Not Motivated

I got up early to observe a sim at work this morning. The run was boring. Basically what I've gotten out of the experience is sleepiness all day so far. Plus, the uncharacteristically low humiditiy in Houston this week is really tempting me to ditch work early and fall asleep on a blanket in my yard. If only.

Sarah already wrote about the confusing end to last night's baseball game. You need one of those every so often. Something that just makes you go, "huh?". It's particularly nice when it results in a win.

Tonight is our first game in the new "competitive" co-ed softball league. I had heard that some of the annoying co-ed rules (like if a guy is walked with 2 outs, the next girl can just take the base) were not going to be used for this league. But I just went and read the rules on the website, and it still has that rule and a couple other annoying ones in there. I think it's basically going to be like co-ed rec with homers.

Life's Soundtrack

Yesterday's soundtrack...

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An' if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know


Today's soundtrack...

Why does the sun always shine
On the other side, on the other side
Why does it always have to be
Oh raining
Always raining on me

Fame

So after Becca's post today, I googled my name. Interesting results...

"Jennifer M..." produced
My WoT rant on Amazon
Mars Exploration on Inbox Robot - my name shows up in the google description, but I can't find it on the actual page
My Flickr profile
A bunch of false positives that have Gavin, Mike, or Lauren listed

"Jen M..." produced
The Quote Board - flashback
A bunch of Yuri's Night listings
Everybody's blogs, including my favorite post of Becca's ever
A bunch of false positives that have Gavin, Mike, or Lauren listed

"Jennifer S..." produced
My co-op bio - #1, I was suprised that the #1 Jennifer S... listing is actually me
The UW Sigma Gamma Tau alumni list

"Jen S..." produced
A listing of names flown on Stardust - forgot I did that

So, as far as the internet knows, I'm famous for being friends with people, Yuri's Night, liking space, and dissing Robert Jordan. My star is rising.

Wx

I had hoped to get back home this week to an immediate transition into console work for the mission. Unfortunately, the weather gods are not only uncooperative, they are actively throwing obstacles into our path. Between lightning and hurricanes, it looks like launch won't be until next week at the earliest. Meanwhile, everyone in the world has just turned into an amateur meteorologist.

In local weather, although it will be September on Friday, Houston is still well in the grips of summer. Heat index today is expected to rise above 100 deg F. I melt.

Still, being home is nice. The dogs are happy to have both their people back for the first time in almost a month. I did a bunch of laundry Sunday, which, although it is not as sexy as working a Shuttle mission, absolutely had to be done. As Gavin noted, we went to see a good movie.

I think I've traveled enough this month to place me on an isolationist trend for a few weeks at least.

Invincible

Becca, Sarah, Jen and I went to see Invincible yesterday afternoon, the football movie with Mark Wahlberg as the Philadelphia Eagle walk-on. It was pretty good, I liked it. I didn't know any of the background story going in, so, I wasn't sure how it was going to end. I mean, I had an idea (it is a Disney movie, after all), but sometimes Disney surprises me.

In other news, looks like Atlantis will roll back to the safety of the huge assembly building as the storm Ernesto threatens the Cape. First the most powerful lightning strike ever recorded at the Cape, then the first hurricane of the season... I wonder what the next challenge will be to get this mission underway.

Back Home

Colorado time is over, for now.

I had to come right back to get ready to work the Shuttle mission, which as it turns out won't be until at least Monday. Hopefully the grounding system worked. Lightning can make a big mess.

Google Trends

Work was interesting today. Not because of what I was working on, but the fact that in the two weeks I was gone two people left and three people arrived in my group.

Anyways, tonight I've been surfing the internet. It's not always a good thing to do. It might make you jealous when you find out that your wife is jogging through mountain canyons after work. I mean, she doesn't even like running! Life's not always fair, I guess. But I did find something new that I thought was cool.

Google usually comes up with neat stuff. I found out they're trying something called "Google Trends", where you can plot the relative volume of web queries and news stories. It is interesting to see what the news seems to think is important versus what the public is interested in. For kicks, I checked "moon" versus "mars". Moon is twice as popular as Mars, but Mars only receives more press when its an anniversary for the Mars rovers. You can even do three-way comparisons, like with "space shuttle" vs. "space station" vs. "spaceship one". Interesting information for space policy debates.

Quality of Living

I love Colorado Springs. Here's what I did this afternoon...

3:30 Meeting over
3:50 Back at hotel
4:10 Leave hotel again
4:20 Trail running in Red Rocks Canyon
5:30 Back at hotel
5:50 Blogging

That rocks!

