May 2003 Archives

so today is the 50th anniversary of tenzing norgay and edmund hillary reaching the top of mt. everest. pretty cool. maybe someday i'll do the same, as jason and i have decided to become mountain climbers.

sars v2 is back, and just in time for me to drive to austin tonight. tonight, that is, if i get all my crap done today at work. otherwise, tomorrow. sigh. but hopefully tonight. i really need some salt lick bbq and $8 spilled beers in my life, and i know this weekend will do it.

yesterday was long. i was at work until almost 7, then went over to debbie's to keep her company while jason played softball. her knee surgery went fine yesterday, but she was pretty much out of commission last night and couldn't do anything but doze on the couch. she got sick once while i was over, probably from the vicadin, but other than that seemed to be doing ok. her knee hurt, obviously. but it should get better pretty quickly, i hope.

it was nice to hang out with her. i like taking care of people when they're not feeling well or need help, even if i'm just sitting around while they sleep. i can't really explain it, but it feels really good to be needed and useful. i guess it's just that i know how much i appreciate having company when i'm not well, and so i like being able to do that for someone else.

i'm recovering from sars, version 2. i think. lately i just can't sleep. i'm tired all the time, which makes me depressed. so i exercise, because exercise puts me in a better mood. because i exercise, i get more tired. it's a vicious cycle. i thought memorial day weekend would allow me to catch up on my sleep, but i guess my monday bike ride wore me out.

i sent off a slew of birthday cards this morning. well, three anyway. i like sending people fun mail. actually, katie got a birthday package, with a couple magazines and a couple books i pulled off my shelf, to give her some news and something to read during any downtime she might have.

i don't really have much to say today.

debbie is getting her knee cut into today. surgery. actually, she's probably already home and waking up from the anathesia.

oh, and my movie-quote-master friend provided me with the actual sleepless in seattle quote that i was trying to post yesterday: "Don't go rolling in poison ivy as soon as I leave the house. Or lock yourself in a closet or do anything that makes you need stitches. If your finger falls off, it's staying off. No one's going to pack it on ice and take you to the hospital so you can be a breakthrough in laser surgery."

it's a funny enough quote, but what makes it great is tom hanks's delivery.

(6:28 p.m.)

my monkey picture is slooooooowly inching back up on the scoreboard of the camera phone contest. problem is, the stupid windy day picture is also inching up. go vote more, people!!

i think i'm coming down with some rare undiscovered disease. i'm tired and my heart hurts.

maybe it'll be like sars, version 2. and i can move to toronto.

the building 16 network is down, rendering it about five times more difficult than usual to do my work, though it does mean that i get to walk into gavin's office and do the "building 16 network is down" dance, which basically involves me wiggling my hips and twirling my arms and singing "the building 16 network is down" a couple times. it amused gavin. i like amusing people.

i'm about to walk back over to the fml to manually copy another 100 lines of code so that i can run things over there, since i can't get things to my desktop. sigh. i hate this.

the keyboards on the machines in the fml are configured differently. every time i go to hit backspace (which i do a lot, and at a pace that makes it hard to tell a backspace from a normal keystroke), i end up hitting a backslash instead. it's the little things.

i am just off today. i dunno. i need a vacation. i need to see a couple people that i haven't seen in too long. i need a hug.

i need lots of things, but at the moment i would settle for the building 16 network coming back up. how sad is that.

(4:29 p.m.)

yup. sars v2. "if your arm falls off, it's staying off. no one's going to pack it on ice, so you can be a breakthrough in medical science."

(apparently no one finds this movie quote as funny as i do, as i couldn't find it in a google search to make sure i had the wording right. oh well.)

sitting here on a sunday night knowing that i have another day off work tomorrow is a great feeling. i plan on sleeping late, watching some braves baseball, taking a long bike ride, and not much else.

it's been a relaxing weekend so far. went to the astros-cubs game with rich and company on friday night, then went back to the ballpark less than 8 hours later for the first annual astros "run for the pennant" 5k race. they had quite a turnout for it being the first year of the race; i was impressed. we even got to run into the stadium through the tunnel at the end, and finish at the warning track in right field. we didn't get to actually go on the field (wouldn't want to muss their precious grass!) but it was still cool to be out there on the warning track. the t-shirt was cool, and the best part was that we all got two free tickets to a future astros game. it was also fun to get some of my friends out there that don't usually come along to the races. ron, buzz, edgar, betsy, darby, hilary, and chris all came along to run, walk, and wheel the 3.1 miles along with debbie and me.

last night i went back to the ballpark yet again for another astros-cubs game. yes, i was at the ballpark three times in 24 hours. and i've watched another two and a half games on tv. sheesh. ha. i could have made it 4 times in 48 hours, but i didn't wake up in time to make the game today. ;) instead, i bummed around my apartment all afternoon, nursing sore thighs from the race yesterday since it was the first time i'd run in a month (speaking of which, my shins didn't bother me at all so it appears my self-imposed month-long running break worked pretty well).

