February 2008 Archives

Last night I dreamed that Bill Gates flew me up to Seattle to interview me for some kind of communications job. He picked me up in his car and we had lunch sitting on the deck of a restaurant next to a lake. He said he wanted to hire me. So I went back to my hotel, where I was apparently staying with Jose, Nick and Heather. As I walked in the door, Jose got very excited because he saw a guy in the hall of the hotel with a monkey hanging onto his shoulders.

Dreams.

I feel totally and completely unprepared for the Texas Independence Relay this weekend. I know which legs I am running and how far they are, and even approximately what time of day I can expect to begin each leg -- but I don't know what I'll eat, when I'll sleep, if I'll sleep, what to wear, what to bring.

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Ok, I started this blog entry 12 hours ago and didn't finish it because suddenly my day turned CRAZY and this is the first time I've gotten to sit down and do something for myself since then. It all began with someone walking into my office and telling me that there were people upstairs waiting for me to do software testing. Why do I never seem to know when I'm supposed to be doing testing? Oh, because I never get the schedule of testing activities. Frustrating! But off I went for 2+ hours of oh-so-fun software testing. I got about halfway done before deciding that I would need at least one more session to finish. Off I went with just enough time to grab a pre-packaged sandwich from the cafeteria, which I ate at the beginning of a two-hour meeting. We talked about one line of changes for 15 minutes, and 25 pages of changes for only an hour. Funny how that works. After that it was back to the office to sit down with my group lead and mentor to go over how I did in the sim on Tuesday. We ended up talking for over an hour, but everything is good and I am going to be scheduled for my final cert sim right after STS-123 (that'd be early April). Then it was off to meet my design client for more transfer of materials and such (lots of hard copies of photos that need to get in the program, mainly), and then it was off to class.

In class, my luck turned! I wasn't prepared for the quiz, but he decided not to give us one! And he let us out at 8:30 instead of going until 10:00! That made me so insanely happy.

Oh, and ANYWAY, my previously mentioned fears about the relay were allayed soon after I typed them when I got an email from Jon, who sent our entire team a final reminder and "what to bring" list. Thanks for being organized, Jon!

This is the first night all week that I've gotten home before 9:30. The schedule has taken a huge toll on my working out. I stupidly took Sunday off after my long bike ride, not realizing that it would be the last opportunity to exercise for a while. I did manage to squeeze in 30 minutes on the bike trainer last night, but I have not run since Friday. Hopefully this will serve as some sort of massive taper for the relay this weekend!! I hate not working out when I'm busy, since working out is my primary stress reliever!

Well, we started out here:

And we ended up here:

So I'd call that a successful rendezvous and docking. Who cares what happened in the middle?

If you'd told me on Monday that I'd spend a good half hour of my cert qual coming up with a plan to dock over Russian ground sites, I would have laughed it off as absurd. But that's what I ended up doing. Even though in the end we didn't need to use it.

When all was said and done, I honestly did not know how I'd performed. I knew that I'd done my best, but I didn't know whether that was good enough. But everyone said I did a great job on a crazy sim that took a complete u-turn from the script within an hour of the start.

Whew!

That was crazy.

To-Do, February 25-29

• Ascent sim
• Cert Qual evaluation for my job as Rendezvous Support
• Homework for 3D modeling class
• Homework for New Media Studies class
• Many, many, many hours preparing program book for my design client (yes, that's back on)

To-Do, March 1-7

• 36 hours spent doing the Texas Independence Relay on 3/1-2
• Bay Area Multisport Kickoff (which I will miss for TIR)
• Rendezvous sim bright & early on 3/3
• Send program book to printer no later than 3/5
• Homework for 3D modeling class
• Test in New Media Studies class
• Team of teachers that I am mentoring arrives in Houston to fly an experiment on the Vomit Comet
• Load checkout for STS-124

To-Do, March 8-14

• 60-mile training ride as prep for Half Ironman on 3/30
• Backup my trainee on all prepwork for her first launch as ARD Support for STS-123
• Ensure that my Vomit Comet team's experiment passes inspection and is in good, safe shape to fly
• STS-123 Launch on 3/11
• Homework for 3D modeling class
• Homework for New Media Studies class
• Fly on Vomit Comet with my team
• Ascent sim for STS-124

Though many of these activities weren't originally planned for the beginning of March, it seems that everything has managed to converge into this three-week period. It's like my own version of the perfect storm.

