June 2008 Archives

First things first about this morning's Y Freedom Tri: I finished 6 minutes faster than last year, repeated as 1st place Athena, and averaged more than 20 miles per hour on the bike for the first time ever! Yee-ha!

Since my mom is in town, I even have photos of my race. I think she enjoyed watching the race -- it was the first time she'd ever been to a triathlon. And I definitely enjoyed having a cheerleader! We had to get up just after 5:00 and left my apartment at 5:30 to drive over to Pearland. We got there with plenty of time to walk over to the park and set up my transition area. I'd made sure to get there early because I had a box of BAM jerseys to deliver to some racers, but I managed to immediately pass those off to a BAMmer who wasn't racing.

Mom took a photo of this guy's shirt -- his daughter had made it for him and on the front it said "Go Jen Go" or something like that. I guess I need to make one for my mom the next time she comes to a tri! Since she only visits once a year, that won't be for a while though. Still, cool shirt.

Here I am mere seconds away from starting the swim. It was a pool swim (obviously) held in the 50-meter public pool at Independence Park in Pearland. It was nice that I'd just swum in a 50-meter pool last week at the Sugarland Women's Tri, so I expected the wall to feel far away. There was a lot more congestion on this swim than there was last week, and I passed 3 or 4 people in the water. There were stairs at the end of the pool that made it very easy to get out of the water, so that was nice. I ran out of the pool, through the grass, and finally crossed the timing mat into transition with a time of 6:34. Actual swimming time was probably about 6:10, which is exactly what I reported (which put me at #106).

There I am running into transition. I got in and out of there in 52 seconds. There was carpet down in the aisle of transition to make it easier to run in bare feet (the parking lot was very pebbly and uncomfortable), but it make for some slippery running in bike shoes. Thankfully I made it out unscathed and hopped on my bike. The 12 mile course is flat and fast, but there are four U-turns that force you to slow down. Still, it's fairly easy to get a good rhythm going. What I couldn't do was break free of a pack of three other women! We leapfrogged each other for the entire 12 miles, none of us ever really breaking away. We maintained enough space between us so as to not get penalized for drafting, but that was it.

I finished the bike in 36:22. Now, if the ride was exactly 12 miles, that's an average of 19.8 mph. But my Garmin measured 12.26 (and last year it measured 12.25), and tris are notorious for rounding the distance to the nearest whole number. Assuming 12.25 miles, that's an average of 20.2 mph! This agrees with what I saw while riding -- I hardly ever saw my speed drop below 20 or 21. And since I didn't give myself credit for 20+ last week since Garmin read 9.5, I'm going to stick with Garmin and pat myself on the back for my first race where I averaged greater than 20 mph on the bike! Woohoo! Next goal: average 20 mph on both the Garmin and the official results. ;-)

I got through T2 in 50 seconds and headed out for the run. Not much to say about it. The first mile follows a crushed gravel path along a bayou, so that's a scenic route. The next two miles are through a neighborhood, and there was the occasional homeowner outside cheering, but other than that it was pretty quiet. I was not wearing my watch, and I actually felt like I was running pretty solidly, but my time shows otherwise. 33:56. Ugh! I really thought I'd covered the distance about a minute faster than that, so I was a little bummed.

Nonetheless, I finished the race in 1:18:34, which is more than 6 minutes faster than last year. The difference is entirely due to a faster bike. My swim and transitions were slightly faster, while my run was about a minute slower. I repeated my title as 1st place Athena and got a cool pint glass with the race logo and "Athena Winner" on it! I liked the award a lot.

All in all, another fun day at the races. We had more than 20 BAMmers out there and many of them placed in their age groups, so it was a successful day all around. I'm not actually sure what my next race is -- but it will probably be the Webster Duathlon at the end of July. Oh, and I'll probably show up at one of the 4th of July 5Ks on Friday.

I get a lot of packages. So many that the girls who work in the office of my apartment complex know me on sight and by the time I actually get into the office, they usually have my package out and waiting. At first I was embarassed -- I probably get an average of 1-2 packages per week, which didn't seem excessive. Some weeks I get a lot, and some weeks I get none. But the apartment girls must think I'm made of money! Really, it's just that I do 80% of my shopping online. Why would I suffer the traffic around the mall and the crowds in the stores when I can usually find the item I want online for 10-20% cheaper. Sure, sometimes I have to pay shipping, but often it's free. And sure, buying online means you have to wait for it to be delivered, but I'm usually patient enough to wait.

