog. I thought I had timed it well, and I almost had... I only caught the rain for the last few minutes of my run. Back in my college days I could jump onto the hills of Berkeley and run for 40 minutes or so with no problem. Now, I ran for about 20 minutes up some hills, felt pretty short of breath and my quads are still sore from the hill work out. But it was fun. I ran alongside another fellow jogging when it started to rain and mentioned that we didn't time it right, we both laughed.

Easter dinner was fantastic, lots of people came. Janice and Muroud and their kids, Martin and Wendy and their kids, Dick and Dottie from across the street, another Norwegian couple visiting on sabattical, plus Andy and two Norwegian students staying with Grandmother. It was a fun party, we had a good time. Andy and I had to split at 7:30pm to start the drive back to Los Angeles. It wasn't bad, I think we missed most of the traffic by leaving so late. I dropped off Andy, filled up my car's gas tank, and was in bed by 1:30am. Not bad.

I did sleep in today. It was nice.

San Fran

My friend Andy and I are going to drive up to San Francisco today, braving the holiday commute and rain. He's visiting some friends at Stanford, I'm visiting my grandmother in Berkeley. Should be fun. :)

If You Were in Charge

I have a question motivated by an interesting discussion I just had with a coworker. If you were asked to create a mission statement for NASA that would guide the agency in developing new manned vehicles and missions for the next couple decades, what would it be? I'm interested in everyone's ideas - even, and perhaps particularly, those of anyone who isn't professionally involved in said development.

Please try to come up with your answer before reading the comments, so that you aren't influenced by things others have said.

Discuss...

Mt. Wilson til Midnight

Observatories are cool. Andy and I went up with 20 others for a private half-night tour, for only $25 each. We looked through the 60-inch (mirror diameter) telescope at Saturn, a planetary nebula, and a cool binary star. The problem with going with a group of 22 people is that it takes about a half hour for everyone to look at any one object. So, we didn't get to see as many things as I had hoped.

Saturn was very cool. Despite being as 5700 ft above sea-level, the atmosphere above is still turbulent and so as you stare at Saturn through the telescope it wavers slightly as if it were a mirage. We could easily make out the rings, as well as a few of the cloud bands. Even cooler, to the lower left of it was a bright tiny disc -- the moon Titan! Several other moons were visible, but they weren't identified to us.

The 60-inch was brought online in 1908. The 1 ton mirror made a well-publicized journey by train across the country to California, with thousands of people gathering to watch it roll by. It was symbol of human ingenuity and our desire to better understand the cosmos and, perhaps from that, ourselves. Its construction was financed by the Carnegie Institute with no government funds. The construction crew loaded the heavy mirror onto a cart to make the slow journey up to the top of Mt. Wilson along a special track, with donkeys pulling and men pushing as needed. The 100-inch telescope was built only a decade later. Both the 60-inch and the 100-inch telescopes deserve to be national historic landmarks. It is with these telescopes, particularly the 100-inch, that many astronomers used throughout the first half of the 20th century. Edwin Hubble used the 100-inch when he determined that the universe was expanding. Interesting to note, the 100-inch telescope is about the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope and weighs three times as much. With special optics in the last five years, the 100-inch can now see better the Hubble Space Telescope for visible light, but the HST isn't limited by the horizon and it can see other wavelengths.

We got to 'ride the dome' as they rotated the 100-inch dome once around the telescope. With the whole dome moving and the telescope remaining still, the illusion made it seem that the telescope was moving. When Albert Einstein visited the dome and saw the same illusion, he remarked that he couldn't think of a better example to demonstrate general relativity and how perspective makes a difference.

It was a fun night. :) I didn't get home until midnight. And we left early.

Yuri's Night @ Mt. Wilson

Since LA had their big blowout dance party over the weekend, a few of us are driving up to Mt. Wilson observatory, just north of LA, to spend the evening looking at stars. Weather looks fine, if it weren't for a full moon we'd have a great evening. With the moon up and bleaching the night sky, it'll probably just be good.

The telescope we'll be using is a 60-inch reflector. Most people buy 6-inch reflectors. It's gonna be cool :). I can't wait to see the Orion Nebula, Mars, Saturn, and maybe a comet or two with it.

Yuri's Night

So, today Cari and Becca and Sarah have all mentioned that it's Yuri's Night. I could add to the plugging, but I think people are seeing it enough.

Oh, WTH. Go to Yuri's Night!

AI and Melys

We went to Mely's tonight for the first time in over a month. That's quite a record for us. Now I will watch American Idol and then go to bed so that I can hopefully get up early enough to go to work before 8:00. I need to start going in earlier.

Speaking of AI, I think Ace needs to go home this week. I know he's prettier than everyone else in the competition this year, but he's not that great a musician. He's always somewhat out of tune, and he doesn't do anything interesting. Anyhow, that's my vote.