this evening i motivated myself enough to go drop off a bag of clothes at goodwill that i've been meaning to take for a while, stop by starbucks for a frappuchino, and head to work to check on my sims. i was only planning on checking my sims and leaving, a 20-minute stop, tops. {sigh} as always happens when the network gets reconfigured or upgraded (as it was yesterday), not all the connections were reconnected. ugh. my computer at my desk in building 30 can't talk to the computers in building 16. so i had to go over to the fml so that i could actually sit at the terminal, and i had to retype about 300 lines of code so that the stuff i usually process on my desktop could run on the unix box. not being able to ftp the files from building 16 to my desk on tuesday morning is going to pose a problem, but unfortunately, there's nothing that can be done tomorrow since it's a holiday.

i'll deal with it tuesday i guess. in any case, i was at work for about 2.5 hours tonight. in the end though, i almost like being at work better when it's just me. everything was nice and quiet. just me and my trusty machine, homer. (there are six machines, all named after the simpsons. homer, bart, lisa, marge, ralph, and moe. homer and bart are the ones i use most.)

it's really sad that i've started treating the suns that i use every day as if they were people.

anyway. that's that.

you people need to vote more for my monkey picture! i'm losing my vacation! and i need a vacation after the way work has gone this week. it's only 10:00 on friday and i've already worked 43 hours this week.

i'm looking forward to the long weekend, even though i'm going to have to come in for an hour or so each day, probably. god, i'm so busy. last night i left work at 5:40 to go play softball (we won!), and came back after the game to do some more stuff. gavin and bini were still here. it's amazing how short the evening seems when you don't get home until 9:00.

i have no big memorial day plans, except baseball games and a 5k sponsored by the astros. i'm just going to r-e-l-a-x.

as you can see above, i've added a shameless plug to go vote for my picture of the monkey in the t-mobile camera phone contest. the link and shameless plug will be a permanent fixture on this page until the voting ends on june 2. if my picture wins, i get a 5-day trip with 5 of my friends on a private jet. i want to win so badly. so please follow the link above, and score all the pictures as a 1 ("yawn") except for the monkey. you should give the monkey a score of 5 ("wow"). i'm currently wobbling between 1st and 3rd place, so go vote! go vote now! go vote often and a lot! thanks. :)

anyway. that's the big excitement in my life at the moment.

my phone rang last night at about 10:00, and i was surprised to see the caller id showing a 404 number...my sister!! it was an unexpected call, but it was great to talk to katie. see, she's spending 9 weeks (from last weekend until mid-july) working with faith ministries in reynosa, mexico. they do a lot of work building houses and giving medical attention to the extremely poor people living in the colonias, which are basically these huge shanty-towns outside of the city. when i say "house," i actually mean "one room concrete-block, concrete roof building" on a small lot that shares water with the neighboring lots on a street that alternates between dust and mud depending on how much it's rained. so you get the idea. very poor living conditions, worse than you'd find almost anywhere in the u.s. i spent a week down there last summer, and katie's been there three times, and decided to go back as a full-time summer volunteer this year.

my mom had talked to katie on sunday, and as is to be expected, once she arrived in reynosa nothing was what she had been told it would be. mexico, flexico, as was the mantra last summer, meaning that to be there, you have to remember to just be flexible. of course, the idea of flexico is easy to follow when we're sitting here in air conditioning in the comfort of the u.s., but it's harder to remember sometimes when you're down there. so katie's first few days were rough, especially because she'd been told she'd be living one place (and isn't), and that there'd be two other volunteers there (there aren't, and won't be until june 9).

but lucky for her, it's a border town and if she stands on the roof of the church, her cell phone can pick up a signal from mcallen, texas. and she can call her friends and family.

she said things were getting better. and she knows this will be a good experience. so i guess it's going ok for her so far.

(i have to start this entry with the disclaimer that houston radio sucks.)

ok. today we're going to play a game. one of the less-sucky of the radio stations here does a game on their wednesday morning show called "one of these things is not like the other," and i want to know if i'm just really good at this game, or if the people that called in this morning were just really bad. the idea is that you get a list of 4 things, name the one that doesn't belong, and then name the thing the other 3 have in common. for instance, if you were given the foursome of red, yellow, cow, and blue...cows come off the list, and the other three are all colors.

i guess i should say that if you were actually playing the game, you'd have to figure it out in about 5 seconds or less, so no time for searching things on the internet, cheaters! so here are today's groupings (at least the ones i can remember):

• football players, priests, star trek convention-goers, dungeons & dragons players
• a flower pot, a tandem bicycle, gay american idol contestant, thing you put in a kiln
• an ice skater, al gore decided not to do it, dmc, a tear in pantyhose
• vin diesel's big movie, ruben studdard's underwear size, james bond, ron jeremy starred in these movies

the two women on the show this morning didn't get a single one, and i got all of them. i should call in next week and win something.

anyway. i have a lot to do today.

