just the facts, ma'am

listening to: eve 6, "how much longer"

so i'm on a bit of an eve 6 kick right now. anyway. i've decided that i want to go take a ride in a hot air balloon sometime. this weekend is the ballunar festival in conjunction with the jsc open house, and this morning as i drove to work, there were dozens of hot air balloons floating around clear lake. it was beautiful.

i finally replied to shun's email yesterday, and he responded in minutes saying, among other things, that all the rocket and space stuff on this webpage sounds a bit nerdy. hmph! i know he's just kidding--after all, he's spent time working down here too--but his comment makes the following paragraphs necessary for those of you who may not actually know me:

at the moment, i live in houston and i work for nasa. when i mention someplace called "jsc," i'm talking about the johnson space center--home to mission control and all the astronauts. i am a co-op, which means i'm not quite a full-time employee, but i'm more than an intern. basically, i alternate periods of school with periods of work. this is my 6th work tour, and i work in the descent analysis division doing trajectory analysis for the x-38. i love my project this summer, but hate sitting in front of a computer all day (which, unfortunately, is a necessity, because trajectory calculations can't really be done by hand...it'd take ages). fortunately, the people i work with are really cool, and make my computer-filled days much more than bearable.

last may, i finished my bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at georgia tech. in a month, i will be starting graduate school at stanford and by next june i should have a master's degree in aerospace engineering. i've been told many times that space is my passion, and though i'm slow to agree with that diagnosis (mainly because "passion" seems like such a strong word), it's probably accurate. i can't really explain why i love space, except to say that the fact that we can leave the planet and survive in a completely alien environment is utterly and completely fascinating. in any case, my interest in space is definitely a big part of who i am, and what i'll be doing with my life in the near future.

of course i like to think there's more to me than school and work...i love movies, and reading (when i have time), and writing, and spending time with cool people. as far as "real" interests go, there are probably three notable things to mention. first is the fact that i was an editor on the newspaper at georgia tech (entertainment section), and really enjoyed the part of my job where i got to basically design what my section looked like each week, and choose what kind of content was printed. second is that i also like making webpages and seeing what kind of interesting (but not overly flashy or complicated) layouts i can invent. and finally, i also like photography, though i'm not too great at it because i haven't been doing it for long.

i get a lot of personal satisfaction from doing those types of graphic design/layout/visual/creative stuff. i've been told that i'm good at it...which is probably just to boost my ego, in which case it worked. but i like to think it's true, and that i really do have at least some artistic talent despite my engineering-oriented brain. someday, i'd love to have the opportunity to turn web design or print layout/editing into a serious interest. we'll see.

anyway. so that's a bit of background.