April 2003 Archives

today i shall attempt to reprogram sort to meet my needs. i hope to accomplish this by the time i leave work this evening to go see the braves (hurrah!) play the astros. it will be tough, and sort will probably scream at me a lot, and spit out junk variables and data, but i think it might be possible. wish me luck.

yesterday i read an article about how baseball attendance is down, and what could be done about it. today i read an article about yesterday's toronto blue jays game, where the team sold tickets for $1 and sold out the entire 48,000 seat stadium. the move was meant to calm fears about sars, but it seems to me that anyone with a little sense could look at this situation and realize that "hmm, maybe we would sell more tickets if they weren't quite so expensive." i'm not saying sell tickets for a dollar. i am saying that maybe $12 to sit at the tip top of the upper deck way down the first base line is a bit much.

as nice as the new park is, i miss the days when the astros played in the astrodome, and you could sit in center field for a dollar next to the guy who fired a cannon each time an astro hit a home run.

so i asked cindy, our division's adminstrative person extraordinaire, to remind someone about my burned-out lightbulb. it turns out that they (i don't know who "they" are, but oh well) have 30 days from the date the light goes out to replace it. 30 days!! how absurd is it that i have to wait up to 30 days for someone to come change a damn light bulb that i could just as easily do myself! the worst part is that i could just go out and buy a new bulb, but then i'd get in trouble for changing it. argh. government.

last night we had two volleyball games. i enjoy playing, but i am also an easily frustrated person, and losing by a large margin each and every time, each and every week (with two exceptions where we've lost 21-25) gets really old. i dunno. we're not that incredibly bad, we just don't communicate. it is frustrating. i guess most of us have never played enough organized sports for the instinct to call the ball to really set in. i certainly don't have that instinct.

after volleyball we went to chuck e. cheese for debbie's birthday. that was an entertaining time, eating pizza and then playing their limited selection of games. but they had skee ball, which is all i really care about. all together, we got enough tickets for debbie to get a dinosaur water gun and a mini incredible hulk.

my battle against turning on the air conditioning is in its death throes. i'm going to have to close the windows eventually. last night i left them open and was awakened at 1 a.m. by a KABOOM of thunder. i fell back asleep and didn't wake up again, so it must not have actually rained very hard, but the KABOOM was unpleasant enough. i just dread the electricity bill going up. that, and i really do like having the windows open. it makes me feel like i'm getting some fresh air, even if it is nasty houston air.

last night after work i went to the bike store to check out road bikes. i have a hybrid, but would like to get into bike riding more, and with the triathlon coming up and my goal of riding the ms150 next year, it seemed like buying a road bike might be a good idea. i'm just not sure about the prices! the cheapest road bike they had at bike barn was $549, and the one the saleslady recommended to me was $799! maybe i just don't know enough about road bikes, but i feel like i should be able to get something a bit cheaper...at the very least, under $500. i mean, maybe the only people who ride road bikes anymore are serious bikers, and thus they just don't make cheap road bikes because they wouldn't sell, but... i'm pretty sure i want a good road bike, but i just don't know if i can justify spending $600+ before i'm absolutely sure that i'll get a ton of use out of it.

anyway. this weekend i think i'll head up to bike sport near the galleria and see what they have. bike barn was pretty limited in their selection anyway.

last night when i got to the workout room, the two guys in there were watching cnn. zzzz. i think cnn is just about the most boring thing ever to watch while exercising. it just doesn't keep me entertained.

i think becca is a bad influence. she is always finding these great deals on random trips to acapulco or 4-day cruises, and making me want to spend more money.

lunchtime.

becca must have been really bored on friday evening, because i walked in this morning to see her desk so clean i wondered if she'd been fired. wow. so as my computer is starting up, i'm sitting here in the dark, because the damn light above my computer desk still hasn't been replaced and i'm thinking about stealing a bulb from some other light... anyway, i'm sitting here looking at becca's clean desk when i see a stapler sitting on top of a manila folder. "hmm, that's cool, becca finally got her own stapler," i think to myself. "now she won't have to keep stealing mine all the time." i pause, realizing what i just thought. i look at my desk. no stapler. i look at her desk. stapler. my stapler. she is an office supply thief!!

i am like the guy in office space. all he wants is his stapler. :)

anyway. i have been visiting the exercise room at my apartment complex a lot more since they got elliptical machines, and since i decided that maybe the only way to get rid of my shin splints is to reduce the amount of running that i do. so last night i went in and started ellipticalling, and the guys that were already in there had the tv on a really horrid show, so i ended up just watching the guys instead.

workout rooms amuse me. i like them best when they're mostly or entirely empty and i can work out on my own schedule, at my own pace, watching whatever i want on tv. but when they're full, i usually entertain myself by finding the person who has come not out of concern for his physical fitness, but out of boredom, or a desire to show off. last night there was this really skinny guy lifting weights that were too heavy for him. this was evidenced by his grimace and the fact that he could only do about 5 reps before taking a break. each time he took a break, he would walk over and get on the elliptical machine next to mine and go for about 3 minutes. then back to the weights. then back to the elliptical for another 3 minutes. back and forth. i also think he had never used the elliptical machine before, because he looked just like i did the first time i got on it--clutching the bars for support, and looking very unsure about the motion it puts your legs through.

funny.

also, before i went to the workout room, i watched this really cool two-hour special on the national geographic channel called "surviving everest." it was about peter hillary, jamling norgay, and brett bishop (the sons of sir edmund hillary, tenzing norgay, and barry bishop) returning to everest this year, the 50th anniversary of hillary and norgay's trip to the top and the 40th anniversary of bishop's summit as a member of the first american team to make it to the top. it was a fantastic documentary. jamling norgay supported the team from base camp (after he climbed everest once in 1996, he promised his family he wouldn't climb it again), and peter hillary and brett bishop both made it to the top. it was so cool, and the video was amazing. it boggles my mind to see video taken from the top of everest, and to see the tops of other 26,000+ foot mountains way down below eye level. crazy.

if i were in tip-top physical shape and had the money, climbing everest would totally be on my list of things to do.

