April 2004 Archives

I bought a new car!

First, here's my old car, my fantastic, reliable, cheerful little Sentra. I almost cried when I had to leave it at the dealership. It will be an excellent car for someone else.

And now, here is my new car! A red Xterra. Yay! It feels weird to be driving a bigger car again, but I'll get used to it soon enough. And it does fit in my garage (I actually wasn't sure that it would). This picture is at the dealership...

And this picture is at my apartment complex!

I have been in some sort of weird limbo lately with my health. I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, and yet I haven't actually come down with a cold. I just feel very blah. Tired, and my throat has been hurting for a few days. Not the type of hurt that usually precedes a true head cold though...just a scratchiness such that by bedtime, I feel like I've overtaxed my vocal cords or something.

Strange. I think I just need sleep. And a weekend "off," meaning, a weekend where I don't have 10 million things to do, at least one of which involves getting up before 6 a.m. Unfortunately, this weekend won't be it, because I'll be up at 5 a.m. on Saturday to drive over to Sugarland with Buzz to do the Speedo Women's Triathlon. However, next weekend is looking clear so far. I think I'm going to try to keep my projected May 8-9 plans to a minimum. Of course, the weekend after that is the Beach to Bay relay in Corpus Christi...

I think I need to slow down.

I left work early yesterday and Dad and I spent the afternoon checking out cars. I think I'm going with the Xterra. We went to one dealership in Sugarland (since I had to go over there anyway to pick up my race packet for Sunday), where I took an Xterra on an extended test drive. About 10 miles in all, including about 4 miles on the interstate to see how the car did with accelerating and passing. My dad likes the Xterra a lot. So we checked out two more dealerships to see what they had on the lot... I think I have decided not to get blue after all, and am currently trying to find a red one. Wouldn't you know, the only red one within 100 miles that's equipped just how I want it is in Port Arthur! (Port Arthur is basically on the TX/LA border.)

Anyway. Dad's calling the parts department this morning to see if an accessory can be added for a reasonable cost, and if so, the dealership just up the highway has a red one that's just what I want. Or, alternately, there are a bazillion silver ones out there. I guess I just was hoping for something different. My little Sentra is silver/beige, and I thought it might be nice to get a change of pace. But we'll see. I'll either get "thermal red" or "silver lightning." You can check the colors out here and let me know what you think in the comments section.

Yes, that was a blatant attempt to get you guys to write comments. I like comments. :)

Last night we did get home in time for me to go swimming with Buzz. She is improving a lot, especially in her swimming endurance. She can do a lot more laps than she used to be able to do! Yay. It was a good swim. I probably did 24 or 25 laps in all. I love swimming. Though the pool was dirty, and massively over-chlorinated. Made my skin all dry and my hair all yucky.

Dad is here! Hooray!

Last night was crazy busy. I left work at 4:30 and met Jason to run a few errands, then we met everyone at the Seabrook Beach Club to watch sailboat races and meet Cari's friend Kelly. Kelly is from Canada, and was at ISU in France for the past nine months (as was Cari), and is working at UTMB in Galveston for the intern portion of the master's degree program. She seems pretty cool, and we are definitely enjoying the opportunity to tell Cari how Kelly is going to take over her life, her friends, and her dog while Cari is "stuck" in Germany for the next couple months.

The sailboat races were really fun to watch. Becca's been sailing in them for at least a year now, and Gavin has started crewing, but neither of them were racing last night. I'm interested in crewing, but at the moment I have pretty low confidence in my sailing ability. Once I get my new car this weekend and thus can tow the sailboat Becca and I bought last summer, I'll get a lot more practice and maybe can start racing. It looked like a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun just to watch as well. It made me want a Sunfish (small, one-person sailboat).

After the races, Paul and Jason and I hung out for a while, and at 10:00 my dad arrived! Yay! He made pretty good time from Charlotte...17 hours total. I think he was pretty tired of being in the car by the time he got here. He likes my new apartment (he'd only seen the old one, and without furniture), and seemed as happy with a bread and cheese sandwich as anything else. My dad is weird. :)

Today we're going to start serious car shopping!

Last night I was tired and cranky and didn't get home from work until after 7:00, but when I opened my mailbox I was greeted with a beautiful sight: the order form for tickets for this summer's MLB All-Star game. I am so excited. The tickets have to be bought in the entire package, of course, which means I will be attending the Futures Game, the Celebrity Softball Game, the Home Run Derby, and the All-Star Game itself. July 13 can't get here quick enough.

I'm going to the baseball All-Star game!
I'm going to the baseball All-Star game!
I'm going to the baseball All-Star game!

I am really tired today. I got in at 7:30 because I had a meeting to go to at 8:30, and I figured an extra hour couldn't hurt. My dad is arriving tonight, so I will probably take tomorrow afternoon and Friday afternoon off to go car shopping/haggling. The rest of the week and weekend will be busy, with Dad in town, car shopping, baseball games, and a triathlon. Buzz and I are doing the Speedo Women's Triathlon in Sugarland on Sunday morning as a "warm-up" for the Danskin in Austin in June. This weekend's race is a bit shorter (only 300m swim, 10 mile bike, 3 mile run as opposed to 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 5k run) and, of course, the terrain is significantly flatter.

I should have people come visit me more often. My dad's imminent arrival has done wonders for the state of my apartment. It's cleaner and neater and less cluttered than it has been in months! I have a few more things to straighten up tonight before he gets here. He's driving, and left at 6 a.m. this morning. I called him at 8:15 my time to check that he was on his way, and he was about 50 miles from Atlanta. At the moment, five hours later, he's probably closing in on the Alabama/Mississippi border. About an hour across the bottom piece of Mississippi, about six hours through Louisiana, and another hour and a half in Texas till you reach me. That should put him here sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 tonight.

Ah, the Charlotte-to-Houston drive. It's been almost two years since I did it last, but I still feel like I know every inch of that road. I hated that drive, but at the same time, I sort of liked it. Early in the morning, in the first hour, knowing that I had a whole day of driving ahead of me just brought me down. But by mid-day, with the cruise control on and a Coke in the cup holder and the radio playing and me singing along happily, the miles just slid past. I used to play games with myself, trying to guess the mileage to the overpass I could see up in the distance. I was pretty good at guessing accurately! I measured my progress in cities or landmarks: the Peachoid, Greenville, the "Atlanta Braves, 1995 World Champions" highway sign, Georgia Tech, Carter's house, Birmingham, the big bridge outside of Mobile, Stennis Space Center, the I-12 shortcut, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, the "El Paso, 768 miles" sign, Beaumont, and finally, the golden bridge on 146 over the Houston ship channel. I always felt like I was almost home when I reached the Texas border, or, going the other way, when I got to the Georgia border. I used to stop in Atlanta for the night, of course, to drop my stuff off at school before continuing on to Charlotte. My crazy dad does the whole thing in one huge gulp.

Crazy dad.

Semi-random site of the day: Nick got a bird a couple weeks ago, and has now set up a webcam that updates every 10 seconds or so, and you can watch Belle all day. Sometimes she's not there, but a lot of the time she is sitting on the windowsill. It's very amusing. Once it refreshed and she was looking right in the camera. Funny.

Another semi-random link: Here are the "official" photos of me riding in the MS150. Select "MS150 Houston to Austin 2004" as the race, and put in my last name and bib number 4161. So if you wanted a good look at me in my race-car-driver-esque jersey, take a look. :)

Ugh. Today has been very frustrating so far. Matlab is taking forever, since I'm having to deal with huge trajectory files. SORT is being a huge bother by continuing to violate the minimum altitude for reasons that are as yet unknown. I can't figure out why. This is why I didn't major in computer science, for god's sake. It's absurd. And the freaking debugger is only really effective if you know which subroutine the thing is breaking in, and I don't.

I really hate coding.

This whole day just started off on the wrong foot when I went downstairs to get into my car this morning and discovered that my water heated had exploded and was leaking water all over my garage. Beautiful. I've lived in this complex for less than two years, in two apartments, and the water heater in both has broken! I think the complex is about 10 years old, so maybe that's the lifespan on a water heater. Anyway, it wasn't a huge deal, since I took my shower last night, and this morning I washed my face, so it must have busted this morning right after that...but the leaking water got all over one of the cardboard boxes of Yuri's Night pint glasses in my garage. I came close to breaking the glasses as I tried to move the box without picking it up too far (since the bottom was so wet it was falling apart).

