January 2003 Archives

i wish it would be sunny outside already. that, and i can't believe it's the end of january.

i don't have much to say today. last night our yuri's night meeting went ok, though i have serious concerns about what will actually end up getting said to the center director during the meeting on february 13. i'm glad leeward will be there in person. he seems like he strikes a good balance between the rest of us, in terms of portraying the situation calmly and most accurately, and being the best combination between optimistic and pessimistic of any of us.

last night i had two stalkers.

i went home from work just briefly enough to grab my grocery list, and headed to the store. on my way out of the fabulousness, i passed jason and debbie, who were also on their way out somewhere. they followed me out the gate, up to the traffic light, down el camino...and it was at this point that i realized they had decided to simply follow me. i continued to the grocery store, they pulled into the parking lot right along with me, and spent the next half hour following me up and down the aisles, critiquing my choices of bananas, hamburger meat, and taboule mix. it was amusing, if a bit strange. afterward, they came over, debbie fixed "american tacos" and we watched american idol. quite a funny show.

christina wrote something in her blog that made me realize how quickly and yet how slowly time passes. she was remembering fall 2000, which was the semester we really became good friends. only two short years ago, and yet it feels like i've known her for ages. but now that we don't live in the same city, i'm losing touch. as i am with many people. i am always torn over whether this is a fact of life, or whether it's something i could control if i tried harder. i don't know.

anyway. tonight we're having a planning meeting for yuri's night, a big space party to be held on april 12, the anniversary of yuri gagarin becoming the first human in space. i volunteered to be the webmaster, surprise surprise. i have some cool ideas for the design and layout, and i hope i'll have time to actually accomplish them.

a week ago i was climbing a mountain.

yesterday i got my invitation to ron and buzz's wedding and my plans for going to colorado crashed and burned. yes, that's right, their wedding is april 5, the same weekend for which i've already bought a plane ticket to denver. argh!! if it were possible to kick my own ass, i would have done so last night, seeing as how i've known since october or november that april 5 was the day. it just didn't click until i actually saw it in writing on the invitation. stupid brain.

missing the wedding is not an option in my opinion, because ron is one of my best friends. and yet by not going to colorado, i leave becca, matt, gavin, jen, and cari hanging. it's funny; we knew someone might not be able to go, but it was supposed to be because the shuttle mission was delayed, and it definitely wasn't supposed to be me.

argh argh argh argh. though i can kick myself all i want, the decision is a non-issue. i'm going to the wedding. hence i'm not going to colorado. i'm about to go call continental and see what my options are in terms of changing dates, destinations, etc.

so yesterday afternoon, becca and i went over to the jsc library on a tip from gavin. they are getting ready to move to u. of houston-clear lake, which i don't really understand, as that makes accessing the library more difficult, because a person would have to get in their car and drive there rather than just walk to building 12. but anyway, apparently there is not quite as much space at uhcl than there is here, so the library is getting rid of duplicate copies of many old documents.

"getting rid" of them meant piling them on a bookshelf with a sign saying "take what you want." free books? free space books? woohoo! so becca and i each took as many as we could reasonably carry back to our building and giggled the whole way as if it were christmas. some of the highlights of what i picked up:

• "the problem of space travel: the rocket motor" translated from the german by hermann noordung, written in 1929.
• "human response to sustained acceleration", a nasa publication from 1966.
• "exploring the unknown" with the full text of papers by the gods of aerospace like percival lowell (1895), tsiolkovsky (1903), oberth (1923), goddard (1919), and von braun (1952).
• "lunar flight handbook, part 1: background material", a nasa publication from 1963.
• "space for mankind's benefit", a summary of a congress held in 1971.

yes, i am a big engineering dork.

(10:18 a.m.)

so i called continental. i can rebook the ticket as long as i do it by april 4 (the original date of travel), and i can change the destination and everything. there's a fee of $100, which i expected, but i get a credit for the price of the original ticket, which was $158. so in the end, i lose $100 instead of $158, because i'll have a $58 credit. i guess that's pretty good, considering.

so i have to decide on somewhere to go by april. i'm thinking atlanta for the 4th of july (and running the peachtree) would be lovely...

everyone go visit nick's page du jour. today's picture is one that i took in marseille on saturday. plus, i am doing my part to keep his hits up. :)

so today is the anniversary of challenger and the flags at the center are at half staff. it makes me think of the metal plaque i have on my wall at home. it's funny but with a serious message that i try to remember on days when i am bored with my work. the sign shows a painted picture of a pilot standing on his wrecked airplane, with the caption "remember the possible consequences if you are careless in your work." it's a nice reminder that my work, though it often seems inconsequential, will have an impact someday, and that i need to do my best.

anyway. enough philosophizing. on to something completely frivilous.

last night i watched joe millionaire. the premise of the show is so wrong, and yet it's so captivating. the show does make fun of itself, which i like, and come on, it is just so incredibly funny to watch. on his date with the curly brown-haired girl last night, i was sitting in my apartment laughing out loud. they were cooking dinner, and this woman knew even less about cooking that i do.

her: "oh, this is garlic, right?
him: "um, no, those are onions."

also, she said if she had $50 million, she'd go to a 3rd world country, and, like, bathe their children, and feed them and educate them. she said she was a real mercenary kind of person. mercenary! becca and i had a great laugh over this one, as we're pretty sure she meant she was a missionary type of person, not (according to m-w.com) 1) a hired soldier in a foreign army or 2) serving solely for pay or sordid advantage. i'm cracking up here.

hee hee hee.

i'm at work. i wish i were back in france.

this trip to europe was unlike my previous two trips in that i wasn't going solely as a tourist. instead, i was staying with a friend and spending my nights in an apartment. the apartment sort of felt like home. whenever i walked downstairs and out the front door of the building onto the little cobblestoned street, i was always vaguely surprised to find myself in france.

i have a habit of losing track of where i am. it amuses me.

last night i was a bum. i actually wasn't tired when i first got home, so i unpacked, started laundry, did some cleaning, ate dinner. i had the super bowl on in the background and saw some of the commercials, but i spent more time just bumming around. by 8:00 i was getting pretty tired, but i ended up staying up till 11 after getting into an involved conversation about alcoholism as a disease, and whether it is within a person's power to control their own alcoholism. the debate started from the question of "do you feel more sympathy for someone with a disease like cancer, with the premise that cancer is not a choice, than you do for someone who is an alcoholic, with the premise that alcoholism is a choice." anyway. lunchtime.

well, i'm back. 7:00 houston time, 2:00 a.m. in aix. i've been home for about three hours now, after 16 hours of travel.

nick and i decided to come back to aix last night instead of staying in marseille for two reasons. one, coming back to nick's apartment was more comfortable. two, spending 50 euros for a cab to the airport versus spending 50 euros for a hotel room in marseille...well obviously i was going to spend 50 euros either way, so we might as well be comfortable in aix. we had a cab meet us at the place de l'hotel de ville at 5:30 a.m. (10:30 p.m. last night houston time, when the person picking me up at the airport this afternoon hadn't even gone to bed yet) and i was at the marseille airport just before 6. nick and i had muffins and then i said goodbye. my flight to london left at 6:50.

i ate breakfast on the flight and then slept for an hour or so. i had two hours to wander around gatwick before boarding the 777 bound for houston. i love 777s. they're big, they're shiny and new, they have individual tv screens in the back of every seat. but even the coolness of a 777 wore thin after my london-to-houston flight.

that was a long flight. i mean long. those of you that have flown to australia or something will scoff, but this was the longest flight i'd ever been on. 10 hours. i ate lunch, and we were still flying. i watched a movie, and we were still flying. i read three chapters of a novel, and we were only crossing the southern tip of greenland. i slept for an hour and a half, and we still had three and a half to go. i went back to sleep, woke up again. two hours to go. i had afternoon tea. still flying. read three more chapters. still flying.