(10:18 a.m.)

funny article: who has the better outfield, braves or reds? my favorite line from it: "Andruw [Jones] catches every fly ball that lands between Georgia Tech and Jimmy Carter's house."

i fear this is going to be one of those "life sucks" days. i was at work till 7:30 last night, and was back in before 8 this morning. i have so much to do today, and i honestly don't know if i'm going to finish it all.

the good news is that my monkey picture is one of the 10 finalists in t-mobile's see seed share contest, which means i now have a 1-in-10 chance of winning the grand prize--a 5 day trip with 5 of my friends anywhere in the continental u.s. how cool! anyway, go to that webpage starting tomorrow to vote for my picture.

maybe i'll have time to update more later.

(4:07 p.m.)

i think i'm going to cry. the powers-that-be have just conferred, and the result of their discussion has rendered my last three weeks of work worthless.

i love james taylor.

i know he's like 57 or something, but i simply adore him.

if james taylor came up to me on the street and said hello, my response would be something like "marry me." just so i could get him to come home with me and sing all the time.

i love everything about him. i love that he comes on stage wearing a faded dress shirt and khakis, and that he rolls up his sleeves after the first few songs and says "man, it's hot." i love that he's bald. i love listening to his voice, singing or talking. i love his smile. i love that he always seems slightly embarassed to have people cheer for him. and i love that he so obviously enjoys what he does.

yeah. i just love him. the concert was great, and he did in fact play "carolina on my mind," which just made my night. and he did not one but two encores, with one of my other favorites--"sweet baby james"--as the last one.

happy sigh.

today just ain't my day.

first, i went to kroger to pick up a few things i forgot last week, like granola bars and an air freshener. i got all the way up to the self checkout when i realized that my wallet wasn't in my purse. i'd been entering receipts into my money software this morning, and forgot to put my wallet back in my purse!! dang. so i put my basket off to the side and had to drive home, get my wallet, drive back to kroger, and pay for my stuff.

then i had grand plans to go biking with becca this afternoon. see, becca's debating whether to do the triathlon or not. she's good with the swimming and running, but she hates biking. but she was going to give it a try today. so the plan was for me to ride over to her house, pick her up, we'd ride about 5 miles round trip with a break at starbucks in the middle, and then i'd ride back home. it'd be a good training ride for me, and a good ride for becca to get reacquainted with her nemesis, the bicycle. ;)

as a side note, i must say that in the week since i bought my new bike, i've had the passing thought on multiple occasions that i should really go buy one of those mini-pump and tire patch under-seat bag kits, just to have with me while i ride. just in case, you know.

well i'm sure you can all guess what happened.

it's almost exactly 6 miles from my apartment to becca's house. at mile 5.6, i hear a "pop" signifying that ran over something. immediately i glance down at my tires, but they appear fine. relieved, i keep riding. at mile 5.8, i suddenly hear a "whoosh" followed quickly by a constant buzzing noise. i look at my front tire. ok. i look at my back tire. flat as a pancake.

sigh.

the good news was that i was only .2 miles (and really only .1 miles when i pick up my bike, carry it over the median and cut through the cul-de-sac) from becca's house. i walked my bike over and enter the house sweaty and annoyed. despite the fact that it is really freaking hot outside today, i think becca was disappointed not to be able to ride a bit. we're going to try again tomorrow night.

in any case, after playing fetch with apache and bennett and oohing over the adorable puppies, we loaded my bike into her car and drove me to bike barn (though we did hit starbucks on the way in keeping with our original plan). they put a new tube in my tire, adjusted the gears for me, and i bought a little kit with an under-seat bag, hex wrench, patching stuff, and a mini-pump that attaches under my water bottle cage. so now i'm all good and next time i get a flat, i'll be able to fix it myself. not to mention that the little bag now gives me a place to stuff my cell phone and ID when i go out riding, for use in the case of a true emergency.

anyway. it's just not my day. but things will be lovely in a few hours because...i am going to a james taylor concert! woohoo! with my luck today, he probably won't play "carolina on my mind" or something, which is my all-time favorite james taylor song. and quite possibly my all-time favorite song, period.

but i hope he will. :)

i'm pooped.

this morning i got up early to go to my third and last sailing class. after three more hours inside, we finally got to hit the water this afternoon! i went out with don, an older guy that is actually manager of the "trajectory excellence" branch in my division at work. we went out on the lake for a couple hours and he said i'm a natural. ;) i am totally into becca's idea of buying a boat now. sailing was so much fun.

after i came home and washed the sunscreen and salt water off my skin, i (gasp) went to work for about an hour. yucko. but the good news is that most of my sims finished, and so i was able to start them post-processing. i'll go in tomorrow for another hour or so to start running the crossranges, and by monday, all the data should be ready. with luck, i'll be able to meet the tuesday deadline of having all of this crap mapped for hopefully the final time.

then i met becca for dinner (strong margaritas, and i'm stuffed with food), and then went back to her house for a puppy viewing. she's fostering 8 puppies and their mother until the puppies are old enough to be adopted. yes, her house is a zoo. the puppies are extremely cute though. they make me want a dog.

