May 2008 Archives
It was a pretty day in Florida for a launch! STS-124 took off carrying the Japanese module "Kibo" for delivery to the space station. It was another smooth launch for me as ARD Support Officer; this was my fourth flight. The solid rocket boosters burned a little hot, so the main engines throttled to compensate for the extra thrust from the SRBs. We had a little bit of a trend, due to performance dispersions, and therefore took a thrust update to get the ARD modeled correctly. No big deal. Wham, bam, we're in orbit! It was a very smooth launch overall and I'm excited that the mission has begun.
For the past few missions, NASA has been putting together creative posters for each crew. They usually spoof a movie, and this mission's taking on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. (Google the movie poster and compare it to the above.) I particularly like Karen Nyberg's wind-blown and glowing hair. Very dramatic. Makes me laugh.
I'm off to find some dinner and relax before heading to bed. I'm due on console for my first-ever Orbit 1 shift at 6 a.m.!
NASA is transitioning to all-electronic personnel files for employees. As a result, I got a sealed envelope in my office mail today that contains all of the paperwork they had on file for me that they determined did not need to be transferred to my electronic record -- things like transcripts, training records and offer letters. It's pretty cool to look at because it contains a lot of paperwork from my days as a co-op. It's got random things like a copy of my letter of admission to the graduate program at Stanford, summaries that I had to write each semester to cover what I worked on as a co-op, and a copy of my transcript at the end of freshman year. (Straight A's, thank you very much. I did not maintain straight A's after my freshman year, but oh well.)
The best item by far is the very first letter I got from JSC, offering me a job as a co-op student. It was June 1997 and I had just finished my freshman year at Georgia Tech.
Dear Sarah:Congratulations! We want you to join us as a Cooperative Education Student at the Johnson Space Center. You will be hired as a GS-3 with an annual salary of $17,332 on August 18, 1997...
I distinctly remember getting that letter, and $17,332 seemed like a LOT of money. How times change...
Good grief it's hot. I went running last night at 6:30, and by that time a bunch of clouds had rolled in and the sun was hidden. But it was still super hot. I walked back into my apartment after 35 minutes of running and looked like I'd been in a swimming pool. I had a pretty good workout though. Warmup, 6x60-60, and cooldown. Yep, a little warm weather speedwork. I'm playing it by ear at this point, but I hope to put together a solid plan for my running over the next month. Goal: a good, solid run at the Y Tri that doesn't totally negate the speed I've gained on the bike!
Speaking of my bike, I had to figure out a way to get it inside my car this morning so it didn't get rained on during the day. (I brought it with me so I can go straight to the brick tonight.) The last time I tried to put a bike in my car, it took 10 minutes of wiggling to get it in there. See, my back seats don't fold down all the way -- they only go to about 45 degrees, which makes it difficult to fit a bike in the back. Or at least I thought they didn't fold down all the way. I just found out today that I can remove the back seat cushions, thus allowing the seats to lie flat when folded down. And I've owned my Xterra for more than 4 years. What other features does it have that I don't know about?
Work continues. We're scheduled to launch on Saturday, and for the first time I'll be working more than just ascent. I'm looking forward to working another mission, but I'm not looking forward to the hours. The ascent shift on Saturday isn't so bad, from 10:00 until about 5:00 with launch at 4:02 p.m. Central, for those who are interested in catching it on TV. But Sunday I'm on console at 6:00 a.m. Monday is rendezvous day and I'm in at 5:30. As Becca pointed out, since she is working the same shift, that is too early for Starbucks! Horrendous, I know. Then we go in at 5:30 for a few days before shifting even earlier. By undocking (currently scheduled for June 11), I'm in at 3:00 a.m. My position doesn't have a whole lot to do when the shuttle is docked to the station, so at least I can be happy that I'm working the main shift. The astronauts will be awake and active and can entertain me with their spacewalks. :)
Until I have kids of my own -- which is at least a few years away so nobody get worked up -- I plan to continue using Carina as my pseudo-child. And yesterday she turned 1! Very exciting. Gavin and Jen invited everyone over for a birthday party / Memorial Day cookout and a good time was had by all. Carina ditched us for a 2-hour nap in the middle of her own party, and then she chose to eat grapes instead of cake, but oh well. She's only 1. ;)
CHECK. IT. OUT. The Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars for the past two years, took a picture of Phoenix as it parachuted towards its successful landing on Mars last night. That is SO FREAKING COOL. In fact, this may be the most amazing photo I have ever seen. Something we sent all the way to Martian orbit was able to capture a photo of something else that we sent all the way to the Martian surface. Amazing.