as a side note, greenland was cool. lots of mountains, lots of snow. it looked a lot like what i imagine the himalayas must look like. i must've snapped two dozen photos, aerial views of anonymous greenland mountains. i was fascinated.

finally, when i felt like i would be forced to live the rest of my days in a pressurized tin can, my ears started to pop. the flaps came down, i heard the landing gear, and we broke through the cloud deck about 300 feet above the ground. i was never so happy to leave an airplane in my life. we could have been anywhere, and i would have still been overjoyed just to get out of that can. ahhhh.

jason picked me up in his new truck and 45 minutes later i was back in my apartment. i left debbie and jason with a key so they could feed my fish and water my plants, but they went a step farther and decorated my apartment! i walked in the door to parachute men hanging from the ceiling, a pair of my tennis shoes sitting on top of the ceiling fan, punch balloons, a balance ball cowboy sitting in my papasan chair, sponge dinosaurs in the sink, messages saying "hi sarah" and "hee hee thanks for the keys", and last but not least, a bathtub full of balloons.

i have great friends. i was sad to leave france, but walking into a decorated apartment makes coming home fun. people always surprise you. i had a great week abroad, but not for the obvious reasons. being in france was great, but what really made me happy was just seeing nick. he could have been anywhere in the world, and i would have been happier just to see my friend.

nick: “i want new ankles.”
sarah: “i want you to put on some pants.”

(8:45 p.m.)

after that exchange that got the morning off to a funny start, nick and i spent a lovely day in marseille. we had planned to be up in time to catch the 9:30 bus, but surprise of surprises (which I say in the most sarcastic tone of voice possible), that didn’t happen. instead, we got up at 10, had a leisurely breakfast, took showers, and finally caught the 11:30 bus that had us in marseille just after 12:00. nick's friend christy, the same one that was at dinner last night, happened to be on the same bus this morning as she was heading to marseille to her lab, but since she didn't have to be there right away, she walked with us from the bus/train station down to the old port.

marseille was a really neat city. it is by far the oldest city in france, having been around since about 600 b.c as a bustling shipping community. the old port was really cool. it is too small to serve as a port for today's enormous cargo ships, so now it serves as a ferry terminal and marina. there were sailboats upon sailboats upon sailboats resting at the docks. it was really pretty in the bright sun (yes, we had another gorgeously sunny and cloudless day). from the port, we caught a bus for the short ride up the steep hill to notre dame de la garde. the church was nice to see, but the real attraction is the awesome view of the entire city and the mediterranean coast and the mountains surrounding marseille. it reminded me a lot of twin peaks in san francisco, a pair of hills that overlooked all of the golden gate.

the water was so blue, it was absolutely gorgeous. i could have stayed up there all day, but we had to catch the bus back down to get back to the old port in time to catch a boat! we had planned to take a cruise past the calanques. a calanque is, accorinding to nick's book, "a narrow and steep-sided coastal valley which has been bored into the solid rock by a river, whose course was usually guided by a fault, during the periods of the sea's retreat, and which has subsequently been submerged by the waves during cycles of flooding. such fluctuations in sea level result from the alternation of glaciation and deglaciation on the earth's surface over the course of the past two million years." (i copied all that because i didn't really know how to describe it briefly in english.)

whew. anyway. point being that the cruise past the calanques turned out to be out of service at the moment, so we only saw them from afar, but they were still cool. instead, we took a boat to the iles du frioul, two rock islands a half hour boat ride off the coast. the islands were nice and quiet, and had a great view of all of marseille and of chateau d'if, an island with an old prison on it that the fictional count of monte cristo was imprisoned in. sort of like france's version of alcatraz. hmm. actually, alcatraz is probably the u.s.'s version of chateau d'if, but oh well.

we caught the boat back and were back at the old port just before 5:00. from there, we walked to the cathedrale sainte-marie majeure. we had seen it from a distance and decided to check it out on a whim. it was totally worth it--much cooler than notre dame de la garde, though to be fair, nowhere near as good a view as the city. ;) from there, we walked through old marseille back to the bus station and voila, here we are back in aix.

tonight we're going to see punch drunk love with some of nick's friends. it's in english, with french subtitles. hurrah, i will be able to understand it!

well, nick and i didn't get up in time this morning to do the planned souvenir shopping, so he promised we would go this afternoon at 4 when he gets back from class. in the meantime, i am on my own again. i think i will walk over to a park that nick said is very pretty.

it is always rather hard to tell what the weather is like simply by looking out the window, because nick's window looks out onto the building next to him (within easy throwing distance, probably only 12 or 15 feet). so you have to crane your neck up to see the sky and the roof, but from here it looks like it is a lovely day. i see a snatch of blue sky, and sunshine falling on the side of the tallest roof.

i can't believe i have to go back to houston soon...two more nights in france, then the long plane flight back. in only 6 days, i've gotten pretty used to being here, and as silly as it sounds, i think i may actually understand french better than i did a week ago.

last night nick invited some of his friends from cafe danse over for dinner. we fixed chicken teriyaki for the main course. it was a nice evening, but the group wasn't very talkative, which is very different from the other two dinners i've been to while over here. there were three girls, and one of their boyfriends; nick says sophie was stressed out, and anna was more interested in ian (her boyfriend) than anything else...but whatever, it was still a nice evening.

tonight we are having a different group of his friends over for dinner--the mostly american group, so i will finally be able to hold a conversation during dinner! i'll be relieved at that, and won't have to work my brain so hard at translating. there are 5 people coming, and they are all female. typical nick. ;) i think we are going to fix chicken parmesan. yum.

(1:50 a.m.)

we had a lovely little dinner party tonight...nick and six girls. melissa and miranda are rotary scholars from the united states like nick. christy is a fulbright scholar working at a psychology lab here. stephanie is a french girl who spend a year in england teaching french at a boarding school, and delphine is an air traffic controller here in aix. it was nice because they all spoke english, even stephanie and delphine, so i could finally understand the dinner conversation, and participate! it was a lively group of people, and i enjoyed it. not to mention that the food turned out really well...chicken parmesan, and garlic bread.

i had a nice walk around town this afternoon, including a stroll through a pretty park and a stop at the museum of old aix. it was a pretty dinky museum, only 4 rooms, but in one they had a collection of maps of aix. they gradually got older and older; the oldest was from 1481! wow.

ohmygod!! i totally forgot this story! so this afternoon when nick got back from class we went to a few of the stores around the old town to collect souvenirs for me to take home...things that are unique to aix. we went to a wine store that nick likes to get a bottle of some red wine that is made locally. the man working there spoke english very well and recommended many wines. after i chose one, he was putting it in a bag and i told him "you speak very good english." he smiled and said "actually, i speak swedish much better than english, i lived in sweden for 8 years." swedish!! i was meant to find that wine store. it was a sign! ("but you don't believe in signs...") sweden!

the other funny story of the day was when nick and i went into the grocery store to buy wine for dinner. we already were carrying 4 baguettes, but when we put 3 bottles of wine down on the counter, the cashier asked "is this all for two??" nick explained that no, we're not drunks, we were having a dinner party, to which the man replied "as long as you drink good wine, you are never a drunk." i love the french.

today i climbed a mountain, hurrah!

it turned out that the bus to the base of mont st victoire left even earlier than we thought, at 8:25 this morning. nick and i were both pretty sleepy getting up that early (ok, so maybe it was just me since nick has been getting up that early all week for class), but we made it to the bus and were on our way to vauvenargues. we got off the bus about 3 kilometers before we reached the town and were right at the base of the trail leading to the top of mont st. victoire.