(4:07 p.m.)

if people don't quit promising footprint deliveries by certain dates without telling me, the person who actually does the dirty work required to make the footprints, i'm going to go postal.

one sentence summary of my weekend: yesterday was jam-packed, and today has been my time to recover.

yesterday began with my alarm clock blaring at 5:30 a.m. ugh. too early. but debbie had signed us up for a race that began at 7:30 in sugarland...and i hadn't realized how far away sugarland was. on the map it looks so close! sigh.

anyway, the race was fun. it was actually a relay race, with everyone running 2.8 miles and passing off a pvc-pipe baton. jason did the first leg for us, with debbie second. i ran third, and gavin (our faster runner with a time of just over 20 minutes) brought it home. our team finished in a total time of one hour, 41 minutes, and change. i was happy because i did my leg in about 27:20, which is under 10 minutes a mile. hurrah! if it had been a 5k, i think i could have finished in under half an hour.

here's a picture of our team after the race. i wonder if i could look any more unattractive after running. ugh. anyway, here:

after the race i had a soccer game. it was hot and sticky outside, and the long shower i took when i got home felt so good after being sweaty all morning. i relaxed by the pool for a few hours, and then got jason, debbie and becca to go to the aeros game with me. they're in the minor league playoffs right now, and this was game 1 of the second round against the norfolk admirals. the game ended up tied 4-4, so we went to overtime. the first overtime period ended still tied, so we went to another overtime, where the aeros scored on a power play about 10 minutes in to win the game. cool. i have been all into hockey lately, and have discovered that it is really quite an entertaining game to watch. i need to learn the rules better so that i understand all the calls, though.

i was absolutely exhausted when i got home, so i slept till noon. carter doesn't understand how i can still sleep till noon, but i maintain that if i'm tired enough, it's never a problem. though i do have to admit that i should have just gotten up when i woke up for the first time today at 10:00. instead, i went back to sleep and as such have had that groggy, too-much-sleep type of hangover all day.

i got up, turned on the braves game (they won), and even got to watch the last inning of kevin millwood's no-hitter! i was so excited to see him pitch that well, and sad that he had to do it in a phillies uniform instead of in atlanta. it's really a shame the braves traded him.

i'm off to exercise. and it's hot; i think i may have to turn on my a/c today.

this quote from an article on espn.com made me laugh: "Baseball players are the worst fighters I've seen in my entire life," said former player and manager Bill Rigney. "The guy charging the mound is thinking, 'What the hell do I do now that I'm here?'"

katie (my friend katie, not my sister katie) was telling me last night at the softball game that she is now a regular reader of my journal, and that she was quite amused at my entry yesterday when i lamented the dullness of my life. hee hee.

carter was writing this morning about planes and vacations and photos and memories. with that as a memory-jogger, i'm now thinking along the same lines. i can still remember every hotel or hostel we stayed in during our month in europe.

my favorite was a room on the top floor of a narrow, 6-floor hotel in paris, where we stayed for our second of four nights in the city. we moved to that room after an awful night at the truly disgusting three ducks hostel. i say this room was my favorite because whenever i think of all the places we stayed, this one comes to mind first, and the image is always bright and full of sunshine. the image may be tainted by the memory of my sheer happiness at finally visiting paris, but maybe it really was a great hotel room.

we only stayed there one night because they were already full for the two following nights, but the room was clean, with a nice bathroom with a tile floor and room to air out our smelly clothes. all seven of us must not have stayed in the room because it didn't have sleeping space for more than five. i vaguely remember carter and kent staying downstairs somewhere, but i don't remember the circumstances; i just remember the room. the ceiling sloped like in an attic, and the building was taller than most of the surrounding ones, so that when we opened the windows we could see over the rooftops of paris.

it was cool.

i was looking at my scrapbook a few weeks ago and reminiscing. we did have some chaotic issues during that trip, and i can never remember the good stuff without remembering that it was a not-so-great time in my life. but then i smile, and think "what an utterly fantastic trip." it was a chaotic time, but despite that, i do know that for the rest of my life, i'll be glad that i got to spend a month with some of the people i care most about.

i am thinking much more, but you know, if i wrote it all down, i'm sure it would sound like a soap opera. i have this unfortunate knack for making things sound overly dramatic and heart-wrenching and conflicted when i write them down. so i won't write it all down. silly me.

anyway. rich came over after work yesterday and bought the bike that's too big for me, so everything worked out well.

i ended up playing two softball games last night, one as a sub at 8:00 and then with my usual team at 9:00. the team i subbed for put me at second base. second base! i've never played second base in my life! i wasn't very good at it. i mean, i can catch the ball when thrown to me, so i made a few outs, but i'm not very good at keeping the ball from making it to the outfield. and really, isn't that a second baseman's job?? at 9:00 it was back to the outfield pour moi. :) overall i hit better than last week...i think i was 3-for-6 counting both games.

i'm glad it's friday.