Oh yeah, and:

• Reassure lovely, incredible, patient and understanding boyfriend that a calmer, saner version of Sarah will return soon.
• Remind myself that a calmer, saner version of me will return soon.

If I post only sporadically for the next three weeks, well, now you know why.

This day has seemed so long and full that I'd swear it's Sunday night and I have to go to work tomorrow. Thankfully, I don't! I need to extra day to recover. My legs are tired. So very tired.

Jose and I are supposed to go flying tomorrow if the weather is good, so I switched my long bike ride to today. The major downside to this was that I had to ride alone, since all my BAM buddies are riding tomorrow. On the schedule? 50 miles.

That is a long way to ride all by myself, and it takes a long time to cover that distance. I was sort of dreading the ride.

After an early morning BAM board meeting and a few hours of watching random TV with Jose, I reached the point of no return and saddled up in order to have enough time to complete the ride before the sun began to set. I left my apartment at 1:30 and quickly made my way over to Bay Area Boulevard to start my usual route. Past the refineries I rode, and through Seabrook. Over the Kemah bridge, and all the way down to 646. As I turned, my odometer flipped 20 miles. Down 646 to 270, to 96, to 146, and back to 646. A 10-mile loop. I did it once. I did it twice. And then I did another 3/4 loop before heading back up 270 to the glorious warm water of the shower.

When all was said and done, I'd covered 51 miles in 3:05. All in all, quite an excellent ride for me -- an average pace above 16 mph on a ride that long is unusual. In fact, it may have never happened before! I credit a lot of it to the fact that the wind, while present, was fairly calm today. Whereas last week the stiff breeze slowly sucked the energy out of me, this week it was only a minor distraction.

Even my butt, back and neck are starting to improve as I put in more regular time on the bike. Oh, they were definitely aching, don't get me wrong -- and I felt it as early as 15 miles in to the ride. But the ache remained a low level pain instead of increasing into the more serious discomfort it has been at times in the past.

p.s. Three hours in the sun, but not even a spot of sunburn! Yay me. My Neutrogena Ultra-Sheer Body Mist sunblock totally rocks.

The JSC clinic gives every employee a yearly physical that they schedule a few weeks prior to your birthday. Today was my lucky day to be poked and prodded, so off I went. But as I sat in the waiting room for short periods between getting my eyes checked, my ears checked, my EKG, my blood taken, etc, I saw a couple familiar faces. They're not familiar faces because I know them personally, but because they've been all over the news. Yes, Stan Love and Dan Tani, two of the astronauts that just came back on the shuttle two days ago, were spending the morning in the clinic running through what I can only assume is the standard battery of post-flight medical tests.

Dan looked pretty darn good for someone who spent the past 4 months in space. He seemed happy, even though it must be a downer to finally come back to Earth only to spend your first few days with a slew of doctors and nurses. His wife was with him, though; she was attached to his arm. I think I'd be pretty attached to my husband too if I hadn't seen him in four months! She looked happy to have him back.

My physical was uneventful. I always forget that they have you do the whole "pee in a cup" thing, and so I spend an hour doing what I end up doing every year -- chugging water between tests to make myself have to go. Fun. I don't actually get the results of my bloodwork and other tests until I go back in a few weeks for part 2, but hopefully when I see them I'll be able to report good, healthy numbers. I think I've lost a few pounds since last year, so that's a start.

Friday is always my day off from exercising, especially during periods like this where I'm training for something. (It's not my only day off, but it's the only standing day of the week that I intentionally plan to not work out.) But I'll be running. So far, it has proved to be quite difficult to fit in workouts on Wednesdays and Thursdays, between work and class and sleep. I've managed to fit in quick runs and spins in past weeks, but this week was a disaster. Take last night, for instance: I had two hours between work and class, which I had to spend doing my homework since I hadn't managed to do it any earlier! My bike sat in the garage taunting me while I did my reading and dutifully took notes. Grr.

So: run tonight. Bike tomorrow. TBD on Sunday!