Back Home

Wyoming was great, Ames conference was a bunch of things but overall good, and Colorado was a blast.

We decided not to get up at 0500 to join Buzz and Ron in their insane quest to scale Pikes Peak, 24 miles round trip. Instead we slept in, had breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall place that has the best pancakes around, and then hiked 6 miles along part of the Ring the Peak Trail. Very pleasant, except I advise that you wait 2 hours before hiking if you've had a foot-diameter pancake and eggs. Colorado Springs has some nice hikes right in their backyard.

The flight home was nice, I managed a seat facing west so I could catch the sunset. Unfortunately most of the sunset occurred when we were flying through a front, but I did get some excellent cloud pictures. (Woo, clouds? Yeah, they were cool! I'll post them later, somehow, probably when Jen helps me set up a webpage for them.)

The parking shuttle dropped me off at Jen's car and I realized that my car-clicker wasn't unlocking it. Looked like an interior light was accidently left on. Fortunately I flagged down another shuttle and he jump-started me, no sweat. I drove off the lot and turned into the nearest gas station since the tank was nearly empty. As I pulled beside the pump I shifted into park and pulled the parking brake. And turned the keys ... WAIT! I realized too late to stop myself as the car went silent again. The battery hadn't recharged enough, so, I went inside and asked the attendent to call a wrecker. I only waited 20 minutes until he showed up with his 3 year old dead asleep in a car seat at 11 at night. I gave him $20 even though he never asked for anything.

The dogs are happy to have me back home, they're curled up next to me. When I walked in the door Zoya didn't stop jumping around for five minutes. Roxy fiercely wagged her tail while she protected her bone from possible theft. It's good to be back home. Just wish Jen was here too.

zzzzzzz

2:51 AM

I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo (sorry – fell asleep there) tired. You know, I used to be totally into these multi-day sims, but that was before I got to fly a couple real flights. Now I’m just annoyed that I have to be up all night for one night in the middle of the week.

I’m off at 8:00 AM. I learned from my experience on our Nashville trip that I can’t reasonably fly out of here before I sleep for at least a few hours tomorrow. For one thing, I would likely fall asleep at the wheel on my way to the airport and kill myself. For another, I will be very annoyed, even angry and mean, if the kid next to me on the plane is excited because it’s his first time flying and wakes me up to ask me if I’ll take a picture out the window with his disposable camera.

So, I’m flying out at 6:30 PM. That means I can sleep for about 6 hours (if I can), but I’ll have to drive from Colorado Springs to Denver at 11:00 at night. I’m hoping that my daytime nap and sleeping on the airplane will make me awake enough to make the drive, but sleepy enough to want to go to bed as soon as I get to the hotel in Denver. We’ll see.

This trip is going to be so complicated.

Fire Update

The Casper Mountain fire is 30% contained this morning. The fire jumped Highway 220 overnight, but fire crews quickly put out the blaze on the west side of the highway and returned to protecting structures in the Goose Egg area.

I talked to my dad last night, and he and my mom are feeling more inconvenienced than truly fearful for their property right now. There is a lot of smoke in town from time to time.

Here's a live webcam view of the mountain from the Casper Medical Center. It seems to go down from time to time - I suppose it's getting more traffic than usual.

On Fire

My little hometown of Casper, WY is making national headlines today. A wildfire burning on Casper Mountain, which is covered with cabins and homes, is on fire. Casper Mountain hasn't had a major fire in about a century, and there is a lot of dead, dry wood lying on the ground up there.

My parents, who live about 1/4 mile into the prairie below the forrested area have been evacuated from their home. Right now, most of the fire seems to be burning to the west - away from my folks house, but the fire is uncontained and unpredictable. My parents are staying with friends in town, and all the family animals got out with them.

The fire started on Saturday due to a lightning strike. That lightning came from the same storm that drove us back to our car early from our hike on Casper Mountain on Saturday. It smouldered without anyone realizing it was there until Monday (a couple hours after we left to catch our airplanes in Denver). Yesterday, it spread quickly and burned over the top of the ridge.

The fire is front and center of the Casper Star Tribune, understandably.

BlazeBlog
Photos

Keeping Busy

In the last four days, I have been hiking, swimming, horseback riding, and paint-balling. I'm a bit sore. It has been a great visit, though. Tomorrow, we are going to the County Fair and picnicking on the mountain. Then Sunday is Caroline's birthday party.