(9:53 p.m.)

i just got home from a belated birthday dinner for gavin. i was about to go to bed, since i have to get up early for a race tomorrow (a relay race at that!), but remembered that the expedition 7 crew is scheduled to launch on their soyuz in an hour. i turned on nasa tv and sure enough, there were ed lu and yuri malenchenko in their sokol suits, ready to shimmy into the cramped capsule that is the soyuz.

i know there is no reason to be nervous about this launch. the soyuz is one of the most reliable space vehicles in existance, and hundreds of people have been launched without a problem, including one american. but i am nervous anyway. challenger shocked me, but i was too young to really understand, and thus the risk of spaceflight never really occurred to me on launches or landings. after columbia, i doubt i'll ever be able to watch a launch or landing without this anxiety.

this week has gone by quickly, and yet i don't feel like i've gotten much accomplished. i've spent the past two days hunting through code and am still no closer to figuring out how to apply gram dispersions to the dao atmosphere. sigh.

this light above my computer desk is still burned out. i didn't think it would bother me, but it makes me feel like it's permanently either a) dark outside or b) overcast, despite the fact that my office doesn't even have a window and i've never been able to see outside to begin with. anyway. it's sort of a downer.

i didn't sleep very well last night, as evidenced by the fact that i had some really weird dreams. i think maybe i was too warm. i haven't turned on the air conditioning yet in an effort to avoid expensive electricity bills for as long as possible, but i may not be able to last much longer. it's not the temperature, it's the humidity. it's usually pleasant outside, but my apartment is always warmer and stickier at night than it is outside, even when i open the windows.

my life has become so boring.

i watched dawson's creek last night. seeing as how the show is about to end, i figure i can watch it into the grave just liked i watched it all along. but it's really gone downhill. i don't really care about the stories or the characters anymore. and joey, who i always identified with the most, now just acts dumb and never grows up. last night her boy toy told her he was taking her to europe for the summer, and she was all excited, until she decided that going to europe was just running away from her problems, and interrupting her "real" life and that it was just too much living-in-the-moment for her to handle. sigh. give me a break, fictional joey. it's a freaking vacation, you have a summer off from college, who cares if you're broke, everyone in college is broke, and hello, going to europe isn't escapism and it's not going to ruin your life. say it with me: vacation!

yes, i know it's a stupid tv show. but i had to roll my eyes last night. and laugh.

volleyball practice and softball tonight. softball isn't until 9:00, which is the absolute worst time for a game just because it's so late. i mean, i get off work, go home, fix dinner, run errands...do everything i need to do, and then i still end up sitting around going "is it time for softball yet??" oh well. hopefully this week i will hit better than last week! :)

the guys in eg just sent an email saying they don't know enough to break into the gram code to make the atmosphere modifications we need to make. hmm. if they and their combined 30 years of experience don't know how to do it, i doubt i'm going to figure it out. there must be another way...

"it is a dream of ourselves as better than we are."

what an appropriate quote for the conversations taking place in my life right now. originally said by a. bartlett giamatti, former commissioner of baseball. just a thought.

so i have two fantasy baseball teams. one is in a league with a bunch of friends where there are eight teams and we pick a 24-man roster from both national and american leagues. this team consists of players like barry bonds, curt schilling, todd helton, shawn green, jim edmonds and john smoltz. they shall be known as "my all-star team." my other team is in a league with a bunch of guys from my division where there are ten teams and we pick 40-man rosters from only the national league. this team consists of jim thome and eric gagne followed by a long list of mediocre players. this team shall be known as "my sucky team."

now that i've clarified things, i can talk about the teams without you guys getting confused. and if you don't care about baseball, you can let it go in one ear and out the other. happy? happy!

so my all-star team is doing well. the only improvement i could make is to pick up a starting pitcher who gets more strikeouts, as i'm third from the bottom in that category. my steals are also low, but i'm not too worried about them...

as for my sucky team, i sort of think they're hopeless, but if i can continue to fluctuate as far up in the rankings as third from last, i suppose i'll be happy.

so we just got back from lunch, and the fluorescent light bulb directly above my computer desk has burned out. i wonder how long it will take to get it replaced.

in other news, i am well into my second day of trying to track down the portion of code that sets atmospheric density in our sim. sounds easy, right? wrong.

what a dull day. i hate wednesdays.

i'm stupid. i bought a bike yesterday off the swap shop for $75. it's an old schwinn road bike, and i planned to ride it around town as a means of exercise. when i picked it up yesterday the seat was too high, but i knew i could lower the seat as soon as i got home. so all i did was throw one leg over the bike to make sure the frame wasn't too big, and then stick it on my bike rack to take home.

so last night i get home, change out of my work clothes, go outside, lower the seat, and get ready to take the bike on a test ride around the parking lot. i throw one leg over and--uh oh. big uh oh. stupid sarah. in my excitement about getting a bike, i forgot that at work i was wearing shoes with a significant heel. well, a 3-inch heel of course makes me 3 inches taller. which makes me fit on a bike i really should fit on. sigh. when i had normal shoes on last night, i found that the bike frame is, in fact, too big for me.