I am all sorts of annoyed that the weather last night was spectacularly crappy and therefore prevented even a moment's glimpse of the lunar eclipse. Stupid clouds.

Lance from raceshots.net sent me these two photos from the Surfside Half Marathon on February 9. It was simply a nice gesture since I've shot for him before. Despite being my worst half marathon ever, these are some of the better photos of me running that I've seen. The first was taken 2-3 miles into the race, and the second is at the finish line.

The pictures are appropriate because I don't think I will be slowing down for a while. I have so much on my plate over the next two weeks. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get it all done, but I trust that somehow it will all come together.

I had THE BEST run last night. The best run I've had in a long while.

They have been building a new trail out at Gilruth for the past few months and it finally opened a week or two ago. The original trail is an asphalt path through the trees along the back fence of the space center for the first 1.5 miles, which then turns into the paved, sloped shoulder of one of the main on-site roads for the remaining 1.4 miles of the 2.9 mile loop. The new trail departs from the old just before the 1.25 mile mark, and cuts behind some buildings before running along the road. However, it's got a buffer of about 40 feet of grass between trail and cars, and the surface is level, crushed gravel like the Seabrook trails, so it's much nicer to run on. The only problem is that it's even shorter than the old trail -- and the old one has always bugged me because it's so close to -- but not quite! -- a nice, even 3 miles.

I ran two laps of the new trail last Saturday, but I didn't have my Garmin with me so I had to estimate the distance at 5.3-5.5 miles for two laps, or about 2.7 miles per loop. This estimate was based on Google Pedometer, which was still inaccurate because the satellite view doesn't show the new trail. Now, if you know me, you know that it makes me antsy to run without stats such as time and distance. So last night I decided to run the new trail with my Garmin and get a good measurement.

Old Trail vs. New Trail:

My Google Pedometer skills are apparently pretty darn good, because my Garmin measured the new trail at exactly 2.7 miles. They haven't added mile markers to the new trail yet, and I don't know if they ever will. The old one is marked every quarter mile, so I hope they will do the same, but you never can tell what the Gilruth Center can do. Even those of us who are regular runners out there didn't know they were building a new trail until we saw it under construction!

Anyway, on to the run itself. I started out easy, because I arrived at Gilruth feeling tired and uninspired. I didn't even really want to run at all, but I can only slack off so much and expect to finish the half ironman in one piece, so I knew I had to run, period. My running friend David caught up with me just past the half mile mark, and I talked to him until I reached the point where the new trail splits from the old. Mile 1 passed in just under 11:00, and mile 2 was just over 11:00. The next 0.7 passed in under 7:30, so my total average for the loop was just under 11:00 pace. Not too bad.

I knew I wanted to run at least 3 miles, but I was feeling good so I decided I'd run to the half mile mark and back to give me 3.7 total. But when I got to the half mile mark, I was feeling so good that I decided to continue to the mile mark before turning around, which would give me 4.7 total. I felt awesome. I ran at a comfortably hard tempo pace and that mile out and mile back passed in 10:25 and 9:57! Wow! Even after that last mile, I could have easily kept going. I was working hard, but at a level I could maintain. I was a little surprised to see the sub-10 because I thought I'd feel worse at that pace.

The run put me in a good mood for the rest of the evening. I didn't end up going downtown to see Obama, but since CNN broadcast the entirety of his speech, I didn't miss out.

I am crossing my fingers and toes for nice weather next weekend for the Texas Independence Relay. We're almost enough that 10-day forecasts cover March 1-2 so I'm sure I'll be obsessing about the potential weather from now on. Temperatures of 55-60 with a dew point of about 45 would be perfect. I think I might actually be able to live up to Jon's hopes for my "speed" if the weather is good...