More Phoenix info is all over the web for those of you who are interested (and that should be pretty much everyone because landing things on Mars is pretty dang cool).
Less than a week after Silverlake, I found myself at the starting line of another triathlon! I did the Combat Tri for the first time last year and it's such a good race that I had to do it again. I don't know why I never did it before last year either, since it's the tri that's closest to home. The weather couldn't have been more different -- yesterday we got the typical hot and humid summer morning instead of last year's downpour of rain. I'm not sure which is worse. I mean, riding in the rain always feels a little absurd, but at least the rain makes things cooler.
First up: the results! I only wore a watch on the bike so that I knew my speed; I wore nothing on the swim or run. Turns out I had a good day in the pool, a great day on the bike, and a very "blah" day on the run. As I was telling everyone after the race, if this race had been an aquabike, I'd have been fantastic -- in fact, my swim+T1+bike+T2 time would have been good enough for 2nd place not in Athena, but in my age group. This is a big deal for me. Actually, I would have finished in 4th of 12 in my age group yesterday, even with my 8/12 running time. That is also way cool. Oh, and I did repeat as 1st place Athena by more than 10 minutes, so I got another plaque to add to my collection. I seriously don't have a place to put them all! Woe is me. ;-)
300 yard swim - 5:40 (last year 5:29)
T1 - 0:56 (1:23)
15 mile bike - 46:07 (49:00)
T2 - 1:02 (1:07)
3 mile run - 33:37 (32:43)
Total - 1:27:24 (1:29:43)
More than 2 minutes faster than last year! It's totally thanks to my new bike, but whatever. Heck yeah!
On to the recap! I put down 5:30 for my predicted swim time, just like last year, but there must be more people doing the race. The numbers are given out in order of predicted swim time to manage the logistics of the pool swim as effectively as possible, and last year I was #106. This year I was #115, which meant another 2 minutes of waiting before I got to start the race. No worries though. At least I wasn't #397. With 6 people per minute, that poor guy had to wait more than an hour before he started his race.
I hopped into the pool in the wake of #114, who was a kid that looked to be maybe 15 years old. "3...2...1..." and I was off. The trick to pool swims is seeding yourself correctly, and I did ok in that regard. The guy behind me passed me within the first two laps (100 yards), so obviously he put down a time that was too slow. Then, as I passed the halfway point at 150 yards, I found myself slapping the feet of the kid in front of me -- I had caught up to him. I thought for a moment about passing him, but in the end I decided that I'd just hang on his heels for the rest of the swim. I was swimming at a comfortably hard effort, and I didn't want to get my heart racing by passing this kid in the pool, all in the name of saving a measley 10 seconds. So I stayed behind him. I slapped his feet at least once per pool length just to let him know I was there, and I did have to do a few strokes of breaststroke here and there to let him get a few feet ahead again, but I was happy enough with my position. All in all, staying behind him couldn't have cost me more than 10-20 seconds, so I would've been right at 5:30 had he not been in front of me. I was happy with my 5:40 swim time and happy to see that I had seeded myself correctly.
I darted out of the water towards transition to the cheers of my BAM teammates still waiting to start the race. I ran to my bike, jammed my helmet on my head, pulled on my shoes and ran out of transition. Check out that T1 time! 56 seconds! I was smokin!
I hopped on my bike and put my sunglasses on as I started to ride. Here's where I knew things would get interesting, because it was windy. As I drove down I-45 to get to the race, I'd been treated to the sight of every car dealership's giant American flag sticking straight out in the stiff wind. It was coming from the southeast and going almost directly parallel to the highway. Since the majority of the bike course is on the I-45 feeder roads, I knew we'd have a huge tailwind going north and a huge headwind for the ~5-mile south portion.
The wind had died down just a bit by the time I got out to the bike course, but I was still flying up the northbound feeder road. I hit 24 mph and held it...and held it...and held it...and it was actually comfortable! I felt like I was flying. It was awesome. I got passed by two people but I didn't care because hey -- 24 mph! The turnaround came up fast though, and after hammering up the overpass I coasted down the other side, grabbed a sip of water, and prepared myself for the wind.