Last week I got three packages on one day, which made the apartment girls tease me again, but oh well. They were all things that I couldn't get at an actual store -- an airplane headset off ebay, plus two pairs of shoes. Yes, I order shoes online. I wear a size 11, and I challenge you to find a store that carries a decent amount of stock and selection in that size. Ten years ago I had to buy men's athletic shoes, so I admit that stores have gotten better about serving bigfeet like myself, but they are still very lacking in selection. Even a huge store like DSW disappoints, and I find that when I'm there instead of looking for a shoe I like, it's easier to just scan the aisles looking for size 11s (often marked with a bright sticker, I suppose because it is an "unusual" size) and then see if I happen to like the shoe.

One pair of shoes came from Zappos, and the experience was so impressive that I feel compelled to share it. I ordered the shoes on Wednesday afternoon. They offered free standard shipping, so I went with that. Then, Wednesday evening, I got an email saying they'd upgraded my shipping at no charge. On Friday morning, I got another email with the package tracking number -- but that email was useless because the shoes had already arrived on Thursday! Ordered Wednesday evening, arrived sometime Thursday, and were waiting at my apartment complex office when I got home. That is less than 24 hours. I am impressed. This is why I shop online. So much easier.

In other news, where did the week go? Suddenly it's Friday, but of course that's a good thing. My mom is in town this weekend, so it should be lots of fun. Tonight we're going to the Astros-Red Sox game and will stick around for Friday night fireworks after that. Tomorrow we're going to see Wall-E (I am so excited, I have been waiting for Waaaaaaaaallleeeeeee for months!), and Sunday morning Mom is going to come cheer for me at the Y Tri in Pearland. I'm sure we will also eat some good food and go shopping at some point before she leaves on Tuesday.

I went running last night after the afternoon storms blew through, and the temperature was actually bearable! It was humid as all get out, and I sweated buckets, but at least the temperature was a little cooler. It was a pretty decent run. Lately I have been allowing myself to do run/walks because it's what I've mentally needed to get out the door. I don't know if this is just a hotter summer, or if I just haven't adjusted but I have been dying in the heat thus far. I start sweating as soon as I walk out the door -- whether to exercise or just to go to work! Good thing the biking is going well. Check out this shot of me from last Sunday's tri. I like it 'cause it makes me look fast!

The guy who marked my age on the back of my leg got a little creative yesterday. I didn't even know it was there. Jose noticed it when I got home, and it made me laugh.

After the huge storms that rolled through last night, it was actually a fairly nice morning for a tri. Nice for June anyway. Humid, but not too hot. I signed up for the Sugarland Women's Tri about a week and a half ago on a whim. And though I hate driving to Sugar Land, this was a great race for which to make that sacrifice. I did this race 4 years ago in its previous incarnation as the Speedo Women's Tri, so it was fun to return to a course that I only vaguely remembered.

I arrived with just enough time to set up my transition area without being rushed, then head over to get my chip, make a stop by the bathroom, and walk over to the pool deck. This race is held at a really nice aquatic center, and the pool was the nicest I've ever been in with the exception of the pool at Georgia Tech (which was built for the 1996 Olympics). I was one of only 5 BAMmers doing this race, and the only one wearing a spiffy BAM jersey, so I wasn't sure if I'd find the other girls or not. But I met Kathy while in the bathroom line, and saw Stephanie on the pool deck later. I saw Cathy (a different Cathy) after the race as well.

The swim was once again seeded by estimated 300 meter swim time. I'd estimated 6:10 which put me at #85. This was a 50 meter pool, so it was big enough to start two people at once, one on either side of the pool with the exit in the middle. I lined up with the odd numbers. As the race began, there was a girl (#90-something) who was standing between me and the girl in front of me. She was making all sorts of crazy comments about the people in the water -- saying things like "oh that person's gonna get caught," and "look at her form, it's crap!" I thought it was pretty presumptious of her to critique the form of the women in the pool who were obvious faster than her (given her race seeding), but whatever.

I hopped in the water and was off. I haven't been in a 50 meter pool since last year at the Y Tri, and though my brain knows that it's twice the distance of my normal pool, it still feels like it takes forever to get across the pool. Where was that wall?? I passed two girls in front of me -- one who had stopped because she was having a problem with her goggles, and another who was just going slow. Three laps later I was done in 6:11! Did I seed myself correctly or what?