• I got to have dinner with my brother Brian on Sunday night! He is in town this week working for an unnamed company. Seriously -- he couldn't tell me who he's working for this week. He does financial consulting, and he said he couldn't tell me because it's a public company, so I can only assume he's working for someone who's considering a merger or acquisition or something. How mysterious of him. He's staying downtown and said he'd be quite busy so I don't know if I'll get to see him again, but I'm glad he flew in early on Sunday so we could have dinner. Star Pizza. Mmm.
• The iPod Shuffle got a price cut today -- only $49 now. And a new 2GB version is available for $69. This is a great deal for a great little music player. I bought a Shuffle as soon as they came out, and it is the perfect music player for running. It clips onto my shorts (with the built-in clip) and weighs next to nothing.
• The war is over and HD-DVD is officially dead. You can safely buy your Blu-Ray player now. Of course, I don't have either since I don't have an HDTV. I know. It's maybe the only area of technology that I haven't bought into yet. Gasp!
• I rode just a hair over 45 miles on Sunday with two girls from BAM. We'd planned to go at least 50, but we dead-ended into a dirt road after 22.5 miles due to a wrong turn on my part, so we just decided to head back. I'd planned to add an extra 5 at the end of the ride, but by the time we got back to the cars I was ready to be done. Holy crap, was it windy!! The wind was as bad as I faced during the half ironman last year. We could only maintain about 12 mph going west on 96, but when we turned around to head back, we were crusing at 22 mph without a problem. For once, I didn't let myself get too down -- I just tucked my head down and kept going. We averaged just over 15 mph for the full ride. The only negative thing is that I felt way more beat up after this weekend's 45 miles than I did after last weekend's 41 miles. My back and neck were really aching. I'll blame the wind. Still, I hope I feel a bit better during next weekend's planned 55-60 miles.
• My graphic design job is sorta, maybe back on. It's a long story. It still hasn't all been sorted out yet.
• Three day weekends are awesome.

My sister and Jen both posted accounts of their experiences in the Washington state caucuses last Saturday. I found both interesting, especially Katie's. I had not thought much about the logistics of a caucus prior to reading her entry, except for thinking that the idea of gathering together to vote seemed fairly out-dated. Reading Katie's account of her precinct's caucus only reinforces that thought. She has many good points. Why should your ability to vote depend on your availability for a two-hour block of time on a single day? Why should we put voters in situations where they may be unduly pressured into casting their vote one way or the other?

I'm excited about the upcoming Texas primaries on March 4. I don't recall voting in the primaries in 2004, though I did vote in the general election. I would guess that Kerry had probably already become the default nominee by the time Texas rolled around four years ago, and thus it didn't strike me to bother. It is so exciting that my vote is important this year.

Why are the primaries so spread out? Why does Iowa vote at the beginning of January but Montana votes a full five months later? I wonder what sets this crazy schedule that puts so much importance on the seemingly random selection of states that get to vote early. Why aren't all primaries held over the span of a few weeks? Or even a few days? That would be much more like a general election, I suppose, but I'm not sure what the problem with that would really be.

Jose's mom mentioned that Hillary made an appearance just outside of Corpus Christi last week. After that, Jose and I spent a while looking through both of the Democratic candidates' websites on Thursday evening, searching for a schedule of their upcoming appearances. We couldn't find anything. We found many instances of supporters holding rallies, and many listings of upcoming Bill Clinton appearances in east Texas, but nothing about where Clinton or Obama will actually be each day. I'm sure their campaigns are scheduling on the fly, but I still found it odd. Shouldn't they want to make it easier for voters to find them? And hear them?

The Chronicle reported today that Obama is coming to Houston for a rally on Tuesday. Perhaps I will go hear him in person. I hope I have an opportunity to hear Clinton as well. I've got to decide which candidate gets my vote on March 4. I have flip-flopped between the two many times already.

Two weeks ago, I met with a client about my first real paying design gig -- putting together the program for a local event to be held in late March. They had contacted one of my former professors at UHCL, and he put them in touch with me. When we met, and they found out that I am not simply a student, but that I am working on a design degree and doing the odd job here and there on the side, they seemed a little thrown. But we talked about what they needed, and they gave me all the materials from last year including a sample and four CDs worth of files. They asked how much I charged, and I was honest with them: I told them that I I would talk with my professor to come up with a reasonable rate considering what they needed done and my experience level.

We communicated via email over the past two weeks, organizing the project and what needed to be done at what point. The event is in late March, and the printer requires 10 working days. That put our "to-printer" date sometime in the middle of the first week of March. Their deadline to the event participants to get their photos and other materials in was March 1.