I gotta say, the tri bike makes the wind more bearable, mainly because being in the aero position lets me maintain a higher speed going into the wind. The slowness of fighting the wind has always been the mentally demoralizing part, so being able to maintain 15 mph into a stiff breeze keeps me in a much happier mental state. I pulled anywhere from 14 to 17 mph while heading south as the wind varied in speed, and passed a handful of people over the next 5 miles. It was disappointing to watch my average speed drop from 21.5 mph to 18.5, but I knew that was coming. I finally reached the second turnaround and grabbed some more water before heading north again. Whee! Flying time again!
The rest of the bike passed quickly. I raised my average speed back to about 19.5 mph and held it there throught the last couple miles, which involved a lesser headwind as we left the highway and rode back to transition. The bike was the only portion of the race where I used a watch, and I did it precisely because I had a goal: beat my time of 49:00 from last year. As I rode into transition, I knew I would finish 3 minutes faster than that, and I was really excited.
I ran into transition, changed shoes, grabbed my hat and race belt and headed out. I am amused in retrospect to see that my T2 was slower than T1; that rarely happens. There's not much to say about the run other than it was hot, it was humid, and I sucked it up. I'm disappointed that I couldn't hold sub-11:00 pace. Still, I finished strong and was very excited to see that I improved my time by more than 2 minutes over last year! Maybe next year I'll get sub-1:25. :)
I took 1st place Athena again, more due to lack of competition in the category than anything else. But it's always fun to get some hardware!
I thought about signing up for the Tejas Tri on June 8, but then remembered that I'll be working the shuttle mission that week! So my next tri will be the Y Tri in Pearland on June 29. My mom will be visiting that weekend so she'll be out there to cheer me on. And that gives me a whole month to work on my running...right?
Happy Birthday to Jose! We went to the Radiohead concert in The Woodlands on Saturday night as his birthday present, but I bought him sushi for lunch and tonight we're going to the Astros game to celebrate his day. Hooray!
In other news, I decided that there is at least one good thing about running in the Houston summer: when you finish and stop running, it almost feels cool outside! I ran 3 miles on Tuesday night starting at 5:30 and was feeling pretty awful by the end. It's the first run I've done this year in the heat, and it sucked accordingly. I was quite happy to be done and, like I said, the only good thing was that after stopping, the breeze actually felt a little cool.
Last night was brick night, and I was finally able to make it out there, for only the second time this year. Attendance was light, but that didn't stop me from getting in a solid workout -- 17+ miles on the bike followed by a 2-mile run. By the time I got to the run, the sun was low enough that the trees along Bay Area blocked most of it, and so the heat wasn't too bad.
I continue to love my bike. I'm still adjusting to the aero position, and my neck and back are usually a little sore at the end of each ride, but nothing awful. My neck is actually less sore than it used to be after long rides on my road bike. On the road bike, I have a bad habit of hunching my shoulders and tensing up all the muscles in my neck and upper back -- which makes everything start burning after a while. That doesn't happen on my tri bike. Silverlake is the first race I've done with the new bike, so here's the first official photo of me on ol' red. (I need a name for my new bike, obviously.)
Boo yeah! I may not be that fast, but at least now I look fast. Ha!
I spent a while yesterday perusing the Silverlake results and you know what? If I could run about an 8:00 pace, I'd be a pretty dang good triathlete. Still not good enough to place in my age group at a large race, but enough to always win Athena handily, and place in the top half of finishers instead of the bottom half. Take my age group, for example. If I raced there instead of Athena, I would have finished 18/32 on Sunday. But take 5 minutes off my run time and I'd have been in the top 10.
I'm not really sure what to do with that information. While there is still room for improvement on both the swim and the bike, the run is where I stand to make the biggest gains. Obviously it would be nice to be a faster runner. I could gain a bit of speed simply by losing weight! (I could lose a 30 pounds and still be an Athena. Crazy.) And I know I have the capability to gain even more speed if I made that my goal (I'm not sure if I could ever get down to 8:00 pace, but I could definitely get into the nines). But I also know that getting significantly faster will take significant dedication, and when I'm honest with myself, I'm not sure I can do that and maintain my love for the sport.
So for now, I'll stick with what I'm doing, I guess. But it's days like these that I start wishing I'd been born with at least an ounce of natural talent... Heh.