i was so excited about getting the bike that i was dumb. sigh. now i will have to turn around and sell it again. luckily i think rich may be interested.

as for me, i may take this as a sign that i just need to go buy myself a new road bike from the bike store. we'll see.

so instead of biking, i went for a 3.5 mile run. my shins didn't really bother me during the 5k on saturday, but they are sore today. i think i'll probably go back to the elliptical machine and keep doing that for another couple weeks. if my shin splints haven't gotten better after a month with little-to-no road running, maybe i'll go see a doctor. though i doubt there's anything a doctor can do besides say "voila, you have shin splints."

in other news, last night i asked nick to marry me because at the moment i can't imagine any other guy being as randomly nice to me as he is. happy sigh.

off to do the tuesday stuff.

jiggity jog.

i had a nice easter, consisting of good food and good friends. i got up early to fix potatoes, then headed over to becca's for her informal easter brunch. after a couple hours there, cari and i headed to darby and hilary's. leave it to me to have too many plans. see, becca was supposed to be going to lufkin, so she didn't plan an easter brunch until i'd already told darby and hilary i was going to their easter lunch. so i just did both. i was glad i did.

i feel like i have many different groups of friends here. sometimes they mix and sometimes they don't. it's not a good or a bad thing, it's just a thing, but i sometimes wind up with having to choose between them. i am really bad at choosing between things when i want to do them both.

the only real problem with my easter was that i just felt tired all day. sluggish. finally around 7:00 last night i headed over to the weight room to do a half hour on the elliptical machine, and that got me going. exercise really is addicting. i'm going crazy with it. i'm doing a triathlon soon, and the ms150 next year, and good lord maybe even a marathon. i don't know what's gotten into me.

the race this morning went well, but man am i sleepy tonight. sheesh. it's like i'm 60.

after the race, we got to talking to a couple guys involved in this marathon training program that i'd actually been reading about earlier this week. one of the guys also rode in the ms150 last weekend. they were cool to talk to, and in one fell swoop convinced me not only to 1) ride in the ms150 next year, but possibly 2) train for next year's houston marathon. we'll see.

this afternoon i ran tons of errands. oil change, car wash, new brown sandals to replace the ones that are falling apart, an ironing board...you know, a totally random array of errands. i met becca, gavin, jen, and kennda for a matinee of "bulletproof monk." dear god. now that is a bad movie. i think monkeys may have written it. the dialogue, plot, editing--basically everything--were absurd.

i'm taking it easy this evening. i'm so sleepy from the race this morning, and this afternoon i didn't feel very good. i was all achy and pre-cold-ish. you know, that feeling you get the day or two before you come down with a full-fledged cold. i hope it wasn't a sign of things to come.

so happy easter in advance. :) i'm having a "potluck" lunch with a bunch of friends tomorrow. mmm.

i was at work till 6:30 last night, missed volleyball practice, and then sucked royally in the softball game (with the exception of one night catch in left center field, validating my promotion from right field). i'll just hope it was an off night. i hit pretty well in batting practice on tuesday, anyway.

i am up to my eyeballs in debris footprint maps. i rue the day gavin taught me how to use his mapping gui. transferring the maps from matlab into a nice powerpoint presentation to give to the higher-ups is so incredibly tedious. sigh. actually, i don't really mind so much, because i know it has to get done, and that it will be put to good use, so...

it looks to be a relatively quiet weekend. no plans for tonight, though a movie may be in order by the afternoon. i'm running a 5k tomorrow morning, my first since the beginning of march, so that should go pretty well. sunday i'm going to hilary and darby's for easter lunch with a bunch of people. i'd like to go to church sunday morning, but don't want to go alone, so...

since i was here late last night, but put 5:00 on my time card, that means i get to leave early today (assuming i finish the maps). yahoo!

if you know me, then you probably also know my tendancy for obsessive songs. i hear a song, i like it or it fits some feeling i'm currently having, and i listen to it basically non-stop for a few days until the mood has passed or i move on to a new song. the interesting part is when i hear a song months or years after the short period that it was the obsessive song. it's funny how songs can bring back memories or feelings.

last night as i was running, angie aparo's "alone" came up on my mp3 player. before i knew it, i was reliving late nights in durand, working on some homework assignment up in the 4th floor study lounge, finally finishing, and standing alone in the darkened hall by the elevators. i would listen to that song on my way out of the building, and on the bike ride home. and despite the fact that it's a fairly upbeat song, it would calm me down enough to fall asleep in peace.

anyway. memories. i was talking to nick last night, and he suggested we both just go back to stanford, and he could dance while i got my ph.d. i said "there are some days when that's all i want to do." i think i would go back this year, or next, if not for one thing--the fact that committing four years of my life (to getting a ph.d.) scares me.

another cool thing happened while i was running last night. i passed two guys working in the garage on what was obviously some sort of flying contraption--they had a bike in the middle, with the structure (wing spars and airfoil sections) of an airplane. curiosity took over immediately, and i stopped to see what they were building. they jokingly said "uh oh, can't you tell what it is?" i said "well it's obviously an airplane of some kind, but what's it for?" turns out they are building it for the texas flugtag that's in austin on april 26. this is one of those events where people build man-powered flying contraptions and hurl them off a ramp into the unsuspecting waters 30 feet below. we had been talking about it at work already, and it was excited to find someone in my own apartment complex building a contraption. a few of us have already signed up to run a race on the 26th, but we may also head over to austin after it's done to catch the flugtag. becca went to one in switzerland and says it's quite an entertaining time. we'll see.