(As a side note, I looked through the results and there were only 2 people -- myself and another girl -- within plus/minus 15 bib numbers that swam anywhere close to a 6:10. This is the part of pool swims that I hate. My bib number was 85, I swam within 1 second of what I predicted, but 6:11 turned out to be the 38th fastest time overall. That's almost 50 people who seeded themselves too fast! People just do not seed themselves correctly! Pet peeve!)

The volunteers at the end of the swim were a little overzealous in dragging me out of the pool, and I ended up with a couple minor scrapes on my knees. No matter. I was on my way into transition in no time. Shoes on feet, helmet on head and I was off while the girl who'd started the swim just ahead of me was still putting her stuff together. T1 time 50 seconds.

I got on the bike and started pedaling. I'd like to average 20 mph in a race sometime this year, and I was determined to give it my best effort. My run is always slow, so I don't see much point in holding back on the bike. I might as well go hard. I whizzed down the road, passing a lot of girls in the process. I probably passed 20-25 people over the short course, and no one passed me. I rolled back into transition in 29:05. The race was advertised as a 10-mile ride, but my Garmin read 9.5 miles -- so I was either just over or just under a 20 mph average. Either way, that is my fastest bike split ever in a race, so I was very excited about that. And as I came into T2, I was greeted with a bunch of empty racks. The racks were laid out in order, so the first couple racks were full since the people who'd started the swim far ahead of me had already headed out for the run. But there was still a lot of empty space in the 40-80 bib number range. I was #85, but I beat the majority of the 50s, 60s, and 70s back into T2. That was a good feeling.

I got through T2 in 58 seconds. It was a little slower than T1 because I had to run farther in my bike shoes (slow) and I had to pause at the rack for a couple seconds to keep from falling over as I reached down to change shoes. Yep, I rode hard on the bike.

As I ran out of T2, a girl ran up beside me and said something like "wow, #85, you're amazing!" (I wish I could remember what she actually said, because it was better.) She was #42, so I must have passed her on the bike. I couldn't help but laugh as I said "I may be a pretty good swimmer and biker, but you haven't seen me run yet. 11:00 miles, oh yeah." But it turns out that she was a lot like me and runs the same pace. "Who cares," she said, "you just smoked all of us on the bike!" That was definitely a confidence booster. I pulled ahead of her on the run, but I looked at her results and she must have finished just a few seconds behind me real-time (a few minutes chip time). I saw her again after the race and we congratulated each other.

The run was, as usual, sucky. Yet again, I am forced to admit that, without question, the run is where I have the most room to improve -- by leaps and bounds. Each mile felt like an eternity. But I managed to keep it steady and ended up finishing the 3 miles in 33:50. I had hoped to get 11:00 pace, but it was not to be.

My final time was 1:10:54. The race had no Athena category so it wasn't a hardware day for me, but I did finish 13th (out of 32) in the 30-34 age group. In my age group I was 6th in swim, 4th in T1, 4th on the bike, 4th in T2 (if it had been an aquabike, I would've placed 5th!)...and 21st on the run. Sigh.

Overall it was a very fun race and I'm pleased with my results. Maybe next year at Lonestar I'll enter the aquabike and go for my first piece of "legitimate" hardware... ;-)

Jen passed her checkride yesterday and is now an officially licensed pilot! Yes, there is an absurdly high number of pilots in my group of friends. Then again, we are all aerospace engineers, so I suppose it's me that's unusual for not having one, instead of the other way around. We celebrated by sitting around Jen's kitchen table and drinking and talking for three hours, which was a lot of fun. For once, we didn't degrade into talk about the office, and instead spent the whole night laughing at funny stories about camping, reality TV, the various absurdities of our work gym and sports leagues, the rapidly growing number of women we know who are pregnant, and of course, flying.

Jen seems to have gotten a fairly normal examiner for her checkride. When I say "normal," I really mean "not insane." The examiner is a freaking superwoman -- she flies in and wins aerobatic flying competitions, performs at airshows, is a captain for Southwest, and owns her own flying school specializing in aerobatics. But compared to stories from Jose's and Byron's checkrides, Jen's examiner was downright boring.