We had our monthly BAM meeting last night, and this month we gathered at Webster Bicycle. They are our major sponsor and I gotta say, they are great. Over the years, I have had experience with three different bike shops in the Clear Lake area. Webster Bike = awesome. Bay Area Schwinn = awesome, albeit with a smaller selection of stuff. The large Houston-area chain bike store = not awesome. Needless to say, Webster Bike has gotten all of my business over the past six months including my new bike. Last night they offered us 20% off during the meeting (instead of our usual 10%), so I took the opportunity to pick up a computer mount for my new bike and a plastic stand so that I don't have to lean my bike against the car anymore when I clean it and hang out in the parking lot before and after rides.
After a week of sickness, it's back to normal starting with a run tonight. It's really hot today. Should be interesting.
I was really looking forward to this race this year, and then I got strep throat. While I feel 100% better, I'm still on the antibiotics, not to mention that being sick means I haven't run since last Saturday, haven't biked since last Thursday, and haven't been in the pool in almost two weeks. I didn't think I had much chance of beating my time from last year, 1:15:11, so I didn't even wear my watch! No watch, and I haven't put a computer on my new tri bike yet, so I had absolutely zero idea of how fast I was going or how far I'd gone.
Maybe I should leave the watch behind more often! I had a great race, and finished in 1:14:19 -- a minute faster than last year, and that's after being sick all week. Crazy. My time was good enough for 3rd place Athena, although I'm still kicking myself for not winning. I was the first Athena off the bike -- I could tell because mine was the first bike back on the rack, and we were all racked together. I didn't know if I could hold on during the run, but I gave it my best shot. It was impossible to tell who was Athena, because not all of us had the giveaway "A" on the back of our calf. Turns out I was passed by two other women, probably in the last half mile, because they each finished less than a minute ahead of me. But that's life. I'm still very happy with my race and with the improvement over the last year. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
I reinforced my reputation for arriving at events at the last minute when I got into transition only 5 minutes before it closed at 6:30. But the sad part is that I was actually in the parking lot before 6 a.m.! Because this race is in the middle of a neighborhood, the parking areas are a mile or so away and you have to walk or ride your bike to the race site. I obviously didn't study the map hard enough, because I set off for the race site -- and a mile and a half later, I was in the middle of nowhere. I'd missed a turn right out of the parking lot and had been riding backwards along the bike course! (I didn't turn around earlier because I saw cones and figured I was heading in the right direction.) Sadly, I even dragged two poor guys along for the ride, since they'd been following me. We turned around and finally found the right road, but I probably rode 5 miles before the race just trying to get there. I can be such a flake sometimes.
Fortunately I can set up transition quickly, and I had no problem getting out of there before it closed. After that, I had a lot of time to hang out since I was in the last wave, starting at 7:27. There were plenty of people to keep me occupied. We had a ton of BAM people out there, and I also got to hang out with 4 of my Texas Independence Relay teammates! Katy was psyching herself up for her first tri, Cassie was, like me, doing a tri after being sick all week, and Jon (and Waverly), Edwin and Manny were there to spectate.
Finally, it was time for those of us in the last wave to begin! I hate being in the last wave, but I've gotten used to it, since that's where they tend to put the Athenas. As a positive, it always means that the course is less crowded, so I guess that's something. The water was 74 degrees, so there were a few people taking advantage of it being wetsuit-legal. But I went without, and the water actually felt fantastic. My goggles fogged up a bit, but soon enough I had completed the V-shaped course and was running through the grass towards my bike. My position in transition sort of sucked because I was at the complete opposite end from the bike out, but nothing I can do about that. It was a long run from transition to the exit, and more running across a small parking lot to get to the bike mount line, but finally I was there and off.
The bike course for this tri is a little unorthodox, with two sections that involve a lot of 90 degree turns in quick succession through the subdivision, as well as a u-turn halfway through the course. It forces you to slow down more often than you'd like, but I actually think the twists and turns are kinda fun to ride. I came out of the water behind my friend Cathy, as well as Katy and Cassie since they'd started in waves ahead of me, but I passed them all on the bike. Did I mention that my new bike rocks? :)
I came roaring back into transition and racked my bike on the empty Athena rack. I'll have to post my splits once the results are online, but I averaged right at 19 mph for the short 10-mile ride. Just about the same as last year. I headed out for the run and felt pretty good. The weather this morning was absolutely perfect -- cool at the start, and the sun didn't really come out until I'd finished, which meant it was also cool for the run. And no humidity! I'm loving these late-season "cold" fronts right now.