first off, i apologize to all the fans (or maybe just debbie and my dad) for not posting yesterday. i do, however, have a very good excuse. yesterday we all took a break from the office to, as one of the guys down the hall so eloquently puts it, "do some trajectory analysis on a small white dimpled sphere."

yup, half my branch wasn't at work yesterday because it was time for the annual lso golf tournament! i'd never played real golf (i.e. not putt-putt) in my life, but it was a lot of fun, despite the fact that my foursome (becca, rich, ray and me) came in dead last. actually, the other descent analysis foursome of gavin, jen, matt and george finished first after managing to do really badly on the handicap holes and really well on all the others ones. (as opposed to my team, where we somehow made par on most of the handicap holes, but imploded on the others, including the last hole where we had to take rich's drive, and he drove a total of about 10 yards...into the weeds.

as for me, i actually played pretty well. and the women's tee had such an advantage over the men's that we ended up using 6 of my drives and 6 of becca's! about halfway through the course, though, i pretty much gave up on using any irons, and hit almost solely with either a wood or my putter, much to the amusement of the others. stupid irons. i can't hit with them.

also, i am really sunburned.

here are a couple pictures:

this is rich and me clowning around on our golf cart. rich is sitting in the driver's seat at this moment, but i was actually the one who drove the whole day. i love driving the cart. we went over about every bump i could find, including on the 14th hole where there were these mogul-ish mounds on one side of the fairway. ah, the golf cart. so much fun.

this is ray and becca early in the day. note ray's slightly scared expression, a direct result of becca's one-handed golf cart driving.

anyway. it was a fun time. perhaps i'll have to play again sometime. becca and i think that next year we should form an all-woman team of me, her, jen, and maybe laurie. by sheer virtue of being able to hit from the women's tees, we might have a good chance at winning.

after golf, we had lunch and caught an afternoon show of the matrix reloaded. it was pretty good. not "ohmygodwowfreakingamazing" good, but pretty good. i enjoyed it. i agree with the reviews that say that these next two matrix movies will have lost the element of surprise...the part that made audiences go "whoa! how did they do that?!" when the first one came out four year ago. it's not as spectacular to see the slow motion bullet-time cinematography anymore. but it's still cool. :)

last night i had softball at the same time the moon was being eclipsed, so we did both at once. watched the moon, and played a softball game. for the first time in a few weeks, i finally got a really good hit, over the infielders and dropping in front of the outfielders. a lot of times i end up on base because of a fielder's choice, or because someone drops the ball or throws it wildly, or just doesn't move fast enough. but last night i had my first legitimate hit in a while. that made me happy.

and tomorrow i'm supposed to go sailing as the last part of my class! cool.

waiting on sims and matlab is like the story of my life at work. ah well. the end is near, i think. we have a meeting at 12:30 today to discuss the final reports. soon, it will be almost like columbia never happened.

as if we could ever really forget.

last night i did a whole lot of nothing. this would be more impressive if i'd gotten home from work before 6:45, but oh well. anyway, i got home, fixed myself some dinner, and did nothing for the rest of the night. yes, i was going to go to orchestra rehearsal, and i didn't. my excuse is that they were having practice somewhere different, and i didn't know where the new place was. the real reason is that they were having practice somewhere different, and i didn't make any effort to find out where the new place was. sigh. i'm such a wuss.

actually, i did try to do one productive thing last night, which was putting up a new picture on the wall in my study. in doing so, i broke the glass in the frame. daunted, i retreated to watching tv on the couch. some evenings that's all i can muster.

regardless, i was still up until midnight, and am sleepy today. i've been having a lot of trouble getting to bed before midnight for the past week and a half. i don't know why. it's annoying.

(9:28 a.m.)

random. the fire alarm just went off. but now we're all back inside. i wish we had fire drills in the afternoon, when i actually need a break. ;)

i think in order to really see how hard you played in a soccer game, you have to wait a day or so and watch the bruises appear. yesterday i had one on my right thigh, another on my left ankle, and another right under my chin. yes, my chin. sheesh.

so next time nacho and i go riding, i'm going to have to make him come meet me at my apartment. last friday i met him at the regatta by riding down nasa 1, and good lord, that stretch of road is so incredibly crappy. there are too many potholes and such on the shoulder, where we were riding, and it messed up the gears on my bike. last night i went for a 14-mile ride, and while the gears weren't so screwy that i couldn't ride effectively, the smallest three cogs on my rear wheel don't shift smoothly, and the derailler will try to shift between them at random times. sigh. it's ok though, because the bike store told me to bring the bike back this week to test on the trainer anyway, so i'll just have them readjust the gears. and i'll watch them so i know how to do it myself.

but yeah, i rode 14 miles last night. it was awesome! aside from the momentarily out-of-whack gears, my bike is sooooo cool. people have been asking to see a picture of it, and i already posted the link here to specialized's webpage, where there's a picture...but i guess you want to see my actual bike. it doesn't look any different from the picture really, except that i've added a little computer and two water bottle cages. but i'll try to remember to take a picture soon and post it.

i also have a couple pictures from the u.s./mexico soccer game last week that i'll try to remember to post soon.