this is a relatively small mountain at only 1000 meters high, but since we were starting from almost sea level, it was a bit of a climb. the first part of the trail led through the forest and was very steep in places; this was the worst part in my opinion. after a while the trail became more rocky, less defined, and more open as the trees gave way to scrubby bush-type plants. nick didn't like this part as much since you had to be really careful with footing to avoid tripping or turning an ankle, but i liked it better because it wasn't as steep. i can deal with rocky footing much better than steepness. :)

after about an hour and a half we reached the small chapel about 50 meters below the top. i was amazed that we got up there so quickly, because from the road where the bus let us off, the top looked quite far away and i had doubts that we would make it to the top in time to get back down to catch the bus back to aix. but we made it with time to spare. we looked around and greeted some of the old men working at the chapel. nick asked them on our way back down and it turns out they climb up to the chapel every thursday to do maintainence work. every thursday! it reminded me of the old german men becca and i saw on the germany/austria border after climbing up a very large hill near fussen--even 80-year-old men are in better shape for climbing mountains than i am! ah well.

we climbed the 50 meters or so to the top of the mountain, which has a large cross on a pedestal sitting there. very descriptively, it's called the "croix de provence" (cross of provence). it was a tricky climb to the cross, and it wasn't made any simpler by the gale force provencal wind blowing over the top of the mountain. i'm serious, this wind was unbelieveable!! i took a brief video clip with my camera just to capture the sound of it roaring through the few trees that were able to grow next to the chapel despite all the limestone; i'll have to post it when i get back to houston. it was a bit scary. i experienced a fear of heights for only the second time i can remember, and i was worried that a gust in the wrong direction would send me tumbling, but fortunately the wind blew us toward the mountain, so it actually helped with the steep climb to the cross. nevertheless, i held on very tightly at the top.

the view was absolutely spectacular. we could see aix down below, and farther in the distance we spotted the aqueduct that we visited yesterday. far away i saw the bridge that the tgv uses, and amazingly, i happened to be looking at just the right time and saw a tgv speed across the bridge like a silver bullet. farther still, we could see the mediterranean and marseille! and looking in the other direction, we could see ridges and valleys and finally way, way off in the distance, at least 50 miles away and probably more, we could see the beginning of the alps, snow-capped and everything! it was absolutely stunning. i took some pictures, but the alps don't show up as well in them as they did to our eyes. it was fantastic. we couldn't have asked for a clearer day. there was hardly a cloud in the sky!

the fierce wind (not to mention cold wind--i was wearing a long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, wool coat, gloves, scarf, and hat to keep warm even after getting the workout of climbing up all that way) finally drove us back down to the chapel and then we started our descent. we came down a slightly different way, and passed a sign. i could only read that it said "danger" but nick read the whole thing and then announced with slight alarm that climbing to the cross (which of course we had just done) was temporarily forbidden due to the hazard of sliding rock and the instability of the small building next to the cross. so oops on our part, but secretly i'm glad we didn't see the sign; it would have sucked to have gotten all the way up there only to have to turn around 10 meters from the top.

when we got back to the edge of the trees, the wind was finally blocked enough to be comfortable again. we got back to the bus stop about 3 and a half hours after we'd left it, and were just in time to catch it down the road into vauvenargues, where we saw a chateau that pablo picasso lived in towards the end of his life, and where he is buried. it was not open to the public, in fact, the sign simply said "not open to the public. please do not insist. the museum is in paris." as if we could just zoom off to paris right then. ;) vauvenargues was a nice little town though, and eventually nick and i ended up just resting on some steps in the sun waiting for the bus to come back.

and now i'm here while nick is in class. we stopped by the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner tonight; nick invited 5 of his friends over to eat with us, so that should be fun. i'm already hungry though...i'll never make it till 9:30. i'll have to find a snack. europeans eat dinner so late! and they always have multiple courses...appetizers, entree, and dessert at minimum it seems. anyway. i am exhausted. i think i'm going to chop some tomatoes and then take a quick nap.

(12:33 a.m.)

what is it with people getting engaged?? this makes two engagements in one week!

i have discovered why french people don't look you in the eye when walking down the street. it's because they are all watching the sidewalk to make sure they don't step in dog poop. anyway. nick says that most of the cities and towns in france feel dirty to him. i sort of agree, but at the same time, i argue that it's probably pretty hard to keep a city looking sparkly clean after hundreds or even thousands of years.

yesterday afternoon the sun finally came out in aix, and so i walked to the cathedral st sauveur, which is only about a quarter of a mile away from nick's apartment. maybe even closer. i got a couple good picture of the cathedral lit by the setting sun, and walked around the inside for about 15 minutes. the organ was playing and it was quite peaceful...until the huge group of japanese tourists came in. ;) ah well. there were some very pretty stained glass windows and statues (see page du jour for pictures).

after touring the cathedral, i spent another hour just walking around the town. i made my way back through the place de l'hotel de ville (the town hall square) and back past nick's apartment and eventually to the cours mirabeau, which is sort of like the main street of aix, and one of the borders between the old town and the new town. it is a wide street with big tall trees and lots of shops and cafes. there are fountains every few hundred feet, culminating in one huge fountain in la rotonde, at the end of the road.

the office of tourism is also right there at la rotonde, so i went in and got a brochure with a map of the cezanne trail. it's a tourist thing where you follow these bronze plaques in the sidewalk and it takes you to all the places that were important in the life of paul cezanne, from the house where he was born to the place where he is buried. i may do that tomorrow afternoon after we hike the mont st. victoire, or friday afternoon while nick has class.

today nick brought home croissants for breakfast. mmmmm. and this afternoon we're headed for an aqueduct that is west of aix.

(12:26 a.m.)

wow, where to start with a recap of today?? it was absolutely fantastic! well, except for when nick woke me up by flipping on the bright light. but i got over that soon enough and joined him for yet another yummy breakfast of jam, cheese, and (for something a bit different this morning) fresh croissants. mmmm. it's really a shame that you can't get bread like this in the states. or coffee either. i love european coffee.i took a shower and got ready for the day while nick went to his 12:15 class, and also made it to the post office for a few more postcard stamps before he got home. wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, the woman at the post office actually understood what i was asking for. when nick came back, we stopped by a sandwich stand and headed to the bus stop.we caught a bus to ventabren, a little town about 12 kilometers away from where we are in aix. our end goal was the roquefavour aqueduct, which is actually outside ventabren, but that's the closest town. with the cooperation of at least 5 different people sitting at the front of the bus, including the driver, we finally figured out which stop we needed to get off at in order to head toward the aqueduct. turns out this stop was in the middle of nowhere in the french countryside, but there was no stopping us at that point. we were walking.it turned out to be 6 kilometers to the aqueduct and then 6 kilometers back, which took us just under an hour each time, but it was definitely worthwhile. see the page du jour for a picture, and i'll post more on my site when i get back to houston.

we got back to the bus stop with 10 minutes to spare, and got back to nick's apartment with just enough time to change clothes and catch a ride with a rotarian (anne-marie). she drove us to a dinner date with another rotarian (ives), his wife (chantal), and his daughter (anne). they live in a house on the outskirts of aix, and had invited nick over for traditional french fondue. when he said i would be in town, they invited me along as well.

i cannot gush enough about how good it was, and how much fun the evening was, despite the fact that i only understand bits and pieces of conversations, and can speak far less than i understand. we started off with appetizers and a wine sort of like champagne, but not. we then moved to the table for meat, followed by cheese fondue (and more wine), and finally an apple and pear dessert. it was all absolutely delicious, and funniest of all was that i found that my french comprehension declined in direct proportion to the number of times ives refilled my wine glass, despite my protests of "non, merci!" :)

after dessert, chantal brought out a bottle of alcohol that she made herself. oh my lord, i have never tasted anything so potent in my life. it was like i have always imagined backwoods moonshine must taste like--52% alcohol. 52 percent!! the funniest part was that anne, the 16-year-old daughter, was allowed to have a bit, though she wasn't allowed to drink any wine, and when nick asked her if she liked it, she replied with "oui, je l'adore." i swear this stuff could cure any ills; in fact, ives even said it was for good health. ;)

from there, the music and dancing began. anne played her clarinet, chantal played the accordian, nick and i gave a rousing rendition of "heart and souls" on the piano, and we also waltzed to the accordian (though there wasn't much room for more than a few turns). all in all it was a great evening.