Again, I had no watch, so I had no idea how I was doing but I felt strong and knew that I was definitely under 11:00 pace. I knew Katy and Cassie would be catching back up to me, and sure enough, Katy passed me just before mile 1, just before I saw Jon cheering on the sidelines. I kept going though, and feeling good. Cassie caught up to me with less than a half mile to go, and we stayed close through the end. She was running a little faster, so I used her as motivation to finish strong! We saw Jon, Waverly and Edwin again just before the finish. My final run time was under 31:00 for an average pace of about 10:20! I can't be too upset about losing 1st and 2nd on the run because that is still a dang good run for me.
Afterwards I hung out for a while chatting with all my friends and waiting on awards. The timing company made an error that put all the Athenas in the first wave -- which meant that the results showed our swim times as 32-38 minutes. Obviously wrong. Subtract the 27 minutes between the first wave and the last wave and you get our true time! They still hadn't fixed the error when I left, but I did alert the timing guy to the issue. They'd figured it out already for the 40-44 women, but hadn't realized they'd done it to the Athenas as well. So my posted time (and the one announced during awards) was my gun time of 1:41:xx but like I said, subtract 27 minutes from that for my chip time.
All in all, it was a beautiful day for a race and I had a great time. I can't wait for the Combat Tri next Saturday!
Update: Finally found the results online.
Swim: 9:02 (last year 8:25)
T1: 1:35 (1:33)
Bike: 31:33 (31:21)
T2: 1:12 (1:07)
Run: 30:56 (32:48)
Total: 1:14:15 (1:15:11)
I'm a little bummed to see that all of my splits were slower than last year except the run, but then again, I'd been sick all week. And I was only seconds slower on each part, but my run was a solid 2 minutes faster. The seconds in T1, T2 and on the bike are a wash, and the swim course was different this year so who knows -- it may have been slightly longer, since they're usually pretty hard to measure. I'll take it. And it just goes to show you never know how you might place. Last year I was 2nd Athena with a time that was a minute slower!
It's possible that the run course was a tenth shorter than last year. I'm not sure though, since I didn't wear my Garmin.
Jose clued me in to a feature on Google Maps that I'd never noticed before -- the ability to look at a map overlaid with snapshots of the place you're looking at. (It's under the "More" box at the top of the map.) This had led to me scrolling all over the city of Anchorage, looking at all the cool shots of mountains and wildlife and float planes. See, we suddenly realized the other day that our trip to Alaska is just over two months away and we had made zero plans, other than returning the RSVP card for the wedding in Anchorage that is serving as our excuse for spending 10 days in the land of the midnight sun.
But we have been nothing if not productive since that realization, and two days later we now have plane tickets, 7 nights of lodging secured in Anchorage and outside Denali, and tickets for the "backcountry adventure" all the way down and back the 95-mile long road through Denali National Park. We're in the process of choosing and scheduling the rest of our activities now, like hiking to the top of Alaska's "most-climbed mountain" (a 3,500 foot peak outside Anchorage), whitewater rafting in the shadow of the national park, and taking a floatplane to go bear viewing a few hours outside of Anchorage, and holy crap, is this going to be an expensive vacation. I may very well spend more money for 10 days in Alaska than I spent for a full month in Europe in 2001.
But I'll eat ramen for the next two months if I have to, because I'm SO FREAKING EXCITED about going to Alaska.
Another day at home, but the end is in sight. Last night my throat still felt awful, but in the last 5 hours -- just in the time since I woke up this morning! -- there has been an almost total change. My throat barely hurts at all! It's going away as quickly as it came on. Finally. To celebrate, I'm drinking as much as I can. (Water, not alcohol! Heh.) I've basically been dehydrated since Sunday afternoon because even drinking was horribly painful. I know it was only three days of really bad throat pain but geez, it feels like so much longer when you don't want to eat, drink, talk, or even open your mouth. Man. Strep throat seemed a lot worse as an adult that I remember it being as a kid. Thank goodness it's ending.