Annoying.

Last night Jason, Debbie and I had a group car-driving outing. I drove the Vue for the first time and the Liberty for a second time, both over a very bumpy and pothole-ridden road. The Liberty continues to ride better than expected, making it an annoyingly tough choice. I think I've ruled out the Saturn, because it doesn't seem to be as rugged overall as the Liberty and Xterra, and for some reason is just not as appealing to me. But the Liberty is really starting to give the Xterra a run for it. As Leila said this morning, basically now I have to choose between Kent and Leila. Kent drives a Liberty, Leila and Brian drive an Xterra. Funny.

Ok, this is truly bizarre. I went into the debugger to check the one subroutine I thought my code might be breaking in, couldn't find anything wrong, and so clicked "continue" to crash the run and exit the program...and now the damn thing appears to be running. WHY?????? I hate this program!!

To top it all off, it's absolutely beautiful outside today, and I just want to go home.

This is one of the funniest blog entries I've read lately. I don't really care whether or not you agree with him, and I'm not going to say how much or how little I agree with him. Basically, I don't know the guy, but his post cracked me up, especially the disclaimer part at the end. (I like cookies and ice cream and pretty kittens too!)

The more I read about each of the three SUVs I am considering, the more stressed out I get. Under consideration: Jeep Liberty, Saturn Vue, Nissan Xterra. I wish I could take each one home for a 24 hour test drive.

Any advice or opinions are welcome.

Ok, let me clear one thing up. The picture below is of Viggo when he was alive. He's not dead in that picture. Do you people seriously think I would post a picture of a dead fish? Sick!

So the weekend was nice. Friday night was dinner and Laser Tag for Gavin's birthday. Gavin was the best at the game, but I was second. Woo! It was really hot in there though, and after only two games, I felt like I'd really had a workout for the night. Saturday morning, Gavin, Jason, Debbie and I headed over to Sugarland for the Bayou Bash relay race. Four team members each run 2.81 miles. It was a pretty frustrating morning; it was raining and the race coordinators were very unaccomodating. Turns out that we were supposed to have picked up our packets on Friday, but we didn't know that. We had tried to find out by checking the race webpage (which said no race day registration, but didn't say no race day packet pickup) and by calling the phone number listed there (but no one answered the phone). Since the packet pickup location was almost an hour's drive away, we decided that it would be ok to wait until Saturday morning before the race.

Mistake! People from the running club that organized the race repeatedly berated me for not having picked up our packets and numbers on Friday. The first woman gave me a blank look. The second woman said she didn't know where our numbers were. The third woman told me I was supposed to have picked them up yesterday (ok, fine, but that doesn't help me NOW does it?). Finally I found a helpful man who had seen our numbers and knew right where they were--in a box in the back of the SUV where the second woman had been standing when she told me she didn't know where they were! Ugh. At this point we had our numbers at least, so we could run. We figured we'd ask about our t-shirts afterward.

The race went really well, despite the rain. Jason ran well without any foot problems in about 22 minutes, I ran well (right at about 26 minutes) even though I apparently went 0.1-0.2 miles too far (the turnaround wasn't clearly marked, at least in my opinion), Gavin ran fast as usual (under 20 minutes), and Debbie did the run in under half an hour--this with both knees yelling at her from knee braces! Go Debbie! Our team finished in 1:36:04.

Afterwards, I made two more attempts to get our t-shirts, which we wanted because we had paid for them, but also because it was going to be really nice to have a dry t-shirt to change into! One man was very rude to me, saying that "well if you didn't pick up your packet yesterday, I'm sorry, but I think you're SOL..." but I finally got four t-shirts. Not wanting to push our luck, we immediately left.

Now that I've planned my own race, I feel like I have a little leeway to complain about bad organization on the part of others. ;) Well, not entirely, but I just don't understand how not having picked up our packets on Friday was as enormous a problem as they made it out to be. Totally unnecessary for them to be so rude and unhelpful to me.

Anyway. That's the end of my mini-rant. Saturday afternoon I test drove both the Jeep Liberty and the Nissan Xterra. I'd also planned on trying out the Saturn Vue, but ran out of time, so I'm gonna go check that one out tonight. I'm getting closer to a decision, though I actually liked the Liberty more than I had expected to. It was smoother than I'd thought it would be, being a Jeep and all. I don't know if I can get over the fact that it looks squished though. I know that's not a good reason to not buy a certain vehicle, but as Jason said, I was something I'm going to be happy driving for 5, 6, 7... years. So. I am leaning towards the Xterra. But at the same time, I'm starting to have major anxiety over buying a car. It's such a big purchase! What if I buy one and then something breaks! Or after 4 years I start having lots of problems! As I was telling Jason yesterday, I don't want to know how the car performs brand new...I want to know how it's going to perform five years from now. Wondering is stressing me out.

My dad is coming down to help, though he called today to say he's not coming until Wednesday (he had been planning to come tomorrow). I really want him to drive the Xterra and tell me his opinion. If he likes it, I think I'll be sold.

Saturday night we drove to the other freaking side of Houston to watch Nick perform in his company's spring ballet. It was better than advertised, and I enjoyed it a lot more than the Nutcracker that we saw at Christmas. Afterwards, we all went out to dinner. His dad paid for the entire thing! His dad is very cool.

Yesterday Jason, Gavin, Jen and I made the trek up to REI to take advantage of the last day of their spring sale. I got $60 back on the tent I bought at the end of March, and turned right around to use that money to buy hiking boots. The longer I stay in REI, the more money I spend! My hiking boots are awesome though. They were comfortable the minute I put them on, and my feet hardly move at all in them. I wore them last night as I vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom. You know, to start breaking them in. :)

Soccer was cancelled last night, so I had dinner with Debbie, Jason and Chris and then came home to watch the Braves while I cleaned my apartment. It was a good pitcher's duel until J.D. Drew cleared the bases with a triple, and came home on an error. Bit of a weird play, actually, I don't think I'd ever seen that before. At first I thought he had gotten an inside-the-park home run.

He put up a good fight after I accidentally almost killed him last summer, but ever since then, Viggo has had a tendency to look a little...off. Sadly, he died yesterday. Vtot will miss having him to puff up at as the "evil red fish in the other bowl." Here's a picture of Viggo in happier times.

RIP Viggo. You were the best fish ever!

An entire duck family just walked past my window. Mama Duck, Papa Duck, and about a dozen adorable little duckings. Some of them were running through the tall grass, and others were coming under the fence closer to my apartment, till Mama and Papa scooted them back to the other side with a stern quack. So cute!

The Astros lost again. This time it took twelve innings and Reggie Sanders. He beat the throw the first to get on base, stole second, took third on Ausmus's throwing error when trying to get him out stealing, and came home on a squeeze play. You could hear the infield shout "squeeze!" even up at our seats, but it didn't help them get Sanders out. And so the Cardinals swept the Astros. Sad, sad.

Also, I don't know much about the NFL, but it seems to me that Eli Manning it being a bit of a baby by not wanting to play in San Diego. That's the way the draft works. The team chooses you, not the other way around.

It's been a hectic week, and I've been sleepy through it all, so I'm really looking forward to the weekend.

Tonight is Gavin's not-a-surprise surprise party. See, first we were supposed to have a surprise party for him tomorrow night. But then his parents surprised him last weekend, which made Matt think he'd missed the party, and he didn't quite cover it up enough, and so Gavin sorta figured it out, and then Jen thought they had something else to do tomorrow night, so she told him, but then it turns out that they don't have something to do tomorrow night, but by that time some of us had already made other plans for tomorrow night (going to Nick's ballet), SO...we're going out to dinner tonight. And playing Laser Tag. Woo! I suck at Laser Tag, but at least it's fun.

Tomorrow morning Gavin, Jason, Debbie and I are running a relay race. Same one we did around this time last year, where everyone runs 2.81 miles. (No, I have no idea why it's 2.81.) Anyway, it should be fun. Debbie has bad knees, Jason has a bum foot and lingering concussion, I'm tired and slow, and so basically Gavin is the only one who will run any sort of reasonable time. Must be nice to be a natural runner!

Tomorrow afternoon I'm test driving cars. Within two weeks, I'll have a new car. Or, rather, SUV. Yes, Katie, kill me now, I'm getting a gas guzzler.

Sunday night I have a soccer game. Yay!