That deadline would leave me exactly 3 days to put together an entire program for an event. Three days. Not nearly enough time to do quality work. So I expressed my concern that the timeline was too tight for me to do an acceptable job and asked if the deadline for participant submissions could be moved up to next weekend. They seemed amenable to that, and we were working towards that new date, which would leave me a full week to put together the program.

Last night I finally heard from my professor and sent the client an email with my hourly rate, along with an estimate of how many hours I expected the project to take.

This morning I checked my email before I left for work. The client emailed. They said nothing about my rate, but instead said that they were not going to be able to work with my schedule to get materials in next weekend. "Thanks anyway."

Am I wrong to be feeling a little put-off here? I spent two weeks talking with them, and while I had not started doing any design work for them, I had started putting significant thought into what I need to get together and what kind of schedule I needed to be on. It seems a little odd that they told me they no longer needed me after I gave them a quote on the cost of the job. Maybe they thought I was too expensive. On the contrary, my rate was reasonable and much cheaper than a professional would be.

Oh well. It's not a huge deal, and I think I'm mainly disappointed because I was looking forward to getting the experience of working for an actual client and doing some real-world work.

Moving on...

I have class tonight, on Valentine's Day, which totally sucks because it means I won't get to spend the evening with Jose. Instead, I will spend the evening with my Critical Approaches to Digital Media professor. Can you hear my excitement?

We ended up doing a pseudo-Valentine's Day yesterday instead. We took off work early and headed to the airport to enjoy the absolutely gorgeous weather with a flight down to Galveston and back. It is so cool that Jose finally has his pilot's license and I can just hop in the plane with him at a moment's notice!

It seemed like it only took about 5 minutes to fly to Galveston. You could see the island as soon as we took off, and as we got closer everything looked so pretty. The water sparkled in the sunlight and everything looked so clear and vivid. It was only my second time flying with Jose, but already I was able to better understand the calls we were hearing over the radio. And since Galveston has a control tower, Jose got to practice talking to a tower -- the first time he's done that without his instructor along! We were cleared for landing and did a big turn over the island to approach from the gulf. I could see the waves crashing on the shore as we descended. It was awesome.

After landing, we just taxiied back around to take off again and head back to Pearland. One day we'll have to actually fly down for lunch. We took off and flew basically right up I-45 for a while. I could see all the construction on the bridge to Galveston, and marvelled at the maze of refineries that is Texas City. It was a fairly clear day, and as we got closer to Pearland, I could see downtown in the distance -- not as much haze as there was the last time we went. There were four or five other airplanes in the pattern at Pearland, so it was quite busy when we came back in to land. There was another plane that was right on Jose's tail, which made our landing feel a little rushed since the guy was so close. I looked behind us at one point and saw him following us -- it felt like something out of a dogfight movie when the plane behind you is trying to get you in its sights! Jose was not exactly happy with how close the guy was, but his landing was still perfect. In fact, his landing in Galveston was perfect as well.

After flying, we had dinner at La Madeleine, which has become Jose's standard post-flying meal spot. Later, he gave me roses and I hid these scientist valentines for him to find. My favorites are Sagan and Darwin. It's good that I have a boyfriend who finds those as funny as I do. It's good that I have a boyfriend as awesome as Jose.

Last night Jose and I went to our third Rockets game in four weeks. Our interest in basketball has fortuitously coincided with the Rockets going on a big win streak. They've won 7 in a row after beating the Trailblazers soundly last night. We went with cheaper seats this time, which worked out surprisingly well. We'd sat in $40 seats for the last two games, located on the upper level but along the sideline of the court. Last night we sat in $22 seats on the end of the arena, and while the basket occasionally blocked our view, it was a minor distraction. And our $22 seats were on the first row of the upper deck, so we were actually closer to the court than we had been in more expensive seats. Sold! We'll be sticking to the more affordable $22 seats from now on.

Before the game, we had fun exploring the "Sky Court" and comparing ourselves to the Rockets:

Yao Ming unsurprisingly has a much larger wingspan than me, and yes, at 7'6" he is almost two whole feet taller than me.

Tracy McGrady is pretty tall himself.

This was the first weekend of half ironman training with significant distances on both the bike and the run, and all in all it went pretty well. I followed Saturday's half marathon with a 41 mile bike ride yesterday, so last night my legs were pretty much begging for mercy. They didn't hurt and I'm not sore at all (though I was when I woke up yesterday), but every time I stood up they just felt weak and tired.