The worst part of the whole ordeal is that I actually had a bunch of commitments at work this week, some of which I still managed to uphold but some that I had to scramble to fill. I am one of only two active, certified ARD Support Officers -- and the other one is currently in Nepal. (I'm so jealous!) So I'm the only one available to do any and all ARD work, and this month has actually been pretty full of just that. I went to work Monday morning, not yet realizing the full extent of my being sick, because I had to do a database check. I was supposed to be there Tuesday morning as well for a load checkout, but there was no way I could go in (instead, I went to the doctor) and while I tried to find a sub, there wasn't really anyone available. Thankfully, the ascent FDO was able to take care of the work himself without the usual help from ARD.
Yesterday morning I had to work a sim, so I didn't have much choice -- I had to go in, since I'm the only ARD in the country. After that I had to go check the 8 flight copies of the rendezvous procedures book. By flight copy, I mean the actual copies of the book that will fly into space on STS-124. (And yes, we checked to make sure it was ok that my strep throat self could look at the books.) I can't believe they actually take 8 copies into space (one each for the commander, pilot, and 2 of the mission specialists, plus a backup for each of those), but NASA is nothing if not diligent in having backups for the backups! Redundancy is an important concept in spaceflight, to be sure. All 8 copies looked fine.
Needless to say, I am very glad I'm getting better, and will be very glad when Bini gets back from the Himalayas!!
And on a completely different note, because Katy tagged me, I guess I'll play along and list 8 things about me, though at the moment I'm gonna stick to just 8 instead of following overachiever Cassie who did 100. ;)
1. When I was in 5th grade, I really, really wanted to get my ears pierced, but my dad didn't. Finally, he offered me a deal -- if I practiced my flute every day for a month, I could get my ears pierced. I'm not sure if he thought I would do it or not, but I did. So I got my ears pierced, but I also credit that deal with making me a great flute player (I made All-State band in high school and played formally from 5th grade through grad school).
2. I have never been one of those girls who "always wanted to be a mom," and it's hard for me to imagine having a child of my own. But I know that I want them, because the thought of being 80 years old and not having a family makes me very, very sad. And I know I want more than one, because I love having siblings myself.
3. Someday I would really like to own a small business. I don't actually have a specific thing in mind, however, and have thought about everything from my own graphic and web design business to a coffee shop to a running store (though there's not room in the Houston market for another running store, I don't think).
4. I love spaceflight. And I love NASA. But I'm not sure that I'm really meant to be an aerospace engineer, even though I've dedicated 6 years of secondary education and another 6 years of my career to it.
5. There aren't many foods that I truly despise, but one of them is melon. All kinds of melon. Yes, even watermelon. "Oh wait," you say, "you just haven't tried a good one yet." Yes. Yes, I have. I have tried many melons, many times, and I simply hate them. Yet strangely, I'm ok with melon-flavored candy and gum.
6. I went on the occasional date in college and afterwards, but nothing ever progressed beyond a few dates. When I was younger, my lack of relationships bothered me, because I felt like not having a boyfriend meant that there was something wrong with me. As I got older, I realized that -- duh -- I didn't need a relationship to be happy with my life. And of course, as the cliche goes, that's when I met Jose.
7. I played soccer and swam on the swim team as a kid, but had stopped by the time I became a teenager. I didn't try out for the high school soccer team because I claimed it would be a conflict with marching band -- and maybe it was, but really, I didn't try out because I didn't consider myself much of an athlete, and I was scared that I wouldn't make the team. I didn't start running until I was in grad school and it was only a couple years later that I finally felt comfortable calling myself an athlete.
8. I have become more of a girl in recent years. I still don't think I could be described as particularly "girly," but I have developed an appreciation for nice jewelry, wearing skirts, pedicures, and the color pink that I just didn't have 5 years ago. I still hate makeup, though.
After a miserable couple days during which my throat got progressively worse, to the point of me not even wanting to eat because eating means swallowing and swallowing felt like fire and razor blades, Jose finally convinced me to go to the doctor. I don't have a regular doctor here since I get free physicals every year from the clinic at work, so I went to his doctor. I saw the physician's assistant, who was really nice. She checked out my ears and nose and throat and lymph nodes and noted it all down on her cool tablet PC.
So yep, I have strep throat.
I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I've had this particular loveliness in about 20 years, as I remember getting it on practically a yearly basis as a kid. But I certainly haven't had it since then. And honestly, I was expecting the doctor to tell me that I just had a cold and it would go away.