Today has been busy, busy, busy. I finally have a task--uncrewed orbiter undocking and disposal--that's mine, and it's involved a lot of running around and input-providing and data-gathering this week. And another task--abort logic for the 2009 Mars mission--has suddenly become high priority at least through the end of the fiscal year (September), so that will begin to take a lot of my time.

Tonight's another Astros game. Hopefully they can win, and avoid being swept by the Cardinals.

Ok, so I didn't have as much to say as I thought.

p.s. Jason's head is ok. Just a concussion. Much relief on everyone's part.

So much to say, so little time.

I finally made it to the ballpark last night for my first game of the season. It was, as they say, good for my soul. The Astros ended up losing 5-3, unfortunately, but hopefully they'll win tomorrow night when we go to our next season ticket game! The usher in our section is pretty cool, if a little loopy, and so it should be a good season. My only complaint about the seats is that if I'm not sitting up on the edge of the seat, the railing obscures my view of the plate. But I suppose that goes along with the territory in getting gimp seats at the cheaper price! :) Pictures here.

And I forgot to mention yesterday that my MS150 pictures are posted as well, here.

Oh! During the 7th inning stretch, there was a streaker! I've never been at a game where anyone streaked before; it was hilarious. The crowd immediately ceased singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and started laughing and cheering. He was a big fat ugly guy. He jumped down from the stands above the right field wall, stripped off all his clothes, and took off toward center field. He paused there to shake his booty for all the people up on the center field balcony overhang, then continued toward left field. By this time, four security guards were closing in, so the naked guy juked left and right, trying to avoid them. But he wasn't wearing any shoes, so he quickly slipped on the grass and fell down, at which point the security guards tackled him. I, of course, took a picture. Couldn't resist. Here's the dude being escorted off the field.

Very funny.

On to other news. When I got back to work on Monday, Debbie informed on Friday at a nearby park, Jason attempted to go over some jump on his mountain bike. In typical Jason fashion, he crashed, went over the handlebars, landed on his head and cracked his helmet. He got up laughing, I'm sure, as his reaction to pain is to laugh instead of cry. Freak. Anyway, yesterday I find out that his head has been hurting more and more, so he went to the doctor yesterday, who said "I think you have a concussion, well, I mean, you do have a concussion, let's get you a CAT scan to make sure it's nothing worse than that." So yesterday Jason literally had his head examined. The sheet he took to the CAT scan place had a line for which body part to image, and the doctor had checked "brain." So. That is that. It made for a lot of good jokes at the baseball game last night ("Jason, how many fingers?"), but hopefully it is only a concussion, and nothing more serious. In fact, as soon as I finish writing this I should call Jason to see if he has heard the results yet.

I don't know what we're going to do with that boy.

Oh, and the third cool thing of yesterday is that Cheri Blauwet, a good friend of Chris's, won the Boston Marathon on Monday. Yes, won the women's wheelchair division of the Boston freaking Marathon. Crazy. Her time was 1:39:53. Here is a picture of her on Chris's page. She's also won the New York and L.A. marathons, set a world record in the women's wheelchair 5K, has arms that could crush you, makes a living off winning races (she won $10,000 for Boston), and I think she's going to the Paralympic Games this summer. And she's smart enough that she's currently in medical school at Stanford. Pretty damn impressive.

Man. Makes me tired just thinking about it. Or maybe it's just that I'm really freaking tired, period. Tonight I have no plans though, so hopefully I will get to bed early. Hopefully.

And finally, there was a thing on the Blogger homepage this morning about testing out Google's Gmail service, so I signed up. Gmail me so I can play around with it. Need a topic? What's the best thing about baseball (or your favorite sport), and why?

Yeah, I didn't get around to updating yesterday. I was in a sleepy haze all morning, and then had work to do all afternoon. But better late than never, right? So here it is, my recap of the MS150.

SATURDAY - Houston to La Grange - 83.8 miles

I didn't sleep very well Friday night due to noisy neighbors and being generally nervous and anxious about the ride, and sort of tossed and turned all night until the alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. Yes, 4:30 a.m. For those keeping score, that is really freaking early. Anyway, I had packed everything Friday evening, so I just put on my biking clothes (including spiffy/ugly Dow team jersey; I felt like a race car driver covered with sponsor logos), at a bowl of cereal, threw my backpack and sleeping bag into the car, and put my bike in the back seat. I have to take the front wheel off to fit it in there, but it's better than using my sketchy bike rack on the highway at 70 mph. Ah, in two weeks when I have a new car I'll never have to worry about transporting my bike again!

Anyway. I was on the road by 5:10 and got to the stadium right at 6:00. The ride actually had two starting points: Tully Stadium in west Houston, and Rhodes Stadium in Katy. The ride from Tully was about 15 miles farther on the first day; in fact, I drove past Tully on my way to Rhodes. The Dow team had a team start arranged at Rhodes though, and I wanted to start with the team (and saving 15 miles didn't hurt)! In any case, I got to the stadium, unloaded my bike, dropped my backpack and sleeping bag in the big pile of luggage to be trucked to the overnight stop in La Grange, and headed to the start line.

From what I can tell, doing the ride with a team is definitely the way to go. The Dow team made sure everything was taken care of, from start to finish. We got to start right after the BP team, at 7:05 a.m., while people in the back of the line probably didn't even get out of the stadium until after 8:00 (they start people in waves to control the flow of bike traffic). I was on my way!

Lunch in Bellville was about 35 miles away. I made good time there, averaging over 18 miles an hour and stopping at only one of the break points to suck on some orange slices (which quickly became my favorite break point item) and drink some Gatorade. I was at the lunch stop at 9:15--early for lunch, but I ate it anyway. Turkey sandwich, yogurt, pasta, potato salad. Mmm. By 9:45 I was back on the road.

The second half of the first day was the hardest part of the entire ride for me. The weather was nice (sunny and about 75 degrees), but it was really windy. The last 30 miles of the first day were pretty much all into a headwind, and up and over one rolling hill after another, which made for some tough biking. I didn't mind the hills as much as the wind. It was brutal! The last 4 miles into La Grange were the worst of all--directly into the wind and up progressively steeper hills. Ugh! I was so happy to roll into the fairgrounds and across the first day's finish line. I arrived just before 2:00 having averaged 15.2 mph for the day. You can do the math--I averaged over 18 mph before lunch, so I had to have average below 12 mph after! I was totally worn out and wondering how in the world I'd ever be able to get back on my bike on Sunday.

After hanging out in the Dow tent for a couple hours though, I was feeling better. No sooner had I walked under the tent than I was greeted with a clean t-shirt, a dozen different drink choices, a full meal, and best of all, a free massage! With some food in my stomach and a masseuse working on my back and neck, I was a happy camper. I sat down with a couple guys who'd finished around 12:30 (speedy!) and talked to them for a while, and at 4:00, I finally saw Angela (a coworker of mine) and her friend Andy come into the tent. We hopped on a bus to a nearby middle school and took showers (ahh). We got back to the tent around 5:30, at which point I was already hungry again, so I ate a second dinner to go with the meal I'd eaten three hours earlier. After that I wandered around the fairgrounds for a while, taking pictures and seeing what was going on. The place was like a carnival--there were games, a climbing wall, a stage, live music, funnel cakes, etc. I walked over to the finish line around 7:00 and people were still steadily coming in, including some guy on a unicycle. Wow.

As the sun started to go down, I started getting really tired, so I headed back to the team tent. Dow provided air mattresses for everyone, which was awesome, so I got mine and found a nice spot at the edge of the tent to set up my bed. I laid around for a while and was just about to fall asleep when the 9:15 fireworks started. Boom! That woke me up again, so I went outside to watch them. They were over by 9:30 and I tumbled onto my air mattress once again and was conked out within minutes.

SUNDAY - La Grange to Austin - 69.7 miles

I woke up when someone in the tent next to us started crowing like a rooster. I figured it must be 5:30 or so...imagine my surprise when I looked at my watch and it was only 4:30 a.m.!! No way I was getting up that early again! I rolled over and dozed for another 45 minutes. At 5:15 I finally got up and hit the breakfast table in the back of the tent. Cereal, eggs, bacon, a big muffin and...coffee! Score. As my food digested, I put on another day's cycling clothes and packed up all my stuff. Dropped off my luggage at the trucks again to be taken to Austin, topped off the water in my camelback, and headed over to the start line with Angela and Andy. Trying to get 13,000 cyclists out of one gate is no small feat, and many people had been in line for an hour or more by the time we got there at 6:40. The official start was at 7, but we didn't get out until almost 8:00.