Hookey

Playing hookey from work to watch baseball all afternoon is very satisfying. Especially when the Astros win in the bottom of the 12th. :)

The only trouble was the traffic out of there. I spent 45 minutes trying to get on the freeway because I was going north instead of south, and I don't know the secret way to get on in that direction. I don't know why people chose to commute.

Buttons and Me

I like buttons. Not the ones on clothing. The ones that do something. For example, buttons that unlock the car doors, or turn on the computer. Buttons are neat, and I like seeing how they work. Not just to see what they do, but how they do what they do.

So the following story didn't surprise Jen in the least.

After I helped our neighbor replace two fenceposts, I was ready for a shower before we went out to see a movie. I turned on the hot water, waited for a bit, and hopped in. There was something new in there. Jen has been putting a lot of new things in there this month. She replaced the shower head while I was gone. She added shelves for lots of shower products. Most of which I don't use and I couldn't tell you what they were for.

But there was a new object, mounted right below the shower head. A clear cylinder, filled with transparent fluid. There was a spout on the bottom of the cylinder. And, most important, there was a nice oval blue button facing me. I figured it must be some new soap dispenser.

I cupped my hand under the cylinder. I eagerly pushed the button.

Nothing happened.

I was a little disappointed, but then, that's how things go sometime. I stuck my head under the shower and began to rinse my hair, when I realized I was hearing something new. A beeping noise. I turned off the water, and tilted my head a little. The cylinder was beeping every two seconds. I peered closely at it. Now I could read the warnings on the inside of the cylinder.

"DO NOT ALLOW CONTACT WITH EYES AND SKIN."

Right then the cylinder sprung to life! It revved up and the spout suddenly began to rotate! A strong, wide spray of antiseptic liquid fountained against the shower door and then, as the spout turned, the spray tracked towards me! I was defenseless! There was nowhere to go!

I remember two thoughts that blazed through my head.
1) Why had my wife put some doomsday device in the shower and not even mentioned it to me?!
2) Cover my eyes!

With a reaction speed that Jackie Chan would be mildly impressed by, I covered my eyes as the fountain sprayed over me. I recognized the sanitizing odor as the fountain sprayed the entire shower three times. It smelled like the spray you use on the shower walls when you're done to prevent soap scum build up. I started laughing before the spraying was finished. I cranked the water back on and scrubbed off the cleaner spray, and continued on with my shower.

After getting ready I stepped out of the bedroom and started putting on my shoes. "Something very interesting just happened to me," I began with a wry grin. Jen looked over from the TV and began to laugh as she realized what must have occurred. Come to think of it, she figured it out very fast. So fast, I wonder if she had planned it...

Great Sunday

This weekend, the weather has been absolutely perfect. It is cool and not humid and wonderful. I hope we get a few more weeks like this before summer sets in. I hope it's this nice tomorrow when Sarah and I play hookey to go to a baseball game.

I just finished watching today's game. It's still early, of course, but it's nice seeing the Astros score some runs. It's even nicer that those runs are coming off the likes of Adam Everett, and not just necessarily bombs from the big bats all the time. I'm so glad I have season tickets this year. It's making me even more into the start of the season than normal, and I usually follow baseball pretty closely in April and May.

My cert sim went well last week. I managed everything OK, and I think I'm going to get passed on to my final. I haven't had the debrief from my group yet, but nobody has been looking at me with concern in their eyes, so I imagine that the debrief won't be terrible.

This week's pace should be a little bit slower. Yuri's Night is Wednesday, but THANK GOD this year all I have to do is show up to the party and have a good time. I would have basically imploded by now had I tried to take an active role in this year's planning.

It's Baseball Season!!!

My blogging is suffering from the insane pace of my life right now. That and the fact that I have my husband back for a week. :)

Sarah, Jose, and I went to Astros opening day yesterday. This event is particularly notable because it is the first time that I have gone to a baseball game that is part of my SEASON TICKET PACKAGE. :) :) I'm so happy that I finally bought season tickets. My tickets are cool and red with pictures of Astros on them. Not those stupid single game tickets. We have another game tomorrow, and Gavin gets to use Jason's ticket since he's out-of-town. We get NL Championship posters if we get there reasonably early.

Aside: For Sarah, I just want you to know that I'm watching the game LIVE at the moment because my TiVo's off recording American Idol. I know you'll sleep better tonight knowing that I wasn't watching events AFTER THEY HAPPEN.

Tomorrow is my "cert qual" sim for Rendezvous FDO. That means that it's the insanely difficult sim they give me to see if I'm ready to get certified. I will no doubt be ready for one of those tall margaritas by game time tomorrow night.