But nope. Strep throat. I'm on amoxicillin for the next 10 days to kill off all the little bacterias.
I'm supposed to do the Silverlake Tri on Sunday. The PA noticed my shirt this morning, a tri t-shirt, and asked if I was a triathlete. When I said I was and that I was supposed to do a race this weekend, she surprised me by saying that she thought it was would be ok if I did the race as long as I listened to my body and took it easy. I already missed Battle of San Jacinto because I was sick the week before the race, and I was disappointed to think that I'd miss another one. So we'll see.
It was hot and humid this morning in League City and thus, as always, the Summer Kick-Off 5K turned out to be a very aptly named race. I am not looking forward to the next six months of running. My body just doesn't like it, and I don't either. But alas, running is what a runner does, and I am a runner. So off I went.
I saw a bunch of my buddies from all over as I wandered around trying to find my chip before the start. There were quite a few BARCers (like Joe) in attendance, as well as some of my fellow BAM triathletes. I saw a few coworkers as well, including Ray, who is a volunteer captain in the League City Fire Department. He and some of the other guys did the 3K walk dressed in all their fire-fighting gear, which I thought was pretty cool but dang they must've been hot!
My race went as well as I expected. I've been feeling a little off over the past couple days -- tired from a busy week at work, and my throat has been feeling weird, and I'm a little congested. Whine, whine, whine.
Anyway, I planned to go out comfortably but I guess I got a little caught up in the start, because mile 1 passed in 9:52. (I didn't actually realize this until after the race when I looked at my splits. I didn't look at my watch during the race until I was almost at the end.) I walked for a moment to get some water just past mile 1, and when I started running again I knew I'd have to hold back a little if I wanted to make it to the finish without completely falling apart. I haven't run much in the heat and humidity yet this year, and I could tell that my body temperature was already rising, and fast. I ended up covering the next two miles in just over 11:00 each and crossing the finish line in 33:13. Not very fast, but not completely awful either. I'm happy. If I can run this pace (10:40ish) for the run portion of next weekend's Silverlake Tri, I'll be a happy camper!
Last night, Stephen Colbert interviewed astronaut Garrett Reisman, who's currently spending time on the International Space Station. It was a pretty basic interview, but the cool part was how excited Colbert seemed. He was giddy! And Reisman had a great sense of humor about the whole thing -- he was even wearing a Colbert "WristStrong" bracelet.
That's right: NASA appeared -- in a positive way -- on one of today's most popular TV shows. And one that's (gasp) popular with young people! When's the last time that happened? It was fantastic!
I'm at work early today for the STS-124 Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. I don't actually have a whole lot to do other than monitor numbers and make a few updates, so I've been watching the video feed from Florida, where the crew is going through the motions of an actual mission -- getting suited up in the orange launch and entry suits and getting into the orbiter. I can see Karen Nyberg (a hardcore runner, by the way; I see her all the time on the trails here at work) and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide in the camera view right now. Aki's waving, which makes me laugh, since the only people watching today are NASA folks. No general public like there will be on launch day. (Aki is perhaps my favorite member of this crew. I have never seen him not smiling.)
I like this crew. I feel like they are "my" crew. I'll be working in the control center during their launch on May 31, their rendezvous with the space station on June 2, and their undocking a week after that. (It's my first mission as a rendezvous flight controller! I'm officially certified as of today!) In fact, the only critical phase of flight that I'm not working is their landing. As rendezvous support, I've spent hours editing their rendezvous procedures and making sure their flight data file is in order. I've been to a lot of their training sessions, watched them practice flying the shuttle, and even answered some of their questions. And now, in just a few weeks, I get to watch them go into space!
p.s. After my previous entry, my brother -- a financial consultant in DC -- texted me to let me know that "Sarah, it's your civic duty to spend the stimulus money here and quickly." Hmm. There are a few things I'd consider buying with it, but my rebate was not the entire $600 so it actually won't go that far. But I have been eyeing the Flip.
Brian is such a bad influence. ;)
I noticed that my "economic stimulus" refund from the government showed up in my bank account recently. Instead of running out and spending it right now, I'm going to put it in the savings account I set up for my Japan trip -- and thus spend it out of the country. Ha!
Becca has been working on her instrument license and needs lots of cross-country flying hours -- defined as flying to an airport at least 50 miles from your point of departure. But she doesn't like to do all the flying alone, so she has recruited Jose to share the piloting time. And Jose recruited me as a passenger. So on this beautiful Sunday, we took off towards the tiny town of Eagle Lake, Texas.