through my shameless plugs for the page du jour, i am helping nick obliterate his old records for hits per day. mwa ha ha. yesterday he had 48 hits and was quite excited about it i think.

so this morning i was woken up by someone buzzing at the door, however, i didn't realize that the loud buzzing noise was coming from the door until they had stopped and gone away. for a minute i was worried it had been nick, but duh, he has keys. so i don't know who it was, but sheesh, it took me forever to realize it was the door buzzing despite the fact that it's not exactly a quiet or peaceful sound. i have just been really groggy every morning so far when i've woken up; it must have something to do with the fact that my body is still lingering on houston time, and doesn't like being forced to get up at 3 a.m.

nick's in class all day so i'm on my own until 5:30. this would be a long time, except i just got up a little while ago and now have only 5 hours. i was going to go running, but it is raining. actually, maybe was raining, as i don't hear any rain at the moment, and i could definitely hear it half an hour ago. i will have to poke my head out the door in a minute. after that, i think i am just going to walk around the town. nick has a book with a walking tour of aix in it, and so i may follow that, or i may just walk. it's funny, i don't really feel like going to see any museums or anything on this trip. i just feel like relaxing and hitting the highlights. i will probably go to the town cathedral, but the museums just aren't getting me excited. maybe i will try to find the grocery store...we do need jam and cheese.

(3:55 p.m.)

so i went running and damn, it's only been a week since the last time i went running (last wednesday) and today was tough. of course, it could also have something to do with the hills, which i'm not used to, and the fact that i had to be always on my guard when placing my feet so that i didn't slip in the mud and fall. the trail was gravel, but pretty muddy after the recent rains.

also, in what i like to call my "tribute to becca," i got lost not only on the way to the trail, but also on the way back! am i good or am i good?? i didn't take a map because, well, i didn't have a pocket for it, so i memorized the route before i left. but once i actually got outside, i took a wrong turn. i knew i was headed in the right general direction though, and eventually i saw a sign for the sports complex, which i knew was right at the head of the trail. hurrah. then on the way back, i took another wrong turn (funny how easy it is to get confused in all these little alleyways), but finally saw the three-story gap (ah, how home-like) and knew that nick only lives two blocks from that. so here i am, back, showered, and about to head out again.

another lovely day in france pour moi. nick had class at 8:45 this morning, so i was left to my own devices for a few hours. i had every good intention of getting up at 10 to go running along this beautiful path by a nearby river...but when the alarm went off i was still quite groggy, and the thought of putting on running shoes and shorts and heading out into the cold and walking over to the park just to go running and then walking back (or even running and walking back) just didn't sound appealing. so it didn't take much convincing by my body to keep me in bed and hitting the snooze button until 11:45.

at that point, i had to get up because nick was due back from class at 12:30 and we had plans for the afternoon that i needed to be ready for. so i got up, showered, and was eating breakfast and trying to understand french tv when he walked in. we ate some more, and on a totally unrelated note, i must say that i am in love with jam and cheese from la vache qui rit on fresh french bread! anyway.

we headed out through the city and north up a long hill. at the top was the domain de la marguerite, a site that has ruins from a village settled in the 2nd century b.c., and a great view of the mont st. victoire, which is a few kilometers north of aix. clouds obscured the highest point from view, but it was still impressive, and the view of the town below was beautiful. hopefully we'll get a better view of the mountain on thursday, when we go to climb it.

nick had another ballet class at 4:05, so we came back to aix and i tagged along to watch. it was a bit strange to be sitting silently on the couch watching the ballet class but not being able to talk to any of them, but i still enjoyed it. there are some very good dancers in there, and nick has also gotten a lot better in the past 4 months. i think i'm going to go watch another class tomorrow night.

after class we picked up bread and potatoes and chicken and came back and made a very american dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn. nick's friend melissa, another rotary scholar studying in aix, came over to eat with us. she is from louisiana and was really cool. thankfully, they made it an english-speaking night. ;)

finally, another shameless plug: be sure to check page du jour for today's picture of nick and me and the mont st. victoire! the page even has a new web address--http://www.pagedujour.net.

well, first things first. france is awesome.

i'm not nearly as tired tonight after getting maybe the best night's sleep of my entire life last night. i think i could have slept through a freaking tornado. ah, wonderful jet lag-curing sleep.

today we went to avignon, which is about 60 kilometers from where he lives aix-en-provence. because the bus and train would have taken something like two hours to get there, and because they weren't that much cheaper than taking the tgv (Train a Grande Vitesse, translated to mean train at great speed), we decided to go for the thrill factor. we hopped on the tgv, reached a top speed of something like 200 kilometers per hour, and were in avignon 20 minutes later. woohoo!

the day was lousy because it was both cold and raining, but fortunately it was only a light rain, and i had a coat and hat and scarf.

(shameless plug: go see some pictures we took today at nick's page du jour, where i am the week's guest author.)

so anyway, in avignon we first stopped at a cafe for some pizza and then headed to the palais des papes (palace of the popes), where the catholic church was headquartered during the 14th century. it was nice to see, with many large rooms and decorative windows (with window seats) overlooking the rest of the town. the prettiest room was the chapel, with its stained glass and stone buttresses.

we left the palais des papes and found our way to the pont st. bezenet, better known simply as the pont d'avignon. we had a couple australians take our picture after we danced on the bridge. see, there is a little sing-song that goes "sur le pont d'avignon, l'on y danse l'on y danse, sur le pont d'avignon, l'on y danse tous en ronde" that my mom sang for me a few days ago when i mentioned we were going to go to avignon. i had never heard it, but nick also knew it! as a result, i have had it stuck in my head all day and have been singing, singing, singing. we even saw a little girl in the pizza cafe who was singing it to her parents; it was the most adorable thing i think i have ever seen.

from the bridge, we walked along the rampart and up the hill into the gardens behind the palais. we were enjoying the views when suddenly we saw about 5 geese in a perfect single file line walking up a ramp. we both thought it was amusing, so we walked up to head them off and get a picture. we caught up with them at the shore of a little pond and were laughing when one of the geese stuck out his neck and started walking toward us. i moved off to the side, but nick stood in place and looked at the goose and said jokingly "what are you gonna do, bite me?"

and the goose bit him!! it walked right up and nipped the top of his foot! i don't think either of us realized that the duck was actually going to get him until it was too late. but it didn't hurt nick, and it had me laughing for the next 5 minutes. in fact, we are still laughing about it tonight. maybe you had to be there, but it was absolutely hilarious. nick's only comment on the situation? "freaking duck. we have to go back to avignon so i can show it who's boss. animal rights, my foot."

anyway. after the unprovoked duck attack, we stopped at a cafe for some coffee and tea, and then wandered the streets of avignon until it was time to catch the bus from centre ville back to the tgv station, and then the tgv back to aix. we had a delicious dinner of shewarma sandwiches from an arabic restaurant. nick has been there before, so the guy making the sandwiches was happy to talk to him in this strange combination of arabic and french. i didn't understand any of it, but c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?

so, at the moment, i am dutifully updating my diary and nick is sitting next to me sewing straps onto his new ballet shoes. and we are listening to opera. hmm.