It was a bit chilly, and for the first few miles I wished I'd worn my windbreaker. By the first break point, though, I was warmed up. I didn't skip any break points on Sunday, as my poor butt needed the rest! I took the "easy" route out of La Grange; just like on Saturday morning, there were two routes to get to lunch. One was about 12 miles longer and went through a very hilly state park, while the other followed highway 71 into Bastrop. I chose the shorter route (the "FedEx Express Route" for those of you craving product placement), which was still pretty hilly, though not as scenic. It wasn't quite as windy early in the morning, and at some places we even had a tailwind, so the going was easier. I reached more than 36 miles per hour coasting down one long hill! That was exciting.

Lunch was in Bastrop at the high school there, Subway sandwiches, chips, and free ice cream sandwiches. By 10:30 I was on the road again with only about 40 miles to go! The break points were pretty evenly spaced out from lunch on, which my butt really appreciated. :) The road flattened out a lot, which was both good and bad--good to not have to climb many hills, but bad because there were no downhills to coast and give my legs a break! At the second-to-last break point there were three goats--very random--and the last break point had Girl Scout cookies and was blaring country music. I was in a great mood by this point, as I wasn't feeling as bad as I had Saturday afternoon, and I knew that I only had 10 more miles to go!

The miles into Austin were pretty slow since it seemed like more and more cyclists were being crammed into a smaller and smaller lane of traffic, but the last mile or so was awesome. It was really windy (I mean, really windy, like blowing trash cans over windy), but mostly downhill. I coasted happily down into the UT campus and past the Longhorn football stadium (just like how the Austin half marathon ended!), then it was just one last quick climb up a hill and around a corner, and there was the Capitol and the finish line! There were lines of people cheering on each side, and I was really excited to be there. Woohoo!

From there I put my bike on a truck back to Houston, and enjoyed a meal at the Hooters tent. That chicken sandwich really hit the spot! I checked in at the Dow tent, took some pictures, found my luggage, and found Angela and Andy (we'd gotten separated early in the day) at the shower trailers. After a lovely shower, I gathered my stuff and hopped on a bus back to Houston. I fell asleep for the first hour, but ended up talking to my seatmate for the rest of the trip back to the stadium in Katy. After talking about our experiences on the ride for a while, I discovered that he was a baseball fan, so we talked baseball for probably half an hour. Fun. :)

Next thing I knew, I was back at my car. All the bikes were trucked back to Tully Stadium, and since I'd left from Rhodes, I had to drive to Tully to get my bike. I expected my bike to be there, seeing as how the truck I'd put it on had left Austin at 2:05, I hadn't left Austin till 3:45, and it was now 6:45...but no luck. Each of the trucks were named after a baseball team so you could keep track of which truck your bike was on; I had put my bike on the Yankees truck (despite saying in Austin "I can't put my bike on the Yankees truck, I hate the Yankees!"). Stupid Yankees. I should have actually paid attention to what I was joking about! I don't know what the driver did on his way from Austin to Houston, but it took him a whole five hours to get to Tully, finally arriving at about 7:15. I only had to wait for half an hour but still--five hours?? Crazy.

Bike in hand, I finally headed home.

TOTAL - Houston to Austin - 153.5 miles

All in all, the MS150 was a cool experience, and I'll probably do it again next year. The one thing that would have made it better is if I'd been able to convince any of my friends to do it with me. I had a good time and raised more than $500 for the MS Society (speaking of which, if you would still like to donate, and in turn receive a really cool thank you card hand-made by yours truly, you can do so here).

I may not get to writing a full update till this afternoon, since it will be fairly long, and I'm very tired. But till then, enjoy the pictures I sent over the weekend! Or, you can get live updates on today's running of the 108th Boston Marathon.

Back in my car, now I just need to go get my trusty bike.

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1:35. I'm in Austin!! HOORAY!

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12:35...eating cookies. Only TEN more miles!!

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At the 11:30 rest stop there was a goat.

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11:25 and getting closer!

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Lunch break at 10:10. (We started just before 8:00.) Almost to Austin!

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Ready or not, it's time to ride again at 7:00...

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Has anybody seen my bike? Hee hee.

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7:00 and people are still finishing for the day. I finished just before 2:00. Now I've showered and eaten and am feeling pretty good. My legs are sunburned though.

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Hooray! In the Dow tent in La Grange. I am seriously sore and cannot wait for my free massage!

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1:00 with my trusty bike.

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12:30 rest stop. 60 miles down, 20 to go.

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11:00 port-a-potty break. I am officially tired!

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Lunch at 9:30...

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First rest stop for me.

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A quick note before I go to bed (yes, at 9:30 on a Friday!)...I'm going to take a few pictures along the way to Austin with my camera phone and send them to this site. They should go through ok and show up within two hours of when I send them, unless my computer at home flips out or something. So check for updates if you're interested. :)

Ok, did anyone else find it a bit strange that when Donald Trump said "you're hired" to Bill, the Apprentice suddenly segued into something like a Price Is Right rip-off?? What was with the boardroom disappearing into a soundstage? And the cheesy band? Dude. So chintzy. I was just waiting for Rod Roddy to pipe in with "Hey, Bill, come on down, you're the next contestant on The Apprentice! Behind door number one, manage construction of a Chicago skyscraper! Behind door number two, manage a beautiful golf course in Los Angeles! And folks, he'll do it all in a.....newwwwww carrrrrrrrr!"

Cue the music. Doot doot do dooooo, doot doot do doooo, doot da-doo-doo da-doo-doo da-doo-doo doot doot do doooo.

If only they'd brought out the Plinko game.

Anyway. Twenty four hours from now, I'll be pedaling away on the road to LaGrange, and then Austin. The plan is thus: Tonight I pack, putting extra clothes, toiletries, and my sleeping bag in the new backpack I got at REI a few weeks ago. Woohoo, a chance to use my new backpack! Tomorrow morning I'll get up at like 4:45 (ugh), load my bike and pack into the car, and drive an hour over to Rhodes Stadium in Katy, one of the two locations the ride starts from. I'll drop off my luggage and find the Dow team, and we'll start riding at 7:00! It's 82.6 miles tomorrow to our overnight stop in LaGrange, where I'll relax, get a massage, and sleep under the big Dow tent. Sunday morning I'll be up bright and early again to ride the remaining 80.2 or 68.5 miles (there are two different routes you can take out of LaGrange, the normal and the "express," so I'll decide which one to take after seeing how I feel on Sunday morning!) into Austin. We finish in front of the state capital, at which point I'll put my bike on a truck headed back to Houston, and hang out, shower, and eat before hopping on a bus to follow my bike back home.

I have no idea what time I'll be back, but at the moment, I'm figuring on somewhere around 5-6 hours to ride the first day, not counting the lunch or rest stops...so that'd be getting to LaGrange between 2 and 3 tomorrow afternoon. Sunday, assuming I get started at 7 a.m. again, and take the "express" route, I figure on arriving in Austin by 1:00. Hang out for a few hours, hop on the bus, back in Houston by 7 or so. Get my bike and everything, and finally home by 9 or 10. Whew! What a weekend!

I will take plenty of pictures, and have many stories to tell on Monday morning, I'm sure. At the moment, I'm both anxious and excited.

I've been saying that once the MS150 is over, I'll have a chance to catch up on other things, but of course that's probably not true. As soon as that's over, I have to prepare to buy a new car (Dad's coming down on the 27th to help me with the purchase). And I have to go back to REI next weekend to exchange my tent; I got the spring sale catalog in the mail the other day, and the tent that I bought for $160 three weeks ago is not on sale for $110. I called them, and they have a 30-day guarantee, hooray. My obsession with keeping receipts for anything over ~$100, especially electronics and outdoor equipment!)

So I get $50 back that I can then turn around and apply to some new hiking boots. Oooh, soon I will have everything I need for the Colorado trip and beyond. So exciting. I think at least one or two people might end up with the same tent as me. $110 is too good to pass up if you've been thinking about buying a backpacking tent!

And finally: Jo sent us the link for the moon Quizno's spongemonkeys again yesterday, and Matt got to looking around the site and found this short, random, and slightly disturbing cartoon: Mr. Stabby. The worst part about it is that once you've watched it, the dang theme song gets totally stuck in your head!! "Mis-ter Stabby, la la la la la la..."