tonight i'm supposed to go to rehearsal for the league city symphonic winds, but after last week's first attempt, i am not enthusiastic about tonight. see, i first heard about this group back in january, and thought "hey, it'd be nice to play my flute again, i'll check it out." then work got crazy, and i never went. so i finally got back in touch with the director at the end of april, and he told me to come to rehearsal last week. the group practices every tuesday, and performs about once a month (which is really more of a time committment than i want to make, but i figured i'd worry about that later).

so last week after nacho and i got back from the bike store, i grabbed my flute and went to rehearsal. i was uncomfortable from the moment i walked in. once i found the director, he greeted me literally with "oh, flute, hi, sit over there." he was so abrupt that i didn't even know how to respond. so i went and sat and got out my flute while everyone else milled around gathering music and folders. after 5 minutes, with the director looking like he was about to start, i got up again and asked him if he had any music for me to play. again, he barely glanced at me before handing me a score and telling me to just read off that. ugh! sight reading is hard enough without having to separate the flute part from the clarinet, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, and trombone.

so i attempted to follow the score, with mixed success. about 15 minutes into rehearsal, the flute section lead arrived. before she had even heard me play, she asked if i could play in a flute ensemble next week (which has since been cancelled). then on sunday night she called me and told me that tonight the director is having a get-together at his house, and that he asked the flutes to bring a fruit or veggie, and did that work for me? i mumbled something about not being sure if i could make it after rehearsal.

maybe i'm just being insecure, but these people really freaked me out last week. and they weren't friendly! i was obviously the new person, and not really sure what i was supposed to be doing, and yet only two people (both flutes, definitely not the director) said more than two sentences to me the whole night. i was just going to say screw it and not go back at all, but i figure maybe i should give it another chance this week. even though i don't really want to.

i am already looking forward to my lunch today. i went to the grocery store last night, and they had some really good strawberries. so i brought some for lunch today, along with the stir fry i made last night. mmm.

if i had a nickel for every time someone's said "you bought an $800 bike? wow, i hope you like bike riding..."

anyway. i had a nice weekend. saturday was busy, with sailing class, getting my toes painted (hee hee), going to the driving range, a 107 early sightings team wrap-up bbq, and a movie. cari, becca and i went to see "bend it like beckham," a british movie about an indian girl who wants to play soccer/football. karen saw it a while ago and recommended it, and i've been wanting to see it ever since, and it finally made it to the cinemark. it was great; i highly recommend it.

so, i think i mentioned last week that i've joined a women's soccer team, and last night was the second game i've been able to play in. the mix of people on the team is really amusing/interesting to me. half the team is in the mid-20s to late 30s, and have full-time jobs, kids, etc. the other half are 19 and 20 years old, just graduated from high school, working as waitresses and attending one of the local community colleges. they're not the most intelligent girls in the world, but they're good soccer players, and that's all i care about. except for one.

there is one girl who's 19, but with the attitude of an 8-year-old. now, we have two goalies on our team: megan, who is about 5 feet tall, and april with the attitude problem, who is about 5-foot-10. april is the tallest person on our team, which makes her a good candidate to play goalie. and she volunteered to play goalie for half of each game. despite this fact, she doesn't like playing in goal, and literally pouts if she's asked to play there. she is the most unenthusiastic, apathetic soccer player i've ever seen. she doesn't leave the goal line, not even to run out and smother the ball to prevent a goal. she doesn't use her hands half the time, trying instead to just block shots with her foot. when she does use her hands, she drops the ball.

last night we lost 4-0. two of those goals were scored when 1) april didn't run out to get the ball when she had the distance advantage, instead letting a forward from the other team take her one-on-one (one-on-one, the forward is much more likely to win) and 2) april had the ball in her hands and dropped it, to let it dribble over the goal line. ARGH!! it was so incredibly frustrating.

she's just really unenthusiastic, and she's even been overheard saying "well i don't play very hard, because i don't like the rest of the team." she also doesn't run. who's ever heard of a soccer player that doesn't run?!? it's absurd. anyway. that's my frustration.

the rest of the team is amusing though. the team we played last night had a few physical players, and my team complained a lot about them. it's funny; i know i complain a lot about work and stuff, but i don't tend to complain about sports. if someone's playing me rough, i just play rough back. that's one thing i think makes me a decent soccer player--i'm not afraid to run into someone trying to get the ball. i'm not afraid to get hit.

last night i took a ball hard on the thigh, and have a nice red spot there even this morning. i also took a ball to the face. that one was unintentional, the thigh block wasn't. ;)

i got the newest outside magazine on saturday, and it rocks. there's an article about lance armstrong, who i am totally obsessed with, and there's an article about becoming a mountain climber that lists the top ten climbs in north america, starting with beginner and going to expert. the final climb is mount mckinley, but the first climb is one i've already done--half dome!! the second climb is long's peak in colorado, which gavin has done before, so we may try to do that next summer. fun.

lunchtime.