I rode alone yesterday. The BAM girls that ride at my pace weren't heading out until 2:00 p.m. (too late for my schedule) and the BAM guys that met at 7:00 are too fast for me, so I slept in a bit and got on the road at 9:00. I finished just before 11:45 and was pretty satisfied with my 15.5 mph average pace. A few parts of the ride were windy, and that was annoying as always. But I've got to get used to the wind -- and I fully expect the half ironman to be just as horribly windy as it was last year! My back and butt started complaining in earnest with about 10 miles to go, but I expected that since this was my longest ride in quite some time. I was encouraged to find that I didn't get too mentally tired and frustrated on this ride. As I've said before, I can be pretty manic-depressive on the bike, so this was a positive sign.

After my bike ride, I recharged by eating a whole bunch of completely unhealthy fried stuff for lunch in Kemah. Jose and I decided we'd venture down there despite the huge crowds that were out enjoying the gorgeous weather. Other than having to park a half mile away, it wasn't too bad. We enjoyed the walk, and the weather was so nice that it was impossible to be annoyed at the masses of people.

It was a lovely weekend, but far too short.

On a totally separate note, here's the result of the second assignment in my 3D modeling class. We had to draw the wooden man in class, and then for homework we had to create a 3D model of him using only our drawing as a reference. The point is that you have to be able to draw at least a little bit in order to model! I think he turned out pretty well, though I'll be excited when we learn how to make something other than a boring black background.

Well, that was interesting. This morning I set a new personal worst in the half marathon with a 2:42:24 finish in Surfside. The reasons are many, some due to my crazy body reacting to a week of <6 hours per night of sleep, but some due to the course. I admit that I may have underestimated the difficulty of running 13.1 miles entirely on sand. Now, this beach is very hard-packed, and so at first it didn't feel difficult. But later in the race, my legs felt very heavy and I could almost feel the sand sucking my energy with each step.

But mainly, it just wasn't my day. I woke up with a headache, and though an Advil got rid of that particular problem, I never really felt 100%. Within the first few miles I started feeling slightly nauseous. At the end of mile 6, I ate a gu hoping it would help to get something in my system, but unfortunately that just made things worse. (I've noticed a couple times lately that when I'm tired, my stomach begins to act a little funny. Incentive to get more sleep, right?) The wind wasn't too bad, but it seemed to slow me down a lot more as I got closer to the turnaround at mile 9. And there, while it was nice to not have the wind in my face anymore, without the breeze to cool me down it got downright hot out there.

My goal pace was 11:30, and I ended up averaging 12:15. For the first 8 miles, I walked for one minute at each mile marker.

1 - 11:39
2 - 11:14
3 - 11:04
4 - 11:31
5 - 11:02
6 - 11:23
7 - 11:58 (slightly longer walk break to eat the gu)
8 - 11:38

I was right on pace through this point, but it was now two miles after eating the gu, I still didn't feel any better and the nauseousness continued. I decided to switch to a run 5 / walk 1 pattern instead of just walking at the mile markers.

9 - 12:24
10 - 14:13

Ugh. At mile 9, I'd turned around to head back to the finish line, and as I mentioned already, without the wind it was just plain hot. I started to overheat. I felt bad. I was frustrated. So I decided right then to walk the next mile. Just walk the whole thing. Worst case, I'd end up with a decent 9-10 mile training run plus a nice 5K walk on the beach, right?

11 - 16:31

After walking a solid mile, I felt better. I'd managed to cool down, drink some water and Gatorade, and the nausea had finally disappeared. So I decided to try running again, and did the last couple miles in a nice-n-easy run 2 / walk 2 pattern.

12 - 12:59
13 - 13:04
0.1 - 1:39 (Garmin read this as 0.16 miles)

Total time: 1:42:24

I got my medal, drank some fluids, and grabbed a banana from the pavilion. They had barbeque for lunch, and I've heard that it's quite tasty, but the thought of eating barbeque at that particular point made me feel a little sick all over again! I decided to head home, and didn't stick around much longer. I did look for JD and Jaclyn (both of whom I'd seen earlier -- Jacklyn running and JD cheering) but didn't find them. I headed back to my car (which was parked a half mile down the beach), walking along the shore with my feet in the water. The water was cold, but it felt good.