it has been a great day. not sure what we're up to tomorrow, but i get to sleep late while nick goes to class in the morning, then i will probably tag along to his late afternoon classes. in between, i think we're going to a scenic overview of aix. yay!

bonjour mes amis! je suis en france!

that's 6:42 france time. but despite having nick the human french-english dictionary sitting next to me, i'm going to revert back to my good ol' anglais now.

so, i'm in aix-en-provence and i'm so tired that i'm about to keel over. i did manage to get about 3.5 hours of sleep on the airplane last night which is more than i expected, so at least i'm not approached scotland-levels of fatigue (where i dozed for a good 24 hours after arriving in the country). anyway. the flight from houston to london was long but uneventful. they were showing "my big fat greek wedding" which i've been wanting to see forever, so i watched that with dinner, slept, had breakfast, got to london. i drank a lot of water, much to karen's pleasure i'm sure. ;)

my flight from london to marseille took off a bit late, but i got through customs in record time and was only about 20 minutes late overall. the frosted glass sliding doors open and...there was nick! hurrah! much hugging ensued, followed by a dash to catch the bus back to aix. i then got to play santa claus and present nick with all his crap, thus lightening my backpack considerably. ;)

so all afternoon, nick's been keep me awake with candy, walks, buying train tickets, going to the bakery, vanilla tea, etc. aix is a really cool little town; i am going to have a lot of fun exploring it. there is even a park with a trail that runs at least half a mile along a river bank and back, so i can go running during the mornings while nick is in class. fun.

we're currently watching "la maillion faible," the french version of "the weakest link." i am amused, but will have to start moving again soon if i am to stay awake for dinner tonight.

we have a visitor in the office this morning; john is using the fads terminal. i guess the one in his office is occupied. it's nice to have visitors, and john is cool. though i think he is quite amused with the random topics of conversation that come up between becca and me. my annual leave spreadsheet and stuff...

i'm currently trying to make sense of gavin's matlab script, the one that creates pretty pictures of debris footprints. i need to leave results for rich before i leave this afternoon, and if gavin were here i could just ask him to do it and it would take all of 5 minutes...but gavin's at some meeting, and so i'm left to figure it out myself. hopefully yesterday's dumbness won't carry over to today.

so i'm leaving for the airport in less than 4 hours. hurrah! i talked to nick last night and as a result, in my carry-on bag there are:

• 2 bottles of french's yellow mustard
• 2 bottles of suave skin therapy powder fresh lotion
• 2 bottles of vanilla coke
• one large bag of sour patch kids
• one large bag of haribo gummy bears (which, though made in marseille, are apparently not sold in aix-en-provence, a la becca's confirmed lack of nestle toll house chocolate chips in switzerland)
• one canon a40 digital camera

ha. i'm like santa claus! with a really freaking heavy backpack. who knew that mustard and lotion and candy could be so heavy? anyway, it's good that my backpack is full of stuff for nick, because my suitcase is absolutely stuffed. there's no room for anything else in the suitcase, but once i get rid of all nick's stuff, i'll have a basically empty backpack.

last night i went over to gavin and jen's to join a small group for pizza and viewing the "encore presentation" of the first two episodes of joe millionaire. i know, how sad are we? but i have to admit, the show cracked me up.

well. not much else to say today. i'm going to france! i should be able to update this page, since nick has internet access (i think he even has dsl now!), and you should definitely all check the page du jour starting tomorrow, as i will be the guest authoress. wahoo!

the shuttle launches today, actually in 44 minutes. at 9:39 houston time. as is customary in my office, those of us who aren't in the control center will slowly meander to the conference room and watch on nasa tv. we'll be 300 feet from mission control, but we'll watch the same broadcast that any joe anywhere in the country can watch. that thought always makes me laugh.

so last night i went running with a local celebrity. not intentionally, but still. and "celebrity" is perhaps not the right word. anyway. it was cold so i decided to run on the treadmill in the workout room. i'd been running for about 10 minutes when he came in and got on the treadmill next to me. he said hi, and started up a conversation, asked if running was a new years resolution. i laughed and told him that my resolution was actually to just keep running, and that i'd started about a year ago. turns out he's just trying to get into it, for fitness and stuff. anyway, we chatted for a bit, and when i finished my 3 miles, i left. it was interesting, i guess. one of those situations where morbid curiosity sort of takes over. that, and well, i was going to run 3 miles anyway, so...

i got back all sweaty to a phone call from a friend who needed to borrow my scanner and cd-burner. this would have been incredibly simple if i hadn't just updated to windows xp, and therefore hadn't gotten around to reinstalling the scanner and cd-writer software. and the installation cds i had are too old to have xp-compatible drivers on them. oops. luckily, hewlett-packard puts all their drivers online. wahoo! the scanner was installed in seconds, but the cd-burner proved more difficult. somehow it had tried to install itself, but didn't have the right drivers for xp. so i had to delete all the old ones, download the new ones, restart my computer about a zillion times in an attempt to get xp to recognize the "new" hardware, and finally just install the drivers manually. but it did eventually work, so that is good.

tonight i have to pack, because tomorrow i go to france! wahoo! i'm soooo excited.

here's a line from a conversation last night that made me smile. when discussing john mayer, carter said "and his lyrics are like... the blues. it's like jazz, but like poppy jazz, but like H Johnson meets the Gap." h johnson meets the gap. i like that.

(10:15 a.m.)

words words words. i drink them in as if they were water, and yet sometimes they hit me like rocks. there are things i wanted that i didn't get. there are things i wanted that other people got instead. and in the end, there is nothing i can do about it and i know that, and amazingly i've even come to terms with that. things weren't meant to be the way i imagined when i was young. people weren't meant to be that way either. but in brief fiery dying flashes, it still hurts.

i need to be in france right now. i need something unconditional.

the launch went well. it's funny; even a casual observer would be able to tell exactly what goes on during a launch if they were walking the hallway during those 8 minutes. at about 2 minutes, there is a collective sigh of relief when the solid rocket boosters jettison. then a bit after 8 minutes, the silence is broken by a lot of chatter and the halls fill with people leaving the rooms with tvs and heading back to their offices. i watched from greg's office. the last time i watched tv in greg's office was september 11. time flies, and yet it doesn't.

launch days are the most inspiring days to work here.

(1:38 p.m.)

i went to the dentist over lunch break today. lovely. it's a new dentist, of course, as i've only been in houston for six months, so today they did the whole x-ray/intial checkup thing. told me everything looks fine except...my upper wisdom teeth. they're impacted. they're pressing on my molars. they might start to cause decay, blah blah blah. basically, he thinks they need to come out, and when i go back in two weeks for my first cleaning with him, he's going to recommend an oral surgeon to go talk to about it.

this is not what i wanted to hear.

(3:46 p.m.)

i'm too stupid to work for nasa. geez.

so today has been completely random so far. i got in to work at 8:30, spent 45 minutes doing my checking email/getting ready for the day routine, then headed over to building 220 with the rest of my group. the x-38s (all three vehicles--two drop test models and one that was supposed to go up on the shuttle but now probably never will) had been dragged out and arranged in the parking lot, and a nasa photographer was taking group pictures of all the different people who worked on the project during its heyday.

first there was the massive 200+ people group picture, followed by individual groups. my officemates and i were in the flight dynamics pictures, taken 2nd and 15th, so we ended up having to hang around for an hour and a half to get all the pictures done. by the time we finished it was lunchtime, so we headed to mongolian bbq. and that's that. i guess this afternoon i will try to get some actual work done! ;)

so yesterday i did something a little crazy. i dyed my hair. not the 6-8 shampoo type either. i mean i went to a salon (dragging jason and debbie along for emotional support) and got my hair dyed. i was thinking of going fairly red, but after discussing it with adam, the guy, we decided on a shade darker than my natural color, with red undertones and a few hidden red highlights. now, for those of you that know me, my natural color is not the sun-bleached blond stuff on top; my natural color is actually the mousey brown that you only really see in the hair at the top of my head or the layer underneath the blond stuff, that is, the hair that you don't usually see much of. so the effect of dying my entire head of hair a shade darker than that natural color is noticeable, but not in a bad way. you'll have to look at next week's page du jour for a viewing.

meeting time, gotta go.