last monday, i woke up with some sort of insect bite on my neck. a spider, most likely. all week it looked red and icky, but today it finally faded to pink and puffy. as such, i've been asked three times (twice directly, once discreetly) if i know that i have a hickey. this prompted me to go to the 24-hour drug store just now to buy some cortisone cream.

now i'm home. it is late, and quiet. i'm awake, and missing people. make new friends, but don't lose the old.

i've never smoked a cigarette in my life, and only a handful of cigars, but there are some nights that i feel like taking up the habit. without considering the fact that it's horribly bad for your health, the action itself has always looked relaxing to me.

i just got back from a few laps around the complex on my new bike. yesterday i finally bought one, or as someone else put it, "i knew that money would burn a hole in your pocket." it is fantastic. a specialized sequoia. last night, an hour after getting home from the bike store, nacho and i went riding. we went down hercules and saturn, and on-site. we rode down the streets and past the duck ponds and under the eaves of the buildings. there was something nice about the center at night. there is something nice about being outside and alone at night, period.

when i was at georgia tech, especially in my last two years, i took a lot of late night walks. sometimes i would take a friend, sometimes i went alone. either way, and in spite of my sometimes hopeless emotions, i always found it peaceful, and calming...to be strolling at night, quietly, wandering through a place that in daylight was so busy, and could feel so chaotic.

i miss that. i miss those walks.

man, what a day. in less than 6 hours i've offended gavin by interrupting him, made becca believe that i am anti-women, and been inspired by an hour with a friend i hadn't seen in 5 years and who is now on her way back to l.a. not bad, sarah, not bad. ;)

anyway. to flesh out that paragraph, here are the explanations: i interrupted gavin with "my brain is fuzzy, i should go home" just as he was starting to explain something to me, but i apologized. becca thought i was anti-feminism and anti-title 9; after more discussion, apparently i am not against feminism or title 9, i just have different ideas of how people should go about trying to implement change, and i think feminists sometimes pick the wrong battles, and i think that if there's enough interest to have, say, a men's wrestling team, then a school should be able to have a men's wrestling team without having to think about what that does to the men's/women's team ratio. and i saw my friend loretta, who i haven't seen since i was on like my second co-op tour, and had a good long inspiring talk with her about space and life in general, and now she's headed back home to l.a. and maybe i'll see her again in another five years. ;)

so yeah, i haven't gotten much done today. my sims are still running. almost done...

the soccer game last night was awesome. (i realized i may not have explained--last night was a game between the u.s. and mexican national men's teams, an exhibition or "friendly" game, but since the u.s. beat mexico 2-0 last year in the world cup, the mexicans were billing it as "revancha en la cancha," revenge on the field. plus, houston has such a large hispanic community that having this game here was just huge...people have been looking forward to it for weeks. here's an article about it.)

the game ended in a 0-0 tie, so the only disappointment was that we didn't get to see any goals, but despite being scoreless, i've never been to any sporting event where that many people stayed that loud for that long. it was crazy!! our seats were at mid-field about 30 rows back, and we were on our feet--as if it were a college football game--for something like 88 of the 90 minutes in the game. the crowd was overwhelmingly pro-mexico, but there were enough people rooting for the americans that we weren't drowned out entirely. and unlike those games where they say it's sold out but you can spot tons of empty seats in the stands, this game was sold out. i swear there wasn't an empty seat in the entire building, not even way up in the rafters. 70,000 people. wow.

i have to say, reliant stadium looked really nice with a soccer field. it would be awesome if houston attracted some more exhibition games, or even world cup games.

it was awesome.

this morning bini and i went down to the mpsr to watch the ascent sim. rich has been training marc on the ard (abort region determinator) support console, and marc is to the point now where he doesn't need rich standing over his shoulder, so rich had time to sit in the back with the two of us and explain the basics of his job. it was cool. they did five runs: one abort-to-orbit, one attempt at an ecal (east coast abort landing) that disintegrated into crew bailout (not good), one tal (trans-atlantic landing) to some place in turkey, and two final runs where they actually got into the desired orbit. rich said we'd have to come back some other time when the trajectory people have more to do; today there were a couple people in other positions that were certifying, so all the problems went to them instead.

it was interesting. it was the first time i've watched a sim since...geez, it must be since i worked with the gpo's, which was...summer 2000? a long time ago. anyway.

tonight i'm headed to the us/mexico soccer game in reliant stadium. it's sold out, so there will be 70,000+ people there. wow. i don't think i've ever been to an event with that many people. i'm sure there will be many more mexico fans, simply because of the local population and the fact that americans aren't known for their soccer fanaticism, but i'm excited nonetheless. i feel like i need to go buy a big u.s. flag to drape myself in.

and last night i test rode a bike that some guy is selling on the swap shop (he's asking $550, which is at least $450 more than the bike is worth, so screw that idea) and then went to the driving range to prepare for next week's division golf tournament. i did ok for a while, but got worse as the night went on. oh well. i think i did pretty good for only my second time ever swinging a club. now i just need to find some clubs to borrow before next thursday...