Thus far, to go flying with Jose has meant cramming myself into the passenger side of a very tiny Cessna 150, shoulder-to-shoulder. Not much room to stretch out or relax, but it was passable. Today, however, we took one of the Warrior's that the Bay Area Aero Club rents out, and boy was it comfy compared to the Cessna! I had the whole back seat to myself, a cushy seat, and plenty of leg room.
I had a lot of fun just looking out the window and listening to Jose and Becca do their pilot-speak thing. I'm getting better at listening to the radio and understanding the terms, but parts of it still go in one ear and out the other.
As we headed west, we flew right past Twin Lakes. This is a very popular spot with local triathletes since it's the perfect place to get some open water swim practice. It's also popular with scuba divers, since they've got a couple sunken boats and things to explore. I haven't actually ever been there, since it's a good half hour drive or more from Clear Lake, but one day...
Next I saw some cows. The looked like little toys! This made me laugh.
Soon enough, we were approaching Eagle Lake. Becca flew us there and had a very nice landing at the very empty airport.
While searching for a bathroom (which ended up being the bushes behind a hangar, fun), I stopped to read this sign and learned that Eagle Lake is the "Goose Hunting Capital of the World." So if you're into that sort of thing, now you know where to go.
Of course I had to get a photo of my brave and valiant pilots next to their lovely airplane.
The only other planes that were parked on the ramp were these large yellow crop-dusters. Byron later laughed at us for not being up-to-date on our crop-duster knowledge, but come on -- how can I be expected to know that the odd-shaped cockpit is that way because it has a roll cage in case of a crash? Or that crop-dusters crash a lot (a hazard of flying close to the ground). Anyway, Jose liked them a lot, as you can see.
We switched pilots and Jose flew us back over the Texas countryside to Pearland.
I was quite excited by this point because I had now been in a small plane for 3/4 of the trip and had not felt sick at all -- not even once! This is a major accomplishment.
When we got back to the pattern at Pearland, things seemed calm. But then all of a sudden, we noticed 5 Japanese Zeros (or planes dressed up like Japanese Zeros, which is a WWII-era warbird) in formation flying ahead of us! As we paralleled the runway on our downwind leg, the warbirds buzzed straight down the runway.
The warbirds peeled off one by one over the runway to enter the landing pattern behind Jose. However, WWII-era fighters are faster than our little Warrior, and they were gaining on us. As Jose tried to concentrate on landing the plane with 5 Japanese Zeros bearing down on him like some crazy war movie, I craned my neck to see the cool planes. It was like being in a war movie! We were under attack!
Jose had barely cleared the runway when the Zeros came barreling down one by one. It was CRAZY! And AWESOME!
All in all, it was quite the day of flying.
Heavens rejoice! Angels are singing! The semester is over and I survived taking two classes on top of all my other overcommittments -- and I think I may have even managed to earn an A in both classes. (For the first time since taking classes at UHCL, this was in doubt. It's easy to earn an A when I take a single class. It's harder when I double the class workload and add in all the other stuff from this spring!) I had my final test in my digital media studies class last night and as I walked out just before 8:30, hand aching from the four pages of essay questions I had to write, I felt so, so relieved.
(Side note: When did my hand become so wussy? In high school, I used to write pages upon pages of notes by hand. I only remember my hand aching once -- my senior year, towards the end of the week of IB exams. By that point I'd probably hand-written tens of pages of discussion and essay questions. Ugh. I can type much faster than I can write, that's for sure.)
My 3D modeling class finished up last week when we all presented our final projects. The assignment was to create a story and depict it using at least 5 models and 10 frames. Now, I'm not much of a writer so the story part was a little tough, but it was easy to come up with something I wanted to model. Since I'm already starting to think about our November trip to Japan, I decided to model some Japanese things and write a story about a ninja. I'm not going to include the cheesy storyline that goes along with the scene I depicted, but I'll show you the models. I was pretty happy with how the project turned out. Four months ago I had zero knowledge of how to use 3D modeling software, much less make something actually look somewhat realistic. And after four months, I was able to produce this! Pretty cool -- though the learning curve for Maya is so freaking steep that I could continue for another year and still not understand how to do everything I want.