(2:08 p.m.)

back from a relatively unproductive meeting. i have a lot to do this afternoon. turns out that a satellite will be deorbited this fall, and our group needs to verify debris footprints. my mentor volunteered our services, but since lately i have become the debris footprint woman, the task falls to me. they need a preliminary answer by next friday, and since i won't be here at all next week, that means i have to get it done before i leave. it won't be a problem if they've given us the right information. i just sent it to the printer, so i'm crossing my fingers that everything i need will be there when i go grab the paper. if so, i'll have the footprints by tomorrow no sweat.

i have a lot to do at work these days. hurrah.

i was going to talk about how cold it is here today, and then about how cold it is supposed to be in france, but then i read how cold it is in chicago and decided that i have no room to complain. feels like -10. damn.

so the fifth harry potter book comes out on june 21. it's finally been announced. that's nice, as it is a little something to look forward to.

(4:08 p.m.)

matt: "elephants do that too, they get drunk on berries."
me: "but they're not in sweden."
matt: "no."

another nice little normal "real life" evening last night. i went home, ate a snack, headed out to run errands. first stop was linens 'n things for wine bottle stoppers, one of those candle lighter thingys, a kitchen timer, and a grease strainer. then to best buy for a new camera for nick. then to payless and finally kohl's in search of black boots, which i found. hurrah. it's official, i am an old woman. {sigh}

this morning when i arrived at the elementary school, i found out that diego, my tutee, won't be coming anymore because his teacher wants to keep him in class to prepare for the texas state tests, held in april. i have issues with this: 1) the test isn't until april, 2) i don't think teachers should be teaching to the test anyway, and 3) one hour a week one-on-one with a tutor is much more valuable to a child than spending that hour in a class of 30. individual attention is invaluable. not to mention that diego and i were really starting to have some fun, and i'm disappointed to not be working with him anymore.

instead, it looks like i will now be tutoring new immigrants (it's a bilingual elementary school), meaning they speak little to no english. and i speak little to no spanish, meaning that i have no obvious way of communicating with these kids. talk about frustrating! today i worked with a 4th-grade boy going over alphabet flash cards. ms. arredondo (the bilingual tutoring person) explained to him that i would say the letter and he would repeat it. then i would say the animal pictured on the back and he would repeat it. so that's what we did for 45 minutes, me saying the word and him repeating it. after one run though the cards, i put them up to see if he could tell me without me saying it first, and he did ok. it's obvious that he can read in spanish; he just has to start learning english now.

so i guess that's what i'll be doing. but it is frustrating. i know that these kids need the practice, they need someone to sit down and go over english pronounciations and such...it's just frustrating to be unable to communicate with them. i don't feel like i can be very effective when i can't talk to them. i feel like the person tutoring these kids should really be someone who can speak at least some spanish. but i guess we'll see how it goes.

france soon!

(3:14 p.m.)

i forgot to mention that i posted some new pictures the other day. maybe you already found them, but if not, there are pictures of my bedroom furniture and of the x-38 being moved from building 13 to its permanent resting site in building 220. this was last friday. the project is in its shutdown phase due to budget woes, and there was a small parade of people who used to work on the project following it. it's not everyday a spacecraft rolls down the street. :)

(3:25 p.m.)

You are Stupendous Man! You are simply amazing, whether you are battling your arch-nemesis Mom Lady, the nefarious Babysitter Girl, or the fiendish Annoying Girl. And you have absolutely nothing to do with mild-mannered Calvin. Take the What Calvin are You? Quiz by contessina_2000@yahoo.com!

moving to houston has made me rethink my take on the weather. i used to like cold weather better than hot, but now that i never experience cold weather, when it does come, like today, i find that i don't care for it so much. weird.

so today james gets the honor of calling me on my relative lack of money. "Sarah, you always amaze me with the cool stuff you buy and do. I hear you talk about being broke, and then have all these cool vacations and buy cool TVs, cameras etc. It doesn't make sense, unless that's the reason why you're broke!" he's right, of course. well, he's less right on the TV/camera/etc part, as i haven't bought any new electronics in a while, but he's dead on with the traveling observation. i'm a travel junkie. i love going to different places. if i didn't travel, i would have significantly more money, but i'm not really willing to give it up.

in that case, i should really stop saying that i'm broke.

so i think i'm going to run the peachtree in atlanta on july 4, assuming i can get my application mailed in time to be in the first 45,000 people. good thing i still have connections in georgia to fax me the application. :)

la la. i feel like i should have more to write, but can't find many good words today. my head feels weird. sort of dizzy. don't know why.

my smart (Spacecraft Mission Assessment and Replanning Tool, how creative of the acronym makers) meeting was cancelled for the afternoon, which is ok. i didn't have anything to report anyway, since i spent all last week working on the paper abstract with becca. instead, i'll finally get started on the project ray and rich gave me last week.

i'm looking forward to a run tonight, though i will probably head to the treadmill again since it's so cold outside, and still pretty wet. i'm not a big fan of the treadmill. most people say that treadmill running is easier than road running due to the lack of air resistance and better cushioning, but i dunno, it doesn't seem that way to me. i do put the treadmill at 1% incline, which is the proven way to make treadmill running like road running...but it doesn't seem to have more cushioning. i actually find that my shins bother me more on a treadmill than they do on the road. but i am trying to get used to it, as i know there will be days this summer when it will too hot to run outside, just as today is too cold.

anyway. i think i might actually run some errands tonight that i have been putting off. plus i have to go buy nick's camera.

france on friday!

houston has temporarily switched identities with seattle, i think. it is raining, and it is 37 degrees outside. 37! anytime the temperature dips into the 30s here seems like a big deal. in a few years i will have to move elsewhere if for no other reason than to remember how to deal with cold weather. in the meantime, i will shiver.

i had been thinking about finally ignoring the absurdity of getting in the car and driving somewhere to go running and was going to drive up to memorial park today. they have a ~3 mile dirt trail that i've read about, and yesterday morning as we were driving home from the race, chrissy recommended it as well. it is a 30-40 minute drive from where i live, but i figured it's sunday, i have the time, and i'm sick of running laps around my apartment complex (the surrounding roads have too many cars and too little sidewalk to feel comfortable running along them). but the weather is so gross that i'll have to save that outing for another day.

funny. the ickiness outside is yet another little reminder that sometimes even the best laid plans go to waste. this is something that in my past life i constantly forgot. these days, the reminders make me laugh knowingly to myself.

this morning i woke up feeling strangely confused. i have been having a lot of dreams lately, some weird, some normal. the other night i dreamed i climbed mt. everest, which was cool. the night before that, i had dreamed that aliens were infiltrating society and made me turn into an alien when the sun went down (which i'm certain can be attributed to a combination of commercials for the dvd of "signs" and watching shrek on tv a few days before). those are two of the few i can remember well; the others have been of the type that fade quickly after you open your eyes, leaving you with the knowledge only that you had been dreaming, and nothing of what it was about. this morning, though i couldn't remember the content of the dream, a vaguely unsettling feeling lingered.

i wonder if it's because i rearranged my furniture and am now sleeping on the opposite side of the bed. that would be interesting.

the unsettling feeling led to a bit of positive reflection. my life, without me really even realizing it, has fallen into a comfortable pattern. hmm. actually, pattern isn't the right word. perhaps it would be better to say that i've reached a happy medium in many respects. things that used to leave me conflicted don't do so as often.