my all-star fantasy team had a freaking awesome pitching day yesterday. jarrod washburn, mark mulder, john smoltz, and tim worrell combined for 2 wins and 2 saves in 20 innings, with 12 strikeouts, a 0.85 whip, and only one earned run. wahoo!

this week is flying by; i can't believe it's already wednesday. my sims are humming along nicely with only a few speedbumps so far, and hopefully will be done and maybe even processed by the end of the week.

i left work yesterday at 4 and nacho and i headed downtown to bike sport. i rode a cannondale r400 while nacho checked out the $3000 and $6000 bikes (good lord). anyway, the r400 was quite nice, with the added benefit of being on sale (from $850 down to $750), since it was last year's model. but now that i've gotten used to the idea of spending that much for a bike, i am having an impossible time deciding what i want! do i want hard-core road bike (aluminum frame, longer top tube, shorter seat tube)? or do i want a road bike that's slower, but a bit more geared for comfort (carbon fork and seat post, shorter top tube, longer head tube)? i am leaning towards the second option, but can't rule out the first yet.

decisions, decisions. when i decide to make a big purchase, i usually end up doing it quickly, but trying to do as much research as i can beforehand. such was the case when i bought my digital camera, only i knew what i was looking for. this time i'm having trouble clarifying what it is i actually want. and i think the learning curve is steeper...

if anyone wants to look into it with me, here are the bikes i've test-ridden so far:

• specialized sequoia sport (this is the one i'm leaning towards buying at this point in time)
• specialized allez sport 27
• trek 1200c
• cannondale r400
• marin portofino
• masi nouva strada

anyway. on another note, for those who are interested, some of my footprint data finally made the caib's website! check out this presentation, and especially slides 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18 and 19. i generated all that data, and i made the maps three of those slides, and gavin mapped the rest. and becca did slides 10, 20, and 21. how cool! i did that! that's my work! i'm so excited to see my stuff being presented and making a difference.

two hours. two freaking measly hours.

after the hearing this morning, that's how long the caib now thinks it would take us (mainly me) to create a debris footprint with the level of accuracy that our current sts-107 footprints have. the most recent versions of those footprints, mind you, the ones that took more than two months to make. and now they have been told that it would take two hours, if we had to do it again.

TWO HOURS!!!

nevermind that the processing time alone would be more like four or five hours, and that's assuming everything runs perfectly and doesn't barf, as the fml is prone to do. and that's not including setup time or mapping time. ugh.

why doesn't anyone ask me how long it would take?!? sigh. i canna take anymore cap'n. i think i'm going to mutiny.

anyway. last night i was supposed to go to bike sport, but then found out they are closed on mondays. then i was supposed to go biking with nacho, but he never showed up and didn't answer my call (turns out he fell asleep). so i went swimming instead, as preparation for the triathlon. i swam 25 laps total, which is 1250 meters. i did the first 16 laps/800 meters/half mile in just under 20 minutes without a problem. that's the length i'll have to swim in the triathlon, so i'm feeling pretty good about it. the triathlon will be in open water instead of the pool, so i figure i'll add a nice cushion of 5-8 minutes to account for 1) not being able to push off the wall every 25 meters and 2) the added choppiness of the water, and i figure i can finish the swim portion and be on my bike in about half an hour.

happy cinqo de mayo! a year ago i was in atlanta visiting friends and watching some of them graduate. i was just reading my entry from last year. i'd forgotten that it was pouring rain for graduation last year, and that carter and kent and i walked from west campus to the coliseum in that rain. now that my memory's been jogged, i remember being wet for the entire ceremony, and recall the power going out for about 15 minutes. crazy.

then of course two years ago, i was the one graduating. i know cinqo de mayo has its own meaning, but i'll always associate it with leaving tech. last year i wrote the following:

it has been one year since i graduated from college. i know that i'm still in school, but in my mind, my college life ended and the real world began one year ago. i came to stanford to take a five year job which has since had its contract shortened to a mere nine months. i love california though. every morning i wake up trying to find another way that i could stay there forever, every time i drive down the road and see the hills and the sky and the people, i want to freeze time and stay in the moment. the funny thing is that i could stay, if i wanted. i don't have to move to houston. i don't have to stay in school either. i could just stay in california. find an apartment. find a job. find friends. find someone to love. i could just stay.

obviously i didn't stay. sometimes i wish i had.

but i came to houston, and as i realized last night, i've done a pretty good job settling into doing things that i really enjoy. my weeks are full of fun activities. tuesdays are for volleyball right now, but soon may be for the league city symphonic winds. thursdays are for softball, though this thursday is for the usa-mexico soccer game at reliant stadium. fridays are for movies and fun, saturday mornings are for coed gilruth soccer (though the spring season has now ended and won't start again until the heat of the summer begins to fade). sunday afternoons are for baseball games or doing stuff around the apartment, sunday nights are for women's league soccer.