By the time I got home, I finally felt like eating again, but it's been 8 hours since I finished and my cheeks are still very warm to the touch. The warmth of the day definitely affected me.

I'm not sure if I will do this race again, but we'll see. I may have to do it again next year just to get rid of the bad taste in my mouth from running a personal worst! But the race itself is well-organized, the schwag is good (tech tee, coaster, mug, and cool medal), and running on the beach was a fun experience. There were some cons -- primarily the mental strain of being able to see for miles but not really have any idea how much farther I had to go -- but overall I enjoyed it. Even in the last miles, when I was feeling tired, sick, and just generally crappy, I could still look to my side and think "well, at least I'm at the beach! Look at those waves! See that sunshine!" It was pretty.

Whew! What a day. I had dinner with Jose, took my first test in my "new media critical analysis" class, and squeezed in an abbreviated ride on the bike trainer.

Oh, and I did this other thing:

I've now worked three launches in nine months, but each one has been unique. Today's launch of STS-122 was the smoothest yet for me. The solid rocket boosters burned slightly cold, but that's not unusual and the three main engines adjusted their throttling to handle it. Our Delta-V margins trend, which is nominally between +/- 3, was flat as a pancake. Perfect. Next thing I knew, we were in orbit.

I hadn't even expected to launch! The weather forecast was so bad, and we watched on the TV all morning as big puffy clouds built in the distance around the launch pad. I thought for sure I'd be back in the control center tomorrow doing another countdown. But with about three hours to go, I looked around the room. The dozens of people that crowd the consoles during the ascent shift were buzzing, going here and there, busily assessing weather data and making final tweaks to the trajectory based on weather balloons and actual measurements of today's winds in Florida. Things were really humming. And I started to think that we really would launch today, against all the bad weather odds.

I think the ascent flight director has some kind of special weather voodoo magic. All day, he kept saying that he felt good about our chances. He's always very positive, so we all chalked it up to his personality. But after we managed to launch through a cold front, I've changed my mind. Weather voodoo magic!

The only other blip to the day was a massive chair shortage in the backroom. :) During sims, it seems like we're just pushing our way through mounds of empty chairs just to get to our consoles, yet on launch day there are no extra chairs to be found!

Jose is working Orbit 3, the shift that is on console right now. He was unlucky to end up with the crappy 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. hours, but I just got this email:

"Ok, something just happened that made this whole shift worth it.

The shuttle went over Houston at NIGHT! and the video was downlinked in real time. You could see all of east texas's cities all lit up, it looked so amazing. Even through the bad black and white downlink. You could see the two bright blobs of dallas/ft.worth and then down to Houston. INCO was playing around with the camera in real time, panning it around to get of Houston as it flew over. It was so cool thinking, that's me, i'm in that blob somewhere.

wow, it's the same feeling I get flying in my little cessna. There is something magical about seeing so much all at once."

Flying space shuttles is cool.

I'm so disappointed that I wasn't able to go to the US-Mexico soccer friendly last night. They had another sell-out crowd of 70,000+ and I was stuck in class. I am really enjoying my class, but it is messing with my social schedule! Harrumph.

Assuming that we get the shuttle launched either today or tomorrow, I'll be heading to Surfside on Saturday morning for a half marathon run entirely on the beach. I was supposed to run this race last year, but came down with a cold a couple days prior to the race. I know there were a bunch of people I knew doing it last year, but I haven't heard much talk about this year. Will anyone out there be joining me at Surfside?

Even if I don't get to see any blogging buddies, a handful of guys and gals from my triathlon club will be there. I don't have much of a race plan. Since I'm in the swing of half ironman training, this race is a training run and nothing more. The goal is to cover the distance. I know that the sand (though packed) will slow me down and add to my usual per mile pace, but I'm not sure how much. I think if I can average right around 11:30 minutes per mile, or a finish time of 2:30, I'll be pretty happy. If the sand slows me down more than that, so be it. If I'm slower than that for any other reason, well, then my training isn't where I think it is and I'll have to reevaluate!