Monday, we're going to have to leave decently early to get to Denver in time to get through whatever crazy new security is in place at the airport. Who would have thought things could change so much in one week?

Sucks

We're in a station wagon speeding across the plains of Wyoming. Caroline, Jen, and Gavin are sitting in the back seat.

Caroline tosses her Poohbear onto the floor. Gavin sees it fall and reaches across the car to hand it back to her.

Caroline tosses her Poohbear onto the floor again. Gavin ignores it. Jen, who missed the first exchange, gives it back to Caroline.

Caroline tosses her Poohbear into Jen's lap. Gavin chuckles at Jen while Caroline waits expectantly. Jen gives Caroline a sideways look. Caroline looks very innocent.

Jen puts the Poohbear away, saying, "You're going to lose your Poohbear now. Yeah, that sucks, doesn't it?"

Caroline grins and says really loud, "SUCKS!"

As we all laugh her mom smirks in the rearview mirror, "Thanks, Jen."

Caroline

Caroline's been a lot of fun. She sings out loud while we hike through the mountains. She likes to make sure that everyone follows her outside into the backyard or wants to play with her cowboys and princesses. She likes pushing buttons, which I can completely relate with.

Yesterday morning I was relaxing in Jessica and Pat's living room when suddenly I heard a car alarm go off. I stood up, looked out the window, and noticed the trunk of our rental car was also wide open. A neighbor mowing his lawn next door was giving our car an amused look.

"Jen? Where are my keys?" I asked, remembering that I had just heard Jen talking with Caroline down the hallway.

I'm sure the neighbor knew exactly why our car was acting up.

In Wyoming

We're having a great time on vacation so far. We spent most of the day traveling, but we got here in time to play with Caroline for a couple hours before she went to bed. She calls us both by name already. Gavin and she bonded by playing in the sand table for 15 minutes.



More later...

Patches

I realized yesterday that I've had an amazing amount of activities in my life that result in the collection of patches.

In elementary school, there was Girl Scouts. I amassed such a collection of patches with them that I only sewed the top part of the patch onto the sash. That way I could layer them over each other like scales to fit more on the sash. For the record, most of my patches were for things like horseback riding, camping, hiking, and science. There were a few patches scattered in for crafts and cooking that the troop did as a group. I never had a cosmetics badge like someone I know.

In junior high and high school, my patch gathering was done in drum and bugle corps. Every summer I'd spend riding a bus all over the USA to shows. I got so many patches for my jacket that when I bought a new jacket my junior year of high school (my old one was falling apart), I only sewed back on the patches from the really big shows. Regionals and finals. I had patches all the way down both sleves, and I put all the finals patches on the back of the jacket.

In college, things were in the same vein as I collected patches for marching band. These were harder to get as I only got one for every bowl game we went to. Still, in the four years I was in the band, we managed to go to four bowl games. One sleve on that jacket has patches all the way down the side.

Then I went out into the real world. Surely, the patch thing was over. Nope. I now collect patches at work. Mission patches. Every mission I work, I buy a shirt with the crew patch for the mission on the breast. I'm up to three different patches on four different shirts now. Oh, and then I have the Mission Operations patch on a shirt, and I'm hoping to get another one of those soon since they updated the patch. Plus, we get large patches after every mission we work, which I have been framing along with a picture of me working the mission.

So, what do you think it says about me that I seem to gravitate towards these activities that use patches to recognize participation? In every case, those patches are badges of honor to the people that get them. Something that says I took part in something special, at least to myself. Is this not that uncommon? For those of you who work in other places and areas, do people in your workplace order polo shirts with the logo of your latest project emblazoned on the breast?

Hole in the System

This is one of those things that skirts the line for me of what I'll blog about work. But it's just too good not to relate...

Yesterday, I had to attend a post-flight review. Everyone talks about things that went wrong in their area, and how they're going to fix them. Sometimes these things are interesting to me, like a discussion about the L5L jet heater that failed. This was reported by the mainstream press quite extensively - must have been a slow news day. By the way, doing the mission with that problem was TOTALLY no big deal.

Many times, however, the problems discussed are not interesting, like a discussion about printer paper onboard not having the usual holes punched in it. At this point of the meeting, I was really suffering. It had been going on, and on, and on for hours. I was struggling to pay attention, but this made me laugh out loud...

"Organization X is responsible for generating the paper; Organization Y is responsible for packing the paper and puting it on the vehicle. We're not sure who is responsible for punching the holes in the paper."

Isn't that so wonderfully, perfectly beaurocratic? There is somebody responsible for punching holes in paper. But we don't know who.