Jose never got around to writing a blog entry about his own checkride, but he had a certifiably crazy examiner. The guy was flying in from College Station, and the first thing he did was enter the landing pattern at the Pearland airport going the wrong direction. Oops. That was only the beginning. He was wearing some kind of crazy sweatshirt with a howling wolf on it that said "Alpha Wolf." When his laptop booted up, which happened often because it kept on crashing, it said "how may I serve you, master" in a sexy girl voice. He typed incessantly on his Blackberry, claiming he was taking notes. And then, when filling out some paperwork, he tore off Jose's social security number and ate it. So that the Yankee government wouldn't have it.

But it was Byron's examiner that won the awesome quote contest. When he asked Byron what a group of orange traffic cones reminded him of, he mentioned that they look like psychadelic witches that have melted into the pavement. I can never look at traffic cones again without thinking about psychadelic witches melting.

I think I may need to learn to fly, just to get a good story.

He got his pilot's license back in February, but Jose hasn't actually owned his own headset until yesterday! After months of borrowing Becca's headset and spares, and having to drop by her house all the time to pick them up, he treated himself to a brand new headset of his own, and it arrived yesterday. Coincidentally, mine also arrived! Mine (which is necessary for my role as Jose's #1 passenger) is a used headset I bought off ebay for $50. It wasn't until after I bought it that I realized apparently it's a helicopter headset, and I now get to spend another $40 for an adapter to convert it to general aviation use. Oh well, that's what I get for using ebay! It was still way cheaper than a new one.

Back in March, Jose and I were sitting in the massive traffic backup that was the rodeo. (We found out later that we ended up going on a day that was sold out, so there were more then 80,000 people there, apparently.) As we sat in traffic, on an unusually hot day for March, my car's air conditioning suddenly ceased to be cold. Then I noticed that the needle for engine temperature was pegged on H. Not good. The temperature came back down each time we started moving again, but when we were stopped in traffic, the car started overheating again.

I never noticed it again until the weather warmed up, but lately it has been happening pretty much every time I'm stuck in traffic. I've managed to avoid pegging the engine on high, but the needle has definitely been climbing. And that's definitely not supposed to happen.

Now, I'm an engineer, but that doesn't mean I know anything about car engines. In fact, they really intimidate me, in much the same way that the thought of working on my bicycle intimidates me -- I'm terrified that in trying to make something better, I will screw it up and ruin it entirely.

But, as Jose kept telling me, it's just an engine. And my coworker Ray encouraged me to get the Haynes manual for my car, that goes into great detail about how to do a lot of maintenance from the easy stuff to the much more difficult. I bought that and read through the section on the engine's cooling system and then, after much research, and much talking to Ray, Jason, Byron and my other friends that are knowledgeable about cars, I determined the following:

• I might need a new thermostat.
• I might need a new cooling fan clutch.
• I might just need more coolant.

After all my questions, reading, and Internet surfing, it appears that all I needed was more coolant. The level in the reservoir was less than minimum, and opening the radiator cap revealed a dry interior, when the Internets (and my car's user manual) said I should see coolant up to the top. So on Sunday night Jose and I added a whole bunch of coolant to the system and voila -- the temperature needle has not risen above the halfway mark all week!

I feel rather dumb to discover in the end that all I needed was more coolant. But I am also a little bit proud that I solved the problem on my own (albeit with help from my friends)! And I learned a lot more about how my engine's cooling system works in the process, so that was pretty cool.

This may not be the end of the story, since I do plan to keep watching the system in case I have a leak somewhere (I mean, how did the system get so low on coolant in the first place?), but for now I'm feeling quite happy and maybe just a tiny bit mechanically-inclined after all.

Next up: cleaning my bike chain! All by myself!

It's only Tuesday but it's already been a weird week. I find myself trying to get certified to work a position that, for now, is specific to the space shuttle. The space shuttle, however, is going to stop flying in two years. There are lots of decisions being made about how to conclude flight controller training for the shuttle and begin to transition a large part of the NASA workforce to the new Constellation program. And I feel pinched. I really, really want to finish the training flow I am about to begin, and I really, really want to be able to work a shuttle flight as lead rendezvous officer before the program ends. I feel like I need this certification, and the ensuing experience, in order to put myself in a decent position to make contributions to the future vehicle -- and to position myself for a fulfilling job after the shuttle program ends. But upper management is trying to figure out how to reduce the number of sims that we run. This is necessary to free up people to work the new program, but it also adversely affects people like me who are still in a training flow. It's a race against time, but many of the factors involved are beyond my control, and I'm afraid that I might not win. So I feel very anxious about my future career.