(Speaking of the Half Ironman: I finally registered for the race today. I'd been training, but wasn't registered. No longer -- I am in!)

Then again, if we don't get the shuttle launched in time, I may be spending Saturday morning at work instead of running. The cold front that came through here on Tuesday night is scheduled to be right over central Florida tomorrow afternoon, but Friday is supposed to be clear. We shall see. Go Atlantis!

The Super Bowl was 3/4 boring and 1/4 awesome, Super Tuesday had me paying closer attention to an election than I ever have, Heath Ledger unsurprisingly died of an overdose, and tomorrow we're supposed to launch a space shuttle. I think that about catches me up.

Super Tuesday was crazy. I mean, I have never ever paid attention to the primaries before, but last night I was glued to CNN for the entire evening. McCain seems to be on his way to the Republican nomination having built a lot more momentum yesterday. But the Democratic race, I mean, wow. There were 1,681 delegates at stake yesterday. So far they're estimating that Hillary Clinton got 540, and Barack Obama got 539. While Clinton won the conspicuous states like New York and California, Obama won pretty much everything in the middle. But then -- how much does a win really mean if it's only by a few percentage points, when the delegates are divided proportionately and by congressional district? Twenty-two states held primaries yesterday, yet so far the two candidates are separated by a single delegate. It's mind-boggling. It's crazy. It's awesome. For the first time in years, I feel like people really, truly care about electing the next president. People feel like they have a real choice, and they're excited about the candidates. I know I am. And bonus: my vote in the Texas primary on March 4 will actually matter!

I came in early, so I'm leaving early to squeeze in a run before class tonight. I haven't worked out since a good 27-mile bike ride on Sunday. This week has been so busy. It's only three days later but that bike ride seems like years ago.

It's official: Jose is a licensed private pilot! He passed his checkride on Friday! I couldn't be happier for him. He didn't finish his checkride until sunset, but fortunately the good weather held out long enough for him to take me up as his first passenger yesterday around lunchtime. We flew around Clear Lake for a half hour before heading back for a nice landing.

Congratulations Jose!

Ah, the 10K that almost wasn't.

The race started at 8:00. My alarm was set for 6:40. My alarm went off, but by the time I consciously realized that it was going off, and that I must have hit snooze a few times without comprehending what I was doing, it was 7:34. CRAP!!

Any later and I definitely would not have made the race. Thankfully the race was nearby and I'd laid out my clothes last night so they were ready to go. I threw them on, slapped my contacts in my eyes, shoved my shoes on my feet and literally ran out the door. I pulled into the parking lot at 7:54 and as I ran towards the starting line, I heard my name being called over the loudspeaker. "Sarah G, please come to the starting line, Sarah G, where are you?" (I was being paged because Debbie had picked up my packet yesterday, and thus had my bib.)

I knew tons of people at this race, so hopefully everyone got a good laugh out of that!

I got my bib pinned on and in line with 2 minutes to go. Suddenly, I was running, and yet my heart was already beating a million times a minute. The adrenaline was flowing, I was stressed out and relieved at the same time, and when I hit the first mile marker, I looked down to see 9:26.

Oh. Jeez.

I did not plan to set a new PR today, and I didn't. After that first mile, I slowed it down a bit and just ran comfortably hard for the rest of the race. Remaining splits were 10:23, 10:45, 11:01, 10:42, 10:47, and 2:06 for the last 0.2 miles. I took four walk breaks, each at a water stop, and mile 4 was slow mainly because I took a longer break while I waited for my tri friend Cathy to catch up. She'd been running only a couple hundred feet behind me. We ran for a bit before she took another walk break while I kept going. I think she was right on my tail at the end, finishing within seconds of me.

Finish time was 1:05:12 by my watch, a bit later according to the gun. Last night I was hoping to finish in the 1:04-1:05 range, so I'm satisfied. The weather was a lot warmer today than it was at the Mardi Gras Race where I PRed last weekend, and I was dehydrated from the start. Because I woke up so late, I didn't get to eat anything before running, or drink anything. As soon as the race began, I was thirsty.

All in all, it was a good run, though I wish I'd had more time to socialize! I arrived at the last minute, and had to leave shortly after finishing to get back home and showered in time to go flying with Jose!