This morning I couldn't find my keys. Now, it's very unusual for me to misplace them, so after spending 30 seconds looking in the most obvious places (on the end table, on the couch if I threw them down the night before, on the bar, or on the floor around the end table) I stopped to think about the last place I'd had them. Which was last night when I came home from running errands and opened the door. I had a lot of stuff in my hands and was anxious to turn the TV on to catch The O.C. (pathetic, I know), so I left the keys in the door momentarily while I hurried in to drop the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, then back to the car for the second load, then back inside.

This morning when I couldn't find them, I remembered all that and opened the front door. There were my keys, still hanging in the lock. Just as they had been all night. Whoa. I felt some relief knowing that my door has a deadbolt that I always lock, and so even if someone had happened along, they wouldn't have been able to get into my apartment. But they could've gotten into my garage, and taken my car or something. Eek. Talk about dumb!

Anyway. Crisis averted, and I'm sure I won't do that again.

I am so excited about the Apprentice finale tonight, it's ridiculous. Ooh, and last night at the store I impulse bought these mint 'n creme Oreos (I love minty things) and they are SO yummy. And, for the moment, I'm in first place in my all-star fantasy baseball league. I'm in sixth place in my other league. I care a lot more about my placement in the all-star league since serious bragging rights (and a Homer Simpson beer trophy) are at stake.

Tonight after the Kwame vs Bill showdown, I'm going to start gathering everything I need for the MS150 this weekend. Yes, it's here, and I'm now officially getting a little anxious. I hope I'm prepared! I hope I can ride that far! I leave with the Dow team from Rhodes Stadium in Katy, which means I have to be in Katy by 6 a.m., which means I have to get up by like 4:45 at the latest. YUCK. But my bike is in good shape, I have spare tires tubes, and yesterday I bought new socks (one pair with Godzilla on them and one with flames). I also bought a new pair of bike shorts that were expensive (why are bike shorts so expensive??), but they do have super duper padding in the butt, so hopefully it will turn out to be a worthy purchase!!

If any of you would still like to donate to the cause (all money benefits the National MS Society), follow this link or the one in the sidebar. I've met the minimum fundraising requirement, but since when should I settle for the minimum? So donate away!

Well, I still got it. ("It" being the ability to run 6+ miles without collapsing.)

Buzz and I did a big lap around the center last night. She's been keeping up with her long runs, but I hadn't done anything longer than a 5K since the Bayou City Classic more than a month ago. We were both tired, so we took it slow, something around 10:45 miles. The wind was pretty brutal back on Space Center Blvd as well. Ugh.

I run a lot, but still I wouldn't say that I love to run. There are days when I definitely feel the need to get out there and relieve some stress and just work everything out, but there are other days when running is the last thing that I want to do, and every step feels like some monumental effort. I don't think I would be able to stick with running like I do if 1) there weren't so many races to keep me motivated and 2) I wasn't able to mix it up on a regular basis with biking, swimming, soccer, etc.

Buzz, on the other hand, really does enjoy running more than anything else. She'd rather run than bike or swim any day, while I definitely have different exercise modes for different moods. Last night I wasn't really in a running mood, but it turned out ok. I sort of got into a zone where I was just listening to Buzz breathe and watching the pavement pass underneath my feet.

Did I mention that my mp3 player broke a while back? Yeah. Not my iPod, but the little dinky player I used to run with. So I need a new one, and I'm going to buy it off Amazon with birthday gift certificates, but I don't know what to get. It seems like they sell most of the tiny ones these days with armbands, and I don't want an armband. I hate wearing an arm band while I run. I want one with a belt clip. Oh, and I want one for under $150 (I only need 128 MB). Anyone out there have any suggestions? I've put George on the case, so I'm sure he'll find me something acceptable...

John offered to take some of us entry folks sailing tonight on his boat (a big enough sailboat that he lives on it) since it's so nice out, and I would go, except I'm supposed to stay at work till 6:00 in order to make up hours from yesterday. Sigh. What to do, what to do... I should really just work till 6, then go home and relax, since I need to catch up on sleep still before the MS150 this weekend. But sailing sounds like so much fun!

I needed a night where I got at least 8 hours of sleep, and last night I finally decided that the only way I could do that anytime soon was to take this morning off. So I did. And slept blissfully until 10:00, when I got up, showered, picked up lunch at Quizno's, and finally made it to work around 11:30. Ahh. I will admit that there's at least one good thing about having a desk job--being able to sleep in without causing any problems for anyone else.

In any case, the fact that I took the morning off work should tell you that Yuri's Night last night was awesome, with about 250 people braving the oddly cold (about 55 degrees and windy) spring weather to party with us and celebrate spaceflight. As this Wired article says, "in 10,000 years, will humans still be partying on the Fourth of July? Probably not. Bastille Day? Doubt it. The day humans first left their home planet? If we're still around to party, probably so." So hooray for spaceflight, and hooray for a successful Yuri's Night Houston 2004. Pictures (mostly bad ones of people partying in dim light, but c'est la vie) are here.

Tonight I'm attempting to jumpstart my running again with a lap around the space center with Buzz. That's somewhere around 7 miles. We're both tired, so it'll be slooooow. After that, I absolutely positively must go to the grocery store. I've been living on take-out, pizza, Quizno's, and other assorted food for like three weeks now. The cupboard is bare.

These days, I need the weeks to recover from my weekends. How tiring! This weekend was crazy nonstop activity.

Friday night was swimming with Buzz and Becca in order to prepare Buzz for the swimming portion of the two triathlons we are doing on May 2 and June 13. After that session, I called my mom and thanked her for putting me in swimming lessons all those years! It's funny--on Friday I realized that 1) I really know how to swim and 2) I totally take it for granted. Poor Buzz cannot swim! Well, I mean, she can swim, as in she probably wouldn't immediately drown if thrown in the water...but she has never been really taught how to cover any sort of distance in the water. We needed accurate 300-meter swim times to submit for the first triathlon we're doing.

I'm not exactly sure how long the lap pool in my complex is (it's either 25 yards or 25 meters, don't know which), but my time for 6 laps/12 lengths was 6:10. If the pool is only 25 yards, I'd need to do one more length to get to 300 meters, which would put me right at 6:40, which is the time I submitted based on scaling my half mile swim time from the triathlon last year. Anyway. Becca covered the 6 lap/12 length distance in about 9:00 (though she's not doing the triathlon, she timed herself anyway). Buzz didn't actually do the distance all at once, but we estimated her time at somewhere around 13:00.

It was sort of surreal. Buzz is the most athletic girl that I know; she's incredibly strong and always pushes herself hard. But never having had a good swimming lesson, she's less-than-average in the water. I've never taught swimming before so I'm not quite sure how to help her, but I think practice will help as much as anything. Her stroke was getting better towards the end of the 45 minutes we spent in the pool, and I think it will continue to improve.

Saturday morning I got up early to run in the Resurrection Run at a church nearby in Nassau Bay. Sean and Amy were both there, along with Kristin (wife of a guy that works down the hall), so that was fun. I finished in 30:30, which is more than a minute off the last 5K that I ran back in December, but I guess it's ok considering I haven't done much running lately. I was really hoping to finish under 30 minutes, but I started too fast (a 9:28 first mile) and as a result, felt horrible enough during the second mile that I had to take a couple quick walking breaks. I am so bad at judging my pace, but I'm going to have to work on it if I ever want to consistently finish under 30 minutes. I think I could have done it on Saturday if I'd only started with a 10 minute mile, and then sped up.

From the race it was home to shower, then lunch with Becca and Buzz at Mediterraneo, followed by a cheesy yet satisfying girl flick, The Prince and Me. From there it was home to meet Debbie, Paul and Sonia and then head downtown for the "final" Aeros game of the season. "Final" because they've made the playoffs, so there will be at least a few more games this year...

Sunday I was up early again. I sort of forgot about Easter; it came and went, my mom sent me a pretty pottery basket and my cow-print egg bunny (hard to explain), and that is that. Instead of having a big meal or going to church, I spent the day in the cold rain getting covered with mud and bushwhacking through the woods. Debbie, Jason, Paul, Sonia, Laura and I headed about 100 miles north to Huntsville State Park to mountain bike and geocache.