tonight i've got volleyball practice followed by a softball game, assuming the rain holds off. knock on wood. it looks a bit bleak outside right now.

no one on my fantasy baseball team has hit a home run in like a week. crazy guys.

so excel decided to give me crap this morning and instead of moving from cell to cell, reconfigured the arrow keys to scroll up and down the sheet. bastard microsoft. after trying in vain to find some option that magically set itself, i restarted the computer. excel worked normally again. sigh. stupid computer.

spaceflight meteorology is supposed to give us uncertainty values for their final rev of the columbia atmosphere today. i won't be surprised if we don't get them. apparently reading weather balloons and satellites is harder than i thought.

oh, the times they are a-changin'.

we had volleyball again last night, but didn't play as well as last week. i don't really know why, but instead of losing gracefully, we got totally creamed. i didn't play as well as i should have, but that wasn't entirely it. i think our team needs to work on communication and calling the ball (and i'm as guilty as any of us when it comes to that). that, and we need a consistent set of six people. when we just play with whoever happens to be able to sub, it's hard to work as a team.

anyway. i'm tired. i want to go home. i feel burned out on work.

the presentation that gavin and i gave yesterday went pretty well. i could have done a better job of explaining how the shaping of our general footprint was done, but other than that i think we were fine. because he's the team lead, rich usually does all the presenting, so i enjoyed the chance to explain all the work i've been doing for the past two and a half months. the audience was dead though; we expected them to have lots of questions, and they had only two. in any case, ron (my boss's boss's boss) told me today at lunch that we did a good job, so that was nice.

no big plans for tonight. i plan on running some errands and then spending a quiet evening at home.

and there was much rejoicing back home in the tarheel nation...roy williams is coming home. i know mom, grandmother, and brian are happy today.

yesterday was great. it was beautiful outside, so i left work at 3:00, spent an hour sunning myself by the pool, spent another hour reading in the shade of my balcony, and even went swimming for half an hour.

see, i have decided to do a triathlon in austin on june 8. i've always wanted to do a triathlon, but only recently felt like i might actually be in good enough shape to complete one. so i signed up for an all-women "sprint" triathlon (half mile swim, 12 mile bike, 5k run) that is supposed to be very friendly to first-timers. rich's girlfriend emily has done it before, and i think she's in about the same physical condition as me, so i feel confident. i estimate that it will take me somewhere between 2 and 2.5 hours to finish. debbie's going to do it, and probably buzz, and maybe becca, so i'll have company.

i have less than two months to train. i'm not worried about the biking or the running because 12 miles isn't that far on a bike, and i've done a lot of 5k races already. so i know i can make those distances, even if i'm tired. i am most anxious about the swimming. i know i can swim half a mile, but probably not very fast, and i've never swum in a crowd of people in open water before. it should be interesting. the best i can do is swim laps in the lap pool at my apartment complex, which simulates the distance but doesn't match the churning waters of a lake with hundreds of racing swimmers. but i'm going to swim in the lap pool anyway, to prepare as best i can.

this afternoon gavin and i are giving a presentation on our debris footprints to all the people who work in flight design over at usa. then tonight i have softball practice and volleyball. whew!

i'm sleepy. we just got back from coke break, where we took a long stroll around the pond and oohed and aahed over the ducklings and baby turtles. they were so cute.

yesterday was fantastic. i woke up late, and was planning only a quiet day of relaxing and cleaning my apartment when chris called and suggested we go to the baseball game. i almost didn't go, but he convinced me on the basis of three things: 1) it was the last game before the astros left on a two-week road trip, 2) it was a gorgeous day, and 3) it wasn't extremely hot, so the roof would probably be open. i couldn't pass that up, so i said i'd go as long as we could sit in the sun.

we got tickets in the crawford boxes in left field and settled in. after an inning, i realized that my sitting-in-the-sun stipulation was good in theory, but would be really bad in practice unless i found some sunscreen, and fast. luckily the clubhouse store sold tubes of "ballpark tan spf 30," so things were all good after i slathered that on. the seats were great, and it was a high-scoring game--four home runs landed within twenty feet of our seats. the astros lost, but it was too sunny and beautiful for me to care.

i came home in time to go ahead and clean my apartment, then went over to becca's to help her walk the four dogs and have dinner with her and kennda (pad thai, mmm). walking the dogs was quite amusing, especially when we let them off the leashes in the park, and roxy thought that the swings were attacking us. every time becca or i started swinging, roxy started jumping on us. finally, as becca got out of the swing roxy jumped at just the right time and ended up with two legs on one side of the swing seat, and two legs on the other side, looking very confused. it was really funny.

it's too pretty to be at work this afternoon. i'm going home.

it's gorgeous again today, as if someone is thanking me for sacrificing yesterday's sunshine to spend all day inside at yuri's night.

that said, yuri's night went about as well as we could have expected. there was some chaos, some stress, some miscommunication and a band of astronauts that got slighted, but in the end, yuri's night went well, we pulled it off, and i had a good time. it's over, and we are all the wiser for it...i hope.

but seriously, i did have a good time. so that's that.