life is good here. i am happy.

i go to france on friday!!

all of a sudden it's gotten cold (and cloudy) outside again, after being lovely and warm and sunny all week. why does that happen? why does the lousy weather roll in for the weekend? ah well.

we ran the rockets run 5k this morning and i finished in...28:45! wahoo! the race finished at center court in the compaq center, so that was pretty neat to run in through the tunnel and end on the basketball court. and then buzz and i got to our soccer game at halftime to find that our team was actually winning! double wahoo! we won the game to finish the season with a record of 1-7. :)

yesterday at work was hectic, hectic, hectic. the good news is that we got everything done, though; becca and i submitted the extended abstract, complete with umpteen signatures, at 4:30. of course in typical fashion, when we logged on to submit we found out that the deadline that was supposed to be yesterday had been pushed back to january 31, making all our rushing and running around and convincing people to just please please sign the damn forms all for naught. but we had spent so much time getting it done that i wasn't about to just let it sit for 3 more weeks, so we went ahead and submitted it anyway.

tonight we're headed to the rockets game with the tickets we got for running the race this morning. should be fun. i haven't been to an nba game in...well, i don't know how long, but years. not since high school definitely, or maybe even junior high...before the hornets started screwing with the city of charlotte and i lost interest in them. and we'll get to see yao ming, the really tall chinese guy that the sporting world is talking about.

this afternoon is set aside for laundry, cleaning, and other assorted chores. whoopee.

this background check dude really makes his rounds quickly. he visited carter like two days ago, and last night he apparently called christina as well as me. though i don't think he actually works for the cia, i think he is just a contractor to the department of defense. meaning all he does is background checks. still, i bet that is a pretty interesting job, especially when you come across someone with a shady past.

anyway, the phone rang and he had trouble saying my name, so when he spit it out, i said "i'm sorry, she's not here, can i take a message?" see, that is my typical response to telemarketers, and i thought he was a telemarketer because of the mispronounciation!

so he started on his message, like "i'm a contractor for the dod, etc" and then i realized he wasn't a telemarketer and had to say "oh oh oh, wait. i am sarah graybeal, i'm sorry!" and he goes "what?" so i had to explain the whole thing. so then he says "oh. well, ok, i'm calling to ask some questions about kent," at which point i'm relieved that he just told me because i actually have two friends in the process of getting security clearances these days and i really didn't want to make myself look even dumber by going "now who are you calling about?"

anyway. he asked his questions, i answered them, and hopefully convinced him that kent is not going to hatch a plot to overthrow the government or anything, you know, basically that kent's not a total wacko (though he now thinks that kent has a total wacko like me for a friend). at the end of the conversation i apologized again for confusing him at the beginning of the conversation, and he laughed and said he understood.

he sounded nice. i can see why carter wanted to talk to him longer. though i guess i am not cool enough (or close enough) to warrant an in-person visit. :)

last night i was at work until 6:30 and had to back out of going to the hockey game because becca and i had to finish our extended abstract that is due today. it's for a paper we want to present at a conference in august.

every time i stay late at work and comment on it, i get reminded that my other friends who are consultants always had to work like 12 hours days all the time, blah blah blah. it's like they're implying that my working 10 hours isn't as notable as their working 12, and last night it annoyed me. normally it doesn't, but i was tired and thus more prone to being annoyed last night. i just felt like saying "fine, ok, you win, you had it worse, happy?"

but it doesn't really bother me, although in general i don't think people who work long hours have much right to complain. most people know what they are getting into when they take a job; if you go to work as a consultant, you know that you will be working long days. it's a well-known fact of the job. it doesn't give you permission to repeatedly imply that you are a harder worker than someone who feels a 10 hour day is a long one.

i sound like i'm upset, but really, it just got me thinking about a conversation irwin and becca and i had a week ago, about salaried jobs versus hourly jobs. though i make a set yearly salary, nasa still keeps track of every single hour i work every week. i have to charge every hour to a time code, and they have to add up to at least 40 each week. it's annoying, and seems nit-picky to me. i am a much bigger fan of the salaried employee concept: you are given a yearly salary, and you work whatever hours you need to get the job done. if you have a lot to do one week, you work 60 hours...but then the next week when you have a break, you can work 25 hours and not be punished. hmm. i think i just like things that are more like school, where i can work somewhat on my own time and pace.

ohmygod. you must all go watch this right now. do not delay. at the end, click on "sweden" and watch the flag do a jig. this is genius, i tell you, genius.

here are some pictures from painting on monday night. first, cari, kennda, and becca confer about something. second, i roll on purple paint over purple primer while kennda edges the corners.

fun! also, yesterday my bedroom set was finally delivered, and after 20 minutes of rearranging furniture to find the optimal arrangement, i have a bedroom that actually looks like a real bedroom instead of simply "room with bed." i took pictures but had already turned off my computer for the night and was ready to sleep, so i'll post them tomorrow hopefully.

last night was nice and quiet. i came home and went for a 3 mile run. (speaking of which, i have got to find a more interesting place to run than my complex and the road in front. unfortunately, this will involve having to drive somewhere, which is what i was hoping to avoid. but running laps around las palmas is just too dull.) after that, i fixed myself a lovely dinner of pasta with chicken, with snow peas as a side dish. mmm. i watched silly tv, messed on the computer, rearranged the bedroom furniture, showered, and slept like a log. lovely.

tonight we're going to a hockey game. perhaps jason will win me another ikea shirt! :)

ok. lots to do today.

(10:44 a.m.)

oh! i forgot the biggest news from yesterday--we bought our plane tickets to denver! april 4-7, from ellington, for $158.50. i'm convinced that it would be impossible to beat that price without bribing an airline. amazing. so there are seven of us that are going to colorado for baseball and spring skiing! now all i need to do is figure out when regular season baseball tickets go on sale...

still stuffy, but i am not taking any more sudafed. no no no. i've also discovered another funny side effect of this stupid cold--odd sleep patterns. when i felt like crap last weekend and didn't feel like doing anything but sleep, i became an insomniac. i had tons of trouble falling asleep and then staying asleep; as a result, i only got like 6 hours of restless sleep each night when i needed more like 12. but now that the cold is starting to go away and i don't need the sleep, i'm sleeping so well that it's damn near impossible to drag myself out of bed in the morning! despite going to bed before 11 last night, this morning i hit the snooze button for a solid 45 minutes before finally crawling into the shower a little after 8. i didn't make it to work until 9:00, but that's ok since i was here till 6 last night.

yeah, work is picking up. i have been tasked with a couple new tasks in the past few weeks, and becca and i have been working on an extended abstract for a paper we're hoping will get accepted for the aiaa flight mechanics conference in austin in august. so there's plenty to do, not to mention we've been planning our colorado trip!

last night i was having second thoughts about going due purely to the money i'd have to spend, but today becca found even cheaper accomodations and rental cars (there are either 5 or 7 of us going depending on the shuttle flight schedule), and the plane tickets to denver are dirt cheap right now, so it looks like i can do the whole 4 day/3 night trip for under $500. that includes a baseball game, one day of skiing, one day of lounging, car, lodging, plane ticket, gas, ski rental, and even food if i eat relatively inexpensively. excellent!