It was definitely an adventure, thanks to six different people with six different ideas of how to proceed. It was chilly (about 55 degrees), rainy, and muddy and people were in cranky moods, but in the end, at least three of us had fun, I think. We left Clear Lake around 9:30, checked out the Sam Houston statue around 11:00, made a pit stop at McDonald's for lunch and Wal-Mart for sweatshirts and raincoats (it was colder and wetter than we expected!). We were in the park by 12:30. The six of us covered a mile or so on bikes before Paul's crappy Las Palmas borrowed bike gave out, and the others were cold and wet. They warmed up in the car while Jason, Debbie and I covered another 5 miles of trail on bikes. By then the rain had stopped, and we were already wet and muddy anyway, so we decided to do a little caching. We found three easily, and Jason, Debbie and I ended up covering another ~3 miles on foot after we got lost on our way back from finding two of them. Oops. :) We made a final pit stop at Walmart to change into dry clean clothes before heading back to Clear Lake. Jason, Debbie and I had dinner at Texas Roadhouse and I finally got home 12 hours after we'd left, at 9:30.

Despite the arguing and crankiness and worrying, I had a good time. Just another lesson on how groups don't always work well together. Pictures are here.

And finally, tonight is Yuri's Night--for real. We've already had the 5K and the educational events, but April 12 is the actual anniversary of 43 years of human spaceflight. So wherever you are, tell someone that space is cool, and if you're in Houston, fight the nasty weather and come to Outrigger's for a fun party!

1. What do you do for a living?
I'm an aerospace engineer for NASA at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

2. What do you like most about your job?
First, the subject matter. I really do feel passionately about space exploration. It's incredible and inspiring and mind-blowing stuff and I wish everyone could see that. Second, the "coolness" factor. As in, dude, I work for the space program. We send people into the cosmos. How crazy cool is that?!? And finally, the people. My coworkers are awesome.

3. What do you like least about your job?
The little day-to-day monotonies. I hate that I sit in front of a computer all day, and that none of my work requires hands-on or extensive face-to-face activity, and that all the days are pretty much exactly the same. And at the moment, I hate that I don't quite have enough to do to really keep me busy 40 hours a week.

4. When you have a bad day at work it's usually because _____...
I feel underappreciated, like I'm just the number cruncher. Or, because my sims don't work.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
Something involving design (web, print, graphic, layout). Or journalism, in some sort of layout or editing capacity (though writing would be fun too). Or being a small-business owner of something like a running (or other athletic pursuits) specialty store, or an independent book shop, or a coffeehouse...basically, some kind of store that fills a local niche and attracts the loyal, grassroots type of customer that comes back because they like you and you make them feel good.

I can't believe Carter chose church and choir over dugout level tickets to the Braves game. Come on. I'm sure God understands how awesome those tickets were...He'd forgive you! Man oh man. (Sarah shakes her head.)

It's weird: having missed opening night in favor of the basketball game, I feel like I spaced out on the beginning of the season. I've been turning on ESPN at night regularly now, but whenever they give the baseball highlights it feels a bit out of place. Truly tragic. I need to get my butt to the ballpark to get myself back into it, but unfortunately the Astros have gone on the road till the end of next week. And at that point I'll be MS150ing it towards Austin. My first game of the season will be April 20, against the Cardinals. Sigh.

We won our softball game last night in a low-scoring affair, 6-4. I went 1-for-3 and made a good catch in the outfield, so yay. After the game, Jason and I took Fred and Katie to find their first geocache; Fred just got the GPS attachment for his PDA and was eager to test it out. We found the "Near NASA" cache, containing some STS-107 stuff and hidden just across the road from Gilruth. Cool.

From there it was home to watch The Apprentice (Bill's gonna win; Omorosa is sabotaging Kwame; Why did he pick her?!? Though he was choosing second, so he'd probably have ended up with her anyway...) and fix my computer. The freaking bastard computer.

Yeah, it's still not working perfectly. Managed to format the hard drive again and reinstall Windows, but then couldn't get the screen resolution above 640x480. Very maddening. Reinstalled the video card drivers and that finally made the screen resolution normal again, thank god. Got the sound card working again. Got the modem working (because SBC was having a DSL outage, bastards). Was finally feeling good when BAM, up pops some crazy error message I've never seen before that says something about RPC service and starts counting down from 60 seconds, then restarts the computer. What the hell is going on?!? So I do some research on it this morning when I get to work to figure it out, and I find that hey, beautiful, within an hour of reinstalling the OS from a completely blank hard drive, and not having been able to download the Windows patches since I have no DSL and didn't want to do it over the modem, I've picked up the Blaster worm virus!

I HATE WINDOWS!!!!

So to sum up, my computer still is screwed up, and tonight I get to install all the freaking security patches and some antivirus software. This computer has caused me nothing but headaches. But I'm sure not calling Tech Support!! (At this point, they'd probably just laugh at me anyway since nothing is as it was when they shipped it.)

I know computers have made our lives better and blah blah blah, but I think I would be a lot less cranky if they'd never been invented.

George didn't come to work on Tuesday because he has pink eye. Now, every time my eye so much as twitches, I think I'm coming down with it as well. Nevermind the fact that my eyes are generally itchy. It's got to be pink eye. I'm so paranoid.

So here comes a rant. With apologies to Irwin, I FREAKING HATE MICROSOFT WINDOWS! (Yes, I know Irwin doesn't work in the Windows division, but he works for Microsoft, so he gets my wrath today.)

Over the weekend, I set up my new computer. It came with Windows XP Home; I had a copy of Windows XP Pro (from Irwin, so he's not all evil). "Oh," I thought, "well, I'll upgrade to XP Pro. The software documentation says to use the upgrade option if you already have XP Home installed." BIG MISTAKE.

Lesson Learned #1: Never upgrade. Wipe the freaking hard drive and start over. Save yourself the headache.

I came home from dinner last night and the computer was frozen. No biggie, I think, so I hold the button in, computer shuts down, I press the button again, computer turns on. Computer won't boot. It comes to some DOS screen saying Windows is having difficulties and I need to choose either safe mode, last known configuration, or start normally. Well, none of the options work. Nothing is working. I can't get the computer to boot, and I can't even get it to boot from the Windows CD. Also, my new computer doesn't have a floppy drive; they don't install them anymore unless you specifically request it, which I didn't. C'est la vie. At a loss for what to do, I decide to call Dell Tech Support. Now, I have never called Tech Support in my life, and I probably never will again after last night.

Lesson Learned #2: Tech Support people who deal with "peons" like me are condescending and treat you like an idiot, even if you've said enough that they should be able to tell that you aren't an idiot.

The tech support guy was completely unhelpful. First, he said I should never use the upgrade option for Windows. Good advice, but not helpful since I had already done it. Second, he berated me for putting a second hard drive in the computer. ("Why did you do that?" "Because it's a 100 GB drive, it's useful, and it has all my data on it." "But why do you need it?" "Uh...why don't I need it?" "The 40 GB drive that came installed should be plenty!!" "Whatever, dude.") Finally, he told me to never tell a tech support person that I'd installed my own hardware, and a different operating system than what came pre-installed. This I knew already, I mean, Dell isn't required to provide support to stuff they didn't install, but come on, how is he supposed to help me if I'm lying to him about what I've done to the system?!?

Lesson Learned #3: If you do have to call Tech Support, lie to them. (Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either.)

After 5 or 6 minutes, it became abundantly clear that the guy was going to be of no use to me, and was only going to tell me what I'd done wrong, and how I shouldn't have changed anything from the way the computer was shipped. What a load of crap. So I hung up on him. Since all signs pointed to the problem having originated with Windows, I briefly considered calling Microsoft Tech Support, but decided I'd rather not deal with another possible condescending jerk.

I took the Dell hard drive out of the new computer, and stuck it in my old computer. Booted up the old computer, formatted the Dell drive, and installed Windows XP Pro (which takes like a full freaking 45 minutes to install). Took the drive out, put it back in the new computer, started the new computer, and.....now the new computer won't recognize the hard drive! It says there's no hard drive found! What sort of CRAP is that?? By this point, I've figured out that the reason the computer wouldn't boot from the CD is that I had the CD in the slave drive (the CD-RW) and not the master drive (the DVD-R); stupid me, I've never had dual drives before and didn't realize that to boot from one, the disc had to be in the master drive. (Gee, I wonder why the Tech Support guy didn't suggest that when I told him I couldn't get the computer to boot from the CD. There was his shining opportunity to be useful, and he failed miserably.) So now I've got the computer booting from the Windows CD, but the computer can't find the hard drive!! I try all sorts of configurations in the BIOS and nothing works. I'm at a total loss.