and today is gorgeous! i pulled out a pair of jean shorts for what is obviously the first time i've worn them since i visited atlanta last labor day; when i reached in the pocket, i found 20 cents and a "blue crush" ticket stub from august 31. hee hee.

chris and i are headed to the astros game for the afternoon, since they're about to head out of town on a two-week road trip. i wasn't going to go, because i had big plans to clean my apartment and then lounge around the pool all afternoon...but baseball is tough to pass up. i finally said i'd go as long as he promises we'll sit in the sunshine. that ballpark roof better be open!!

it's absolutely freaking gorgeous outside, and i get to spend the day inside at yuri's night. at least i got to spend two hours outside this morning for soccer...where we won our game! yes, we won! i am so excited! but now, off to yuri's night.

sigh.

i have a serious train of thought today, about iraq, but i don't have time at the moment to type it out. perhaps this afternoon. in the meantime...

jarrod washburn, pitcher for the anaheim angels, is my current hero. in one night with an 8 inning, no runs, 0.75 whip performance, he brought my fantasy team's era from something absurd down to a much more reasonable 3.20, and shot me into first place. i know, i know, it's only been a week and a half, but now i can at least say i was in first place for a time.

yesterday was extremely stressful and today doesn't really look to be any better. but maybe it will be. but yesterday sucked. i came home a little after 8, walked in the door, and called "honey, i'm home!" in response there was silence. this was not surprising, seeing as how i live by myself, but yesterday i would have been really happy if someone had answered me. as my voice echoed up the stairs, i imagined that someone did answer. "welcome home honey!" or maybe "dinner's ready."

ah well. instead, i put on my shoes as usual, and ellipticalled my stress away. my apartment may be empty, but the elliptical machine loves me.

for months i have been complaining about how much my computer here at work sucks, and for months everyone has just laughed at me. it was really quite discouraging.

well yesterday i finally had the last laugh, as the c partition of my hard drive completely died, or, as i described it to the help desk person: "my hard drive is dying...yes, i'm sure...how do i know?...well, my computer won't boot and says it can't read the c drive...and because it's making that horrible scratchy 'i'm dying' sound!!"

sigh. anyway, the help desk sent the service ticket to a guy downstairs, who had somebody else bring me a "new" computer. i say "new" because it's not really new, it's just another computer with a working hard drive. but it's still an improvement because the processor is a bit faster and it thankfully runs windows 2000 and not crappy windows 98.

and in another stroke of luck, it was only the c partition that died and all my gigs of data on the d drive (the important stuff that would take me days to reproduce) were salvageable. so in the end, it actually worked out quite well. i lost 4 hours of work, but in return i got a "new" computer that runs much more efficiently...and i didn't lose any data. woohoo.

this week has gone by really quickly. tonight we have a yuri's night meeting, which sucks, but since yuri's night is saturday, this is the last meeting, which is very good. i will be really glad when it's over. and that's all i have to say 'bout that. yeah.

i made two new cds last night to listen to at work. yay.

(4:01 p.m.)

after years, it still surprises me how strongly i get tied up in my friends, and how strongly they affect me even from far away.

jen's volleyball team needed more players this season, so i volunteered. last night as i was driving to our first game, i struggled to remember the last time i actually played volleyball. i thought about it for the whole 10 minute drive, and finally concluded that the last time i played volleyball of any kind was sand volleyball during my second co-op tour (exactly 5 years ago), and the last time i played normal indoor volleyball was in 9th grade gym in 1993. yeah.

anyway, it was fun. none of my teams ever win, and this one is no different, but they're not as bad as they told me they were. jen is actually pretty darn good, and everyone else usually can get the ball going in the right general direction. as for me, i found that i can bump just fine, and set decently, but can't spike, and can only serve effectively 4 times out of 5. ah well. i'm sure i will improve.

i was at work until about 6:30 yesterday, trying to get a bunch of sim runs kicked off before i left, and then i had to rush to get something to fedex before 7. came home, changed clothes, went to volleyball. after volleyball i came home, did 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, and read for a while before heading to bed.

carter was commenting today about how hard it can be to have a life when you work full time. i have a similar feeling. there are nights when i want nothing more than to just come home and veg. and when i have nights like last night where i have tons of after-work things to do, i miss having down time. and yet i miss hanging out and doing social things too. i dunno. i think at some point, there's an adjustment we make between being in college, where we had tons of free time, and working, where we see our free time shrink more every year. i do miss the days where i had two or three hours of class, and the rest of my time was up to me to spend however i saw fit. when 8+ hours are committed five days a week, goofing off and just enjoying little things becomes harder.

but not impossible. which is good.

i was going to write something else, but whatever it was has totally slipped my mind.

some days i look at the calendar and wonder how it got to be february, or october, or june already. today is definitely one of those days. where has 2003 gone? it seems like i was just coming back from christmas yesterday.

the office is comfortably noisy again today, with gavin, matt, and becca all back from the ski trip. i've already seen about 30 of their pictures, and wish there was some way i could have gone. ah well, c'est la vie. i probably would have come down with a cold from all the snow anyway. ;)

my computer just hiccupped and shut down all my sims. i hate that. the process for dealing with computer hiccups is as follows: click the mouse around the screen hoping to somehow make the windows reappear. realize that the windows are not going to reappear. curse. click a few more times. curse, this time with feeling. sigh. restart exceed. restart sort runs.