so i watched this very interesting documentary on the travel channel last night about the concorde and i have made a decision. once i am out of debt, i'm going to start putting away a bit of money each month and when i have enough, i'm going to buy myself a round-trip ticket from new york to london or paris on the concorde. hurrah! british airways even runs specials sometimes that when you buy one concorde ticket, you get another for free! that way, i could talk a friend into splitting the $7000-12000 price tag. ;)

robert fick. this is the braves' answer to a seemingly decimated pitching staff. robert fick. {sigh}

so some of us (the particular someones have not all been determined yet) have decided to go to colorado the first weekend in april to see a baseball game and ski. i'm quite proud to say that the baseball game requirement, and thus the placement of the trip on the first weekend of april when most ski places are about to close for the year, is entirely my doing. see, i can't ski, and so if i'm going to spend a whole weekend falling on my butt, i might as well get a baseball game out of it, and add another ballpark to the list of parks i've visited. anyway. this should be fun! i love colorado. :)

in other news, the furniture company is stupid, stupid, stupid. despite telling me when i bought a bedroom set last week that it would be delived on tuesday (as in today), it wasn't even put on the truck today and therefore won't arrive until tomorrow. why, for the love of god, why are furniture delivery people incompetant?? this is the fourth time i've bought furniture in 6 months, and only one of those times was it delivered as scheduled. it's exasperating. i don't care that it took them a week from when i bought it to deliver it. that's fine. but they should tell me that up front, instead of telling me one thing and then changing their tune once it's too late for me to do anything about it! argh.

i wish there were a way i could just flush out my entire head. it is oh-so-stuffy which makes work oh-so-tedious.

we finished painting becca's study last night, and took pictures, but i didn't get a chance to resize them last night. so maybe later.

i am so disappointed that i missed the premiere of joe millionaire last night. really, i am.

i need to go play with matlab now.

(6:34 p.m.)

now i remember why i try to avoid taking anything other than advil when i am sick. this afternoon i took a sudafed to try to relieve some of the oh-so-stuffy-licious-ness. bad idea. i'm not stuffy anymore, however, that's been replaced with watery eyes and a nose that is leaking like a freaking faucet. note to self: next time, stick with being stuffy. it's more comfortable than dripping.

so in the past, i have always gotten annoyed whenever people asked me about something i wrote online. however, now that most of my friends keep some sort of online journal/diary/blog, i find it very hard not to ask them to explain themselves occasionally. how hypocritical of me!

my head is still all stuffy, and getting out of bed this morning proved to be quite the ordeal. but here i am.

yesterday we primed the walls of becca's study, and today we'll put on a good coat of paint. it is very purple. carter says purple is not a study color, and gavin and jen apparently stared in silence. but the homeowner, the roommate, and the friend all like it. and once the furniture is back in the room, the purple will become more of an accent color and less of an overwhelming wall color. i guess becca will probably have to repaint the room a more normal color in the future when she decides to sell the house, but in the meantime, i think it looks fun.

stupid flight mechanics lab. the computers, or the connection, or something, is down again, meaning no connection and no way to do work for moi. {sigh} it's a sign (but you don't believe in signs!). perhaps i should have just stayed home again today...

i'm listening to becca's avril lavigne cd. it is entertaining, but i think the chick is trying a bit too hard to be a punk, and the lyrics make me laugh. i think a 6-year-old must have written them. "it's the first time i ever felt this lonely, wish someone could cure this pain, it's funny when you think it's gonna work out, till you chose weed over me you're so lame." um....ok. ah well.

11 days.

nyquil makes me have very weird dreams. hmm. anyway, i am feeling a bit better, still achy, but not as feverish. so i'm off to paint at becca's house, i think. i tend to feel better when i'm active.

yuck yuck yuck. sore throat, aching head and back, don't think i have a fever but feel like i do. ikea. luigi's. "still loved, and still love" tells me that i missed something fun at new years, and that i was the one who wasn't there. hot tea should help my throat. i can't think straight.

in 2002, i ran 255.25 miles in 43.45 hours, for an average pace of 10:13 per mile and a weight loss of about 9 pounds (two numbers which surprised me). 255.25 miles. that's like running from my front door to tech, plus 5.25 miles! wow. all this running is good because last night i stuffed myself silly at a mexican restaurant. ohhhhhhh.

carter is the winner of the name-my-fish contest, as his name was chosen out of the grand total of three, yes three, submissions. (you people are slackers.) the winning name...drumroll, please...is viggo.

yes, viggo. it's perfect! one, it reflects my recent fascination with viggo mortensen (aka aragorn from lord of the rings, if you are becca and only know the character names). two, i looked it up and it is of scandinavian origin, and sweden is in scandanavia, and i like sweden. three, it is a "short form of names containing the scandinavian element vig 'war'." a siamese fighting fish with a name that means war! i love it.

so carter wins my undying love and affection, but no hershey bar, cause he doesn't like hershey bars. too bad.

i am sick. i blame rich. he came to work yesterday and announced that he'd had the flu over christmas right before he collapsed into a coughing spasm. last night after dinner, someone suddenly stabbed a knife into my throat, and every swallow was like swallowing needles, and last night i must have woken up like every 45 freaking minutes. but i'm at work because, well, if i were at home i'd just be sitting on my couch staring at the tv. i dunno. i think maybe i will go home in a little while if i don't feel better. it's not like i don't have a bazillion sick hours or anything.

ironically, becca and irwin and i were just discussing sick hours last night at dinner, and how we never use them and wish they could be applied to our annual leave. perhaps the sick gods heard me.

i'm ready to go to france. nick has planned out practically my whole trip for me already, and every night ends with "then we eat well and sleep." i am so amused.

oh happy day! it's an interactive diary entry from sarah!

this is my new pet, bought on impulse yesterday when i followed becca and irwin to the pet store. (i almost bought a turtle cause they were so cool, but figured i should find out more about how to care for a turtle before i randomly get one.) anyway, my new pet is a male red beta fish, and he needs a name! after watching harry potter last night while puttering around my apartment, i came up with one name option--fang. or, since he is a siamese fighting fish, i could name him something siamese, but when i tried to think of siamese names, all that came to mind were japanese names.

so give me suggestions. i'm taking a poll! yay polls! email me. the winning name will get...um...my undying love and affection! and maybe i'll send you a hershey bar or something if the name is extra good.

oh, and here is another picture of ivan the amaryllis, proof that i can grow a plant. ha ha!

also, i have one more picture if anyone wants to see what becca's and my office looks like. it's a 360 view courtesy of my digital camera and cool photo-stitching software. see it here. plus one more picture of the people in my group. see it here. back row: george, gil, ray, rich, gavin, and me. front row: matt, becca, and laura, who has sadly finished her co-op tour and gone back to texas a&m.

it's lunchtime, but perhaps i'll update with more substance later.

the first day of 2003 is absolutely beautiful. sunny, breezy, cool. this bodes well for the year to come, i think. :)

last night was fun. gavin, jen, becca, irwin and i went to see "two weeks notice" after the football game (which georgia tech lost, unfortunately...a mediocre end to a mediocre season). it was a typical cheesy romantic comedy, but i did enjoy hugh grant's character. he is great at doing the whole sarcastic-yet-with-straight-face thing. i love that. it's my favorite kind of humor.

after the movie we went back to becca's place for cheese fondue. yum! i love fondue, even though i've only had it like three times in my entire life. i think i'm going to take one of the million 20% off coupons i always get from bed, bath, and beyond and go buy a fondue pot so i can do it myself and have people over. it's been a long time since i had anyone over for dinner.

just after 11:00, after fondue and watching the ball drop in new york, we headed to randy and ami's house to join them, ron and buzz, phil, edgar, chris, and a whole bunch of other people. somehow the tv ended up on the spanish station, which was broadcasting from san antonio, so we counted down "diez, nueve, ocho, seite, seis, cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno, feliz ano nuevo!!"

so it was a great night. i got to see ian, an old co-op friend who i haven't seen in probably three years. katie called about 2 minutes before midnight to wish me a happy new year. i got a kiss at midnight. and then carter called at 1 a.m., too hopped up on cheesecake (or so he said) to realize that it was already 2 a.m. his time and thus new years in denver already and no longer new years in houston. but i appreciated the call anyway. ;)

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true

hooray for 2003, it's going well so far...