It's now past 1:00 in the morning. Thoroughly annoyed and frustrated and on the verge of throwing the hard drive across the room till it smashed into a bazillion little pieces, I decide to go to bed. This morning, I get up and am faced with open computers and assorted hard drives littering the floor around my desk. I decide to give it one more brief try before heading to work, and took the Dell drive out of the new computer and back into the old computer.

And that's when the entire IDE cable came out in my hand. And that's when I realized that in all the hardware switching going on late last night, the IDE cable had gotten disconnected from the motherboard. My hard drive was getting power, but that was it. No wonder the damn thing couldn't find a hard drive.

Lesson Learned #4: If Sarah is trying to fix a computer at 1 a.m. and is tired, cranky, and pissed off at Tech Support, she should go to bed and just leave it till morning, at which point she'll discover that not only are Dell and Microsoft idiots, but she can be an idiot too.

Moral of the story: Don't use the Windows upgrade feature, Dell Tech Support is crappy, and if your hard drive isn't being recognized, it might be because your IDE cables aren't connected to the motherboard.

SIGH.

The good news is that last night before all the computer headaches, I learned how to change a bike tire and now I'm not scared of breaking something, I had a yummy dinner with good friends, and the Astros won behind Roger Clemens's NL debut. He even got a single in his first at-bat!

I was just looking through some new pictures my sister posted. She and some friends went to Montreat the weekend before last, up in the mountains of North Carolina. I love this shot:

All I can say is thank you, Smithsonian. They are finally taking steps to spruce up the Saturn V rocket lying on JSC's front lawn. Every morning I drive through the gate and see the Saturn V, which is so impressive and yet so decrepit after years of lying under the Houston sun. There are animals living in it, the metal is rusting, the paint is flaking off in huge pieces. It's a shame to let it decay out there, and I've talked about it more than once, even throwing out the offer of volunteering my own time to give the poor thing a fresh coat of paint. In the past couple weeks, I've seen people out inspecting it, but I didn't get my hopes up that they might actually be preparing to make major improvements. But they are! Hooray!

It is such a cool and impressive piece of hardware, and it'd be a damn shame to let it waste away. I'm really, really glad they're finally going to do something about it. I want to find out how to donate to the Save America's Treasures fund the article talks about, as long as I can donate directly to refurbishing the Saturn V.

I don't know why this news makes me so happy, but it really does.

Last night I finally went running for the first time in a couple weeks. I managed a 5K at just under 10 minute pace, but it was a struggle. Two weeks I think is right on the edge of starting to really lose my running fitness, so I needed to go. Since we're not going camping this weekend (instead, maybe to Huntsville State Park for the day on Sunday), I'm going to run in the Resurrection Run on Saturday, which I just realized will be my first 5K since December, believe it or not. I've run four other races this year, but two were half marathons and two were 10Ks. So my athletic calendar now looks like this (italics aren't definite, but knowing me...):

- Resurrection Run 5K this Saturday
- MS150 next weekend
- Bayou Bash relay, 2.81 miles each on April 24
- Speedo Women's Triathlon (300 m swim, 10 mi bike, 5k run) in Sugarland on May 2
- On The Run 5K on May 8
- Beach to Bay relay in Corpus Christi, ~4.5 miles for each of 6 people for a total of 26.2, on May 15
- Summer Kick-off 5K on June 5
- Danskin Women's Triathlon (1/2 mi swim, 12 mi bike, 5k run) on June 13
- Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on July 4
- Lunar Rendezvous Run 5K on July 17

Whew. Three years ago I'd never run a race in my life, and now look what I've turned into. Sort of scary.

Last night after my run, I relaxed. The guy who bought my monitor off Ebay lives in Clear Lake also, so he came by to pick it up instead of paying for me to ship it all of two miles, but after that, I just watched TV. John Stevens is just not good enough to win American Idol, despite the public being idiots. Ugh. After that it was a brand new One Tree Hill, where they've entered some sort of reverse world where all the characters have adopted the opposite behavior of what they used to have. Lucas is the jerk now; Nathan is the nice guy. Peyton is the bitch now; Brooke has turned into the sympathetic character. It's bizarre.

Oh well. Tonight I learn roadside maintenance for my bike and celebrate Stephanie's birthday. Whee!

I was just looking through Jen's photos from her weekend with her sister in town. Every time I look through her photos, I miss California something awful. When I feel discouraged and beaten down, it helps to just get away to somewhere pretty and let everything else fade away.

When I was at Stanford, there was never a shortage of pretty places to escape to. One night I drove over to Half Moon Bay and watched the moon set over the ocean. Another evening I went running back into the neighborhood where a lot of professors lived and worked my way up until I was at the top of the hill and could see all the way to San Francisco Bay. One weekend I went as far as the top of Half Dome in Yosemite with Becca; another time I only had to go a mile away and walk up to the Dish when Carter was visiting. I watched meteors with the control lab boys while lying on the golf course. Mom and I walked up into the foothills until we could see all the way to downtown San Francisco, and watched a sailboat almost capsize under the pull of its spinnaker as it went under the Golden Gate bridge.

In Houston today, it's pouring rain. In Houston this summer, it will be sticky and hazy and hot. In California, even the highway had a view of golden, rolling hills; in Houston, it runs past endless strip joints and strip malls.

I know I must sound like a broken record sometimes, always talking about how I miss living in California. But Houston is just missing something.

So this morning my boss comes in and says "hey Sarah, you free at 10 to go talk to a flight director about ATV reentry?" Of course, I say. Cool, I think. Something new. Becca whispers "notice how he came to you," knowing my frustration with the whole footprint chain-of-command. For a moment, I let myself think that I really was the footprint person.

But I'm not. We went to the meeting, where I sat quietly while somebody else did all the talking. Sigh. I am never going to progress beyond being the footprint grunt worker unless I either a) start being really rude, i.e. interrupting people at meetings to try to get a word in to convey the fact that I understand what's going on, or b) purposefully circumvent the footprint analysis chain of command. Option A is not really my style, while Option B could make me look ignorant, vengeful or disgruntled...or all three.

I don't know what to do. I just feel like I'm the number cruncher, and that no one feels like I understand what we're doing other than how to run the numbers that somebody else gives me. I know I'm not the most experienced, but how am I supposed to become experienced when I never get the chance to do anything but run sims??

Agh. It is so frustrating. I am just really not happy with the way things are going right now and haven't yet figured out what to do about it. I wish I had thought about grad school earlier; this fall is looking like it would have been a great time to go back.

Last night after work I finally got down to setting up my new computer. Took the second hard drive out of my old computer, stuck it in the new. Took the Firewire card out of the old computer, stuck it in the new. Closed it back up, started it up, upgraded the Windows XP Home that it came pre-installed with to the Windows XP Pro that Irwin got me a while ago. Had to change all the display settings to make it less stupid-user-friendly and more Sarah-friendly. But everything seems to be lovely, and now I just have to reinstall a bunch of software. But I have a new computer, hurrah! And the flat panel monitor that was a free upgrade sold on Ebay last night for $410, meaning that with that, my computer cost a grand total of $300. Three hundred bucks for a Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM. Nice.

Before heading over to Becca's to watch the basketball game, I found two geocaches in a Seabrook park, including Debbie's DVD exchange cache. I dropped off a DVD of Gosford Park that I never watch and scored The Patriot in return, which I will watch. Awesome. The park was cool; I need to go running on those trails sometime.

The NCAA championship game is not the time you want to have an off night, but unfortunately, Georgia Tech had a very off night. It seemed like nothing they shot went in, while UConn could throw the ball up with their eyes closed and it would swish through the net.

Still, Georgia Tech had a fabulous season. They ignored all those who predicted they'd wallow in the ACC cellar, and instead advanced all the way to the national championship, farther than all but one other team in the country.

I'm proud to be a Yellow Jacket tonight!

What a dilemma I have today. I realized Saturday night as I was falling asleep that Tech would be playing for the national championship tonight....and that I have baseball tickets for Astros opening day tonight. I am so torn! It feels wrong to even consider missing opening day. But it feels worse to think that I would miss watching Georgia Tech play for the national championship!