I swam 1800 yards last night and I can feel it in my arms and back today. It was a good swim, three sets of 500 yards freestyle, each followed by 100 yards of breaststroke. There was a crazy guy two lanes over from me. I couldn't figure out what he was doing. As I left, I noticed his bag had tags hanging off it that read "Speedo" and "Athlete" and things like that -- they looked like athlete passes from some kind of event. But his behavior in the pool was just strange. He never swam more than 50 yards without taking an extended break. He swam each of those 50 yards all-out, but his breaks were so long that it didn't seem as if he was doing any sort of structured workout. At one point, he wore flippers on his feet and paddled backstroke furiously while his body was angled in the water at about 45 degrees. I can't even describe well what he was doing but it was strange. Basically, everything he did seemed designed to produce the maximum amount of splash and noise. Weird.

I bought two more orchids last night at HEB. I know, HEB! A grocery store. Seems like a strange place to buy orchids, but they were only $9.99 and they looked very healthy. Plus, they were both still blooming, so now I've got some new flowers to enjoy while my purple one goes dormant for the year -- or whatever it is they do.

After two up-and-down years, I surrendered the HARRA webmaster position to someone else. I enjoyed working on the website, and being a part of the HARRA board, even if I wasn't very active as a board member. I enjoyed redesigning the site and getting things up and running with a new system. But after two years, I needed a break from the day-to-day maintenance work, and from the emails from members asking questions that were new to them, but that I felt like I'd answered a thousand times already. I think I'm a lot more interested in website design than in website maintenance anyway. It will be good to have fresh blood working on the site.

Ok. That was one crazy awesome weekend. I've never been quite as annoyed to have to wake up, come to work, and hear that I might never actually get certified to work in the front room because the grand plan is to start cutting generic sims as soon as possible. But I am trying to keep my frustration at bay by remembering my weekend. Which was awesome.

 

Friday night Jen, Debbie, Jose and I headed downtown to the Astros game. They lost by the disappointing score of 2-1, but at least we got to enjoy the Friday Night Fireworks after the game. They really spare no expense with those things!

I had originally planned to get up Saturday morning and run the BARC Predict-Your-Time 5K and also renew my membership for the next year, but that was before I remembered that we had scheduled a BAM board meeting for 8:00 that morning! I was disappointed to miss the run, but we got some good stuff done at the BAM meeting. I got home in time to watch the STS-124 landing on NASA TV, and then Jose and I spent the rest of the day bumming around and running errands. I tried to buy a new camera (point and shoot), but Circuit City only had it in pink and I want blue. Hey, if I'm paying $200, I might as well get the color I want, right?

We had just started wondering what to do for dinner and how to spend our evening when Becca and Byron invited us to go sailing on Byron's boat. That turned out to be the perfect activity for the evening.

We got out on the water just as the sun was setting and it was really nice. We had rushed to get out while it was still light because one of Byron's friends wanted us to take some photos of his boat. After sailing up next to him and trading cameras, we sailed neck-and-neck for a while snapping photos and video as we went.

They headed back in while we continued to sail south along the shore for a while. The sun went down and you could see a lot more stars out there on the bay than you ever can from Clear Lake. Kemah shrank to just a small speck of neon on the horizon. After a while, we turned around to head back and the wind pretty much died. We were pulling about 2.5 knots with 4 miles still to go when Byron's friend called -- the motor on his boat had died, which made it nearly impossible for them to get back into their marina. We ended up putting the outboard motor back in the water and motoring the rest of the way back to Kemah to help them out. We towed them into the Kemah marina and then motored our way back under the bridge and into Clear Lake back to the Watergate Marina where Byron is currently keeping his boat. By the time we got back it was almost 11:30! I was pooped, but sailing was definitely a fun way to spend the evening.

As if that weren't enough, Jose and I got up early Sunday morning to go flying! Sailing and flying in less than 24 hours. Jose wanted to get up and back early before it got too hot, and that was a great idea as far as I was concerned -- yesterday had to have been one of the hottest days of the year so far. We were roasting on the ramp while Jose pre-flighted the plane. I did the two jobs I know how to do -- take off the cover and untie the plane. I really should learn how to do more of the pre-flight checks so I can do something other than stand there. It took us forever to get the plane started -- the engine just did not want to turn over. It finally roared to life after about 10 tries, and off we went.

It had gotten late enough that we only had about an hour to fly before we needed to be