so i am going to take sailing lessons next month. i think it will be fun. now i just need becca to buy a boat that i can mooch on.

ten: i keep thinking about ron and buzz's wedding. i want to get married. someday, you know. it looks like fun. stressful, but fun.

nine: this morning my suspicions were confirmed--my computer hates me, and the flight mechanics lab hates me. friday evening as i left work at 6:00, i started a script that should have kicked off 31,000 monte carlo runs. i came in this morning, and how many actually ran? 500. that's right, 1/62, 1.6%, a really freaking small fraction of the total. and why didn't they run? i have no idea. the same script is running perfectly now, and i didn't change anything, so i can only assume that my computer burped right after i left work on friday. and stopped doing what it was supposed to be doing, as it is prone to do. seriously. my computer is like a big baby. it has to be watched at all times or it decides to act up. grr.

but i digress.

eight: a cold front is supposed to make a last gasp, but i think summer has arrived. it is damn humid outside.

seven: at what point do friends become faraway friends? at what point do you lose track of them to the extent that you really don't understand their life anymore? it is weird to me that i don't know what my non-houston friends are up to on a weekly basis anymore. i was reading carter's blog this morning and saw that he and kent went to visit anit over the weekend and i had no idea. even when i talked to carter yesterday, it didn't come up. it feels strange, the idea that perhaps it is inevitable. i wonder what anit is up to. we get older, we lose track, but some wonderings stay the same.

six: every time i go to type "six," i end up typing "xis" and having to backspace and retry. i don't know why.

five: chrissy is moving back to atlanta in a week and a half, and last night james and liz organized a going-away dinner for her. i am sad to see her go. we only saw each other once a month or so, but it was nice to just know that she was here. i tried to explain that feeling to someone, and i don't know if they understood. maybe i'm the only one.

four: talked to nick yesterday. i needed that. then he suggested i spend my $500 on another trip to france. if only he knew how tempting that is...

three: i'm glad that my weekend of dogs is over. i left them outside today, despite the fact that it's damp and i'm sure they'll get all muddy, because i didn't trust them in the house. anyway. it's not that i minded taking care of them for the weekend, but the past three nights have been three of the most sleepless nights in my recent memory (even including the unsettling nights in february). the combination of three high-strung dogs and sleeping in a strange bed has led to some unsightly bags under my eyes. i can't wait to sleep in my own apartment tonight.

two: i think we are all crazy in our own ways. it's the quirks that distinguish us, or, "who we are is in the details." maybe instead of trying to become less crazy, i should appreciate and seek out the people who recognize that it's just something else that makes me unique. the way i see it, ron married buzz not because she's perfect, but because he could accept and love her quirks.

i want someone who can accept and love the crazy in me.

one: still obsessing over that song. "every dawn split another day and in another day we weren't so restless."

zero: blast off.

the wedding last night was so much fun. we met at randy's house at 4 to carpool, and phil and i arrived at the same time so we walked up to the front door together.

me: "i'm so excited, it's a wedding, hooray!"
phil: "see, this is the difference between men and women."
me: "what?"
phil: "you're going 'ooh, wedding' and i'm just wondering if there's an open bar."

i took a ton of pictures, but many of the shots in the reception hall didn't turn out too well because the lighting was dim. but here are two good ones from the ceremony and just afterward:

i had such a good time. it was a small wedding, with just their families and closest friends. it was great because all of us from houston know both ron and buzz really well, and we all know each other really well, so it was just like a fun party where we got to celebrate two of our friends finally get married. it was similar to leila's wedding in that sense...just a fun time with some of our best friends. there was an open bar (as phil was pleased to see), and barbeque, and a dance floor, and we all just had a grand time. betsy caught the bouquet, edgar caught the garter, and we laughed because the two of them have been dating for almost two years now anyway.

i've known ron for almost six years now; he was a great friend through school, a great roommate for two summers here, and a great person all around. he's always there when i need him. and i've finally gotten to know buzz better since she moved to houston after all their years of long-distance dating. so last night, it was just really good to see two people that i really like finally get married, and be so happy about it. it made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

when things finally wound down a little after 11, chris and phil and i finished the night with a trip to the waffle house. it just somehow seemed appropriate.

yay.

the three dogs are insane. i get to gavin and jen's house after being gone last night for the hockey game, or this morning for soccer, and you'd think they've never seen a human before. sheesh. lick lick jump lick. i'm glad i'm only taking care of them for three days. plus i didn't sleep very well last night. i never sleep well in other people's houses.

we lost our game this morning, as usual. we don't mind losing most of the time, because we're still having fun, but it's worse when the other team acts like a bunch of babies. there was one guy on the other team that was, to put it bluntly, a total asshole. he threw elbows and was overly physical, but worse than that was his freaking mouth. he would not shut up, and heckled our team to no end, bragging about how he scored a hat trick, shouting "foul" all the time, making a big show of the slightest contact. towards the end of the game he had an indirect kick on goal and commented to our defensive line that "that's ok, you can line up to block, i'll kick it at your faces." i was so furious at his completely uncalled-for behavior that i lost control of my own mouth for an instant. he kicked the ball, and when i blocked his shot with my foot (ha HA!), i said in my most sarcastic tone "hey, you missed my face." (and muttered a few curse words under my breath.) i'd spoken before i even realized i'd opened my mouth, and i immediately wanted to kick myself, thinking i was about to get called for unsportsmanlike conduct for talking back. despite him being an asshole, we have to be able to just ignore him.