So I am staying home. I am not going to the baseball game. Instead, I'm going to sit on the couch (or, if it's like Saturday night, I'm going to pace the room, kneel on the floor, plead with the tv, bite my fingernails, and jump up and down) and watch Tech play UConn.

I think Jason is tempted to kill me for skipping the baseball game.

Anyway. I'm back in the office feeling like I never had a weekend. Saturday was the race, followed by a long softball practice, followed by basketball games. Yesterday was Yuri's Night educational stuff at the Museum of Natural Science, followed by a five hour (five hour!!) baseball draft. Geez. The draft went on forever, it was so long. We drafted 40 players, the last 5 or 10 of whom I've never even heard of because they're like the backup backup catcher for the Padres or something. Seriously. In the last round I almost took Alex Rodriguez, just for kicks (our league is NL only and he'd do me no good). I don't know how Carter manages the eight hour draft his league does.

My officemates are on my nerves this morning, and they think it's funny. I hate that. It's only 10:30 and I'm already ready to go home. I'm tired. I'm bored. I have no meaningful work to do, I push the "go" button on work that someone else gets to analyze and present, and no one gives a crap. Some days I don't know why I bother.

Grrrrr. Today is not my day.

WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON!!!!!
WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my god!!! Georgia Tech is playing for the national championship on Monday!!!!

I am SOOOOOOO excited! I think I almost had about 100 heart attacks, but when Bynum's shot went in and the clock ran out, I started jumping up and down in my apartment all by myself screaming "YES! YES! YES!" Then of course I called Katie. She was on SAC fields, where they'd set up a big screen TV. She said it was very, very loud.

My neighbors probably think I'm insane.

WE WON!

The race this morning went very well, all things considered. There were things we could have done a bit better...my throat wishes we'd had a megaphone, and there were about 15 runners who took an unintentional ~0.15 mile shortcut...but all in all, I think we did a really great job for a first-year race. Everyone was there on time; the EMTs, HAM radio guys, Jay and the timing equipment, the sheriff's deputies were all where I needed them to be. I had an awesome group of volunteers that included Jason, Debbie, Ron, Buzz, Gavin, Jen, Becca, Paul, Sonia, Leeward, Marianne, and others.

We had 138 registered 5K runners, and 8 kids for the Kid's K. The overall male winner was a Mexican man I've seen at many local races before, with a time of 17:46. The female winner is a NASA girl who was in training with me when I first started working with a time of 22:07. And we made $1000 for our charities.

Awesome.

Well, the moment of truth is here. The Yuri's Night 5K begins in two and a half hours!

I had my alarm set for 5 a.m. but it didn't even really need to go off; I was half-awake. I think I was half-awake for the entire five hours I slept. Now I'm just piddling around until it's time to meet Debbie at 5:45 to load up food. I'm anxious, but hopefully the worst is over--I forgot to take the coolers from the store yesterday when I left, and thus we may have to use our own, which Jason bought last night after I realized my mistake and couldn't get ahold of the store owner on the phone. Argh! I knew I would forget something; I just wish it hadn't been something we were supposed to borrow and thus not have to buy.

However, we do have the money for it, so if that's the worst that will happen, we're in good shape! :)

Last night at softball I was in full sell mode. Sign up for the race! Volunteer for the race! Buy a Yuri's Night pint glass! Soemthing must have been working a little off...I didn't get anyone else to sign up, but I did go 3-for-3 from the plate. Woohoo! I was using this $30 bat that Jason bought a week ago that has something rattling inside it. Yes, rattling. Not a good thing. However, he can't take it back to the store because he took the plastic off (he'd have to send it back to Louisville Slugger)...but that doesn't matter anyway because I'm not going to allow him to take it back. It's my 3-for-3 rattlin' bat. I told him I'm keeping it. :) Though in exchange for my good night at the plate, I played some of the crappiest left field you've ever seen...

Yesterday Matt gave me the Dilbert cartoon from his daily calendar. It's perfect for my life this week. I'll have to scan it and put it up.

Catbert: "Why aren't you signed up for the 401K?"
Pointy-Haired Boss: "I'd never be able to run that far. I did a 10K wheelchair race once. The guy who pushed me still has whip marks."

As of this moment, we have 107 people signed up. 107! If Laurie does indeed come through with her 15 lacrosse players, and we get the 20-30 people on race morning that I expect, we are going to run out of t-shirts. Eek. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. There are too many other things to worry about, such as the fact that we can only get into the park an hour and fifteen minutes before the race starts. I'm going to be lucky if I have any fingernails left 24 hours from now.

Last night's schedule was hectic, I didn't get to bed until 1 a.m., and I am sleeeeeepy. Left work a 5, ran to Home Depot to buy wooden stakes for course signage, ran to Office Depot to make 150 more copies. Got home. Debbie arrived at 6, and I put together all the age group medals (i.e. attached neck ribbon to medal) while we worried about why Jason, who is always, always, always on-time, was late. By 6:30, we were in worry mode and Debbie left to go to work to see if his truck was still there. Finally Jason calls saying he was trapped by the lease lady at his apartment complex. Crisis over. Debbie and I met him at Sam's Club at 7, where we bought 24 6-packs of bagels, 5 10-pound bags of oranges, 5 32-packs of water, and 3 48-packs of granola bars.

From there it was to SuperTarget, where we spent a gift card they'd donated to our race on plastic cups, duct tape, trash bags, and safety pins. From there Jason and I headed to softball, where we lost by 4 runs (bummer). After softball it was off to Debbie's to help her unload all the stuff we'd gotten at Sam's Club, then back to my apartment to stuff two more pieces of paper and a t-shirt in each race packet. Put the boxes of packets in my car, Jason went home, and I had fun with Jen's staple gun, stapling the posterboard signs I made on Wednesday night to the wooden stakes.

Whew. It makes me tired all over again just thinking about it! This race is gonna be great. :)

Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring

Hee hee.

My new computer came last night and I didn't even have time to set it up. Instead, I spent the evening walking the race course again at Challenger Park to figure out where the mile markers should go, finding two geocaches in the process, and then coming home to stuff race packets (thanks Gavin, Jo, Ron, Debbie, Jason, and Jen for the help!) and make signs. When everyone left, I did have time to quickly list the monitor that came with my computer on ebay, so if anyone wants to bid on a 17" flat panel monitor, head this way. Also, American Idol was surprising last night, and reinforced the fact that the American public is a bunch of idiots. John sang like crap on Tuesday, and wasn't even in the bottom three. Idiots, I say.

Tonight I need to go to Home Depot to get sign stakes, and then at 6:00 Jason and Debbie and I are going to Sam's Club to buy food for the race, then I have softball at 9. Tomorrow I leave work before 2:00 to go to the running store for early packet pickup with Ron. At some point I'll also have to run home to get packages from my apartment complex office before they close for the day. I am just all over the place this week, and have been sleeeeeeeepy the whole time. When the race is over, hopefully I will get some rest.

In other news, every time I hear another of Becca's bad neighbor stories, it makes me never, ever want to buy a house. Last night her freaky overly sensitive neighbors called the police about Bennet barking. The police! And apparently the neighbors said the the only solution at this point is for Becca to get rid of Apache and Bennet; they told her they are "working on the situation" and trying to get rid of the dogs. It's bizarre to me that they think the only solution is for the dogs to disappear.

Now, I am not a huge dog person, and find constantly barking dogs extremely annoying, so I am predisposed to agreeing the neighbors instead of Becca...and I would, if Bennet was truly out in the backyard barking every day, non-stop. But I don't think he is. And Apache, though I think she has doggy A.D.D., is not really a barker from what I can tell. So it seems like a little neighborly compromise is in order. The neighbors have only spoken to Becca about the problem three or four times, and Becca has made a considerable effort to fix things--buying bark collars, and usually getting home by 5 or 6 to bring the dogs inside for the evening. Yet the neighbors leave anonymous threatening phone calls, and now have taken to calling the police?

I'm never buying a house. I'm going to stay in my nice apartment complex where I don't have a yard that has to be maintained a particular way, and I don't have appliances that are my responsibility to fix, and I don't have freaky neighbors that leave mean messages on my answering machine.

Anyway. I've already had two April Fool's pranks played on me, but I figured them out quickly. Hurrah.

And finally, send happy thoughts Katie's way. It must be in our family's nature to hate change, but like new things. She's stressed out by Tech...I think we can all relate. :)