i've joined a women's soccer team, and last night made it to my first game. this season i'm only a sub, because they did all the planning and practicing when i was still too busy at work, but next season i'll be full time. i really liked playing on an all-women team. on the coed team i don't get the ball very much, and am more ineffective because there are a lot of guys that can cruise right past me. but on a women's team...well, there are fewer women who can flat out beat me in a sprint, and i am less intimidated by trying to take the ball away from another girl. it was fun. lots of fun. i like soccer; i'm so glad i'm playing it again.

well, off to figure out what paul needs from me for his testimony in front of the caib tomorrow. i like doing work that matters. :)

this afternoon i've been running errands, straightening up my apartment, doing laundry, and other similar lazy sunday activities. for background music, i pulled out a cd i haven't listened to in a long time...the counting crows, august and everything after. now, i listen to counting crows a lot. but it's always either 1) their newer stuff or 2) their old stuff, but live versions like the vh1 and mtv cds, or various mp3 versions. but i haven't actually listened to the original studio album in ages.

it was sort of strange to put in the original, and remember how the "official" versions of the songs sound. it took me back to music theory class in 10th grade. nick van wie brought in the cd one day and was playing it before class started. laura and i sat as "mr. jones" played in the background and then looked at each other with a "who is this band?" look on our faces. so i bought the cd.

i listened to it a lot, putting the cd into permanent rotation alongside u2, the wallflowers, dave matthews, rem, and sarah mclachlan. i graduated high school, went to college, and met two counting crows fanatics. and the rest is history.

only the crows and u2 remain in my permanent rotation today. i tired of the others, as i am wont to do. i doubt i'll ever tire of those two.

leila bought our tickets to the counting crows and john mayer concert yesterday. july 25th. wahoo.

10th grade. geez. as i shake my head to send the memories of that year back into the depths of my head...

i've seen many questions in various places along the lines of "if your life had a soundtrack, what songs would be on it?" well... i guess for me it's less about the song itself, and more about the memory i associate with it. counting crows, "have you seen me lately" (the acoustic version on the vh1 storytellers cd), because it got me through a rough time. james taylor, "carolina on my mind" for obvious reasons. sarah mclachlan, "angel" because after i was forced to sing it once, a boy told me i had a nice voice, and he wasn't teasing. eve 6, "open road song" because of harris. a song by u2, though i'm torn between "mysterious ways" and "i still haven't found what i'm looking for."

anwyay.

we lost our soccer game again this morning by a score of 3-2, but played well, and almost tied it at the last minute. though we still aren't winning, it's hard to be frustrated when i see the improvement we've made since we started in the fall. just playing together for six months has helped us a lot. we make better passes, play our positions with more confidence, and i feel like our lack of wins is just a fluke of bad luck, not due to a lack of skill.

anyway. last night i had my first of three sailing classes, and it went well. last night was a bit boring because we were just sitting in a classroom learning the names of all the parts of a sail and a boat and being taught the basics of sailing maneuvers and such. but i'm excited for next week, when we get to mess around with a sailboat in the parking lot, and then the following week, when we actually go out on the water. ever since i went sailing on the pamlico sound on the bike trip i took at the end of 9th grade, i've thought it would be great to learn how to sail, and now i'm finally doing it! hooray!

i'm off to sun & ski to check out their road bikes, and hoping to find one that's reasonably affordable.

oh!! i can't believe i almost forgot to mention this! incredibly, i won another $500 yesterday from t-mobile for a picture of jason and debbie. check it out. that's $1100 and counting... i am so in love with my phone it's not even funny, and am on a great lucky streak. i think i should go to vegas.

last night i caught not one but two fly balls to left center in our softball game. (i am writing this here just for katie, who said she expected to hear about it "in the journal" tomorrow.)

i'm taking most of the afternoon off. we're catching an early showing of x-men, and then i have to go to the bike store and finally buy a helmet. i'm taking my first sailing class (three hours for the next three weeks and i'll know how to sail!) tonight. fun.

lunchtime.

the good news: i finally have a new light bulb above my desk, after a week in the dark. so how many nasa people does it take to change a light bulb? only one, but it takes a week.

the bad news: i didn't quite finish my code mods yesterday. if i'd had 20 more minutes, it would have been done, just 20 more minutes! but i had to leave work to get home by 6, because...

the good news: i got debbie, jason, chris, and chris's friend matt to go to the baseball game with me. the braves are in town! wahoo! they won big last night, 11-1, as i root root rooted for the away team. hampton pitched well. go braves!

the bad news: when the braves aren't in town, the astros are my team, and they aren't playing well this year. i don't understand. with biggio, bagwell, berkman and kent, they should be producing a lot more offensively, and the pitching hasn't been as good as expected either. hmm.

the good news: i won more money with my camera phone! i submitted a photo of jason sporting a pink and orange tissue paper hat at debbie's chuck e. cheese bday dinner, and it was selected as a daily winner. (follow the link, it's the $100 picture on the lower left.)

the bad news: it was selected as an honorable mention, not the big daily winner, so only $100 instead of $500, and no entry into the next round. still, no complaints on my part, or jason's, as we're both $50 richer.

the good news: i am still winning the a/c war in my apartment.

the bad news: it's starting to get really warm outside.

happy may day everybody!