luckily the ref didn't hear...or maybe he just ignored my comment because he knew the guy was being a jerk.

anyway.

i'm still totally pumped about how awesome yesterday afternoon was, what with the winning photo and the branch award. they say good things come in threes, so i wonder what else will happen!

tonight is ron and buzz's wedding, and i am so excited. i finally decided what to wear, which was more of a struggle than i thought it would be. i've been in the wedding party for the three previous weddings i've been to, so i had someone telling me what to wear. i've never just gone as a friend! but it's going to be great. ron and buzz are two great friends, and all our other friends are going to be there, and it's just going to be a grand old time. i'll have to post pictures tomorrow.

oh my god!! you all have to go to http://www.seesendshare.com right now. see the picture of the monkey? the one under the headline "today's $500 winner"?

that is totally my picture!! last night we went to happy hour at this new bar across from site, and they had this monkey out front. well, i had never had the opportunity to pet a monkey before, so we played with him and i took his picture with my camera phone and entered the t-mobile camera phone contest.

and i totally just won $500!!

(5:45 p.m.)

and right after i found out i won $500, my branch chief came in to present me with this week's k-70 award for all the work i've been doing on the debris footprints. "for her tireless efforts in support of the sts-107 debris investigation...although her specific efforts have been in the background, the results of her efforts have been well recognized by nasa management."

it's funny how sometimes you get a boost right when you need one. what a great day.

a few weeks ago i tried out the new elliptical machines that appeared in my apartment complex's exercise room, and i didn't like it at all. it made my legs burn, and the stride just didn't feel comfortable. i couldn't figure out why people like them so much, and i was telling my sister about this when i visited atlanta. she said i should give it another try, because it takes a little while to get the hang out it.

so last night i didn't feel like beating up on my shins, and it was too chilly to go swimming, and i don't have a helmet nor did i want to bike in the dark...so i decided i'd do what katie suggested and try the elliptical machine again. and this time it was cool! and best of all, my shins don't hurt. so i think i may be adding the elliptical machine to my repertoire to give me periodic breaks from running.

this week has been crazy, and it's not letting up. sigh. tonight i have a yuri's night meeting, and a late softball game. then i am living at gavin and jen's house for the weekend to take care of three dogs while they go to colorado. and ron and buzz's wedding is on saturday. and there are other plans for sunday. whew.

it is definitely a blah thursday. i'm ready for the weekend.

i talked rich into heading up to the ballpark early yesterday to catch batting practice before the game. after driving around in circles for 10 minutes, we found parking for a quarter. a quarter! i volunteered to splurge to cover it since i'd complained about him driving in circles. ;)

we found space for two along the front row of the crawford boxes in left field. it was a beautiful day, the roof was open, the sun was shining, and jeff bagwell was sending long, lazy batting practice homers our way. rich drank his beer while i tried to figure out how i'd catch a ball without a glove. if one had come directly to me, i was prepared to catch it with my hat.

they closed the roof at the end of batting practice, which was the only bad part of the game, since it was such a gorgeous evening. rich and i worked our way up to his seats, four rows from the top of the stadium behind home plate. we watched the pregame ceremony honoring the sts-107 crew, cheered as members of the seven crew families threw out the first pitches, and settled in for the first game of the season.

the astros won 10-4, with jeff bagwell hitting two home runs, and jeff kent also going deep in his first at-bat as an astro. kent got a standing ovation, and had to come out of the dugout to tip his hat before the crowd stopped cheering.

so that was fun.

today i am stressed over yuri's night. stupid yuri's night.

the radio station i listen to in the mornings had a great april fool's joke this morning, convincing many people that the local toll road had decided to start charging people $1 per person in the car at every toll booth. they even had a fake guy call in and pretend to be the spokesman for the local toll authority. it was a good prank; they even had me going for a while. had i remembered it was april 1 i would have figured it out immediately (i was thinking "what? no way, that's absurd, they must be misinformed..."), but as it was i almost believed it. funny.

on the other hand, when i came to work and announced to gavin and rich that the new general footprint won't be ready today because i'm an idiot...well, that unfortunately wasn't an april fools joke, because it really won't be done, because i really am an idiot. ugh.

this afternoon we're leaving work early to head downtown to minute maid park for the astros home opener! yes!! baseball!! i am so excited. the game starts at 6, but we're going to get there early enough to see some batting practice, and then at 5:15 they are having a ceremony honoring the sts-107 crew and other nasa people. jason gets to be one of the 107 nasa employees on the field carrying a big american flag, since he was in the control center working the 107 entry. i'm envious; i wish i could be one of the people on the field! but i'll survive. ;) i'm just excited to finally be watching some baseball again.

last night we had softball practice. playing softball on the first real day of baseball season. it was great, and i needed the batting practice. i even played some first base, and i think i might actually be better at that than i am at my current position in right field. i'm not good at judging fly balls. but i can catch most balls coming to me at first base. maybe nick (our team captain) will switch me. who knows. i also played some catcher at practice last night and now i really understand (as if i didn't know before) why major league catchers don't last long. good lord that sucked--my knee was killing me.

yaaaaaaayyyyy baseball.

(3:03 p.m.)

this is the best day ever. i am in a great mood. it is beautiful outside. and there is baseball. what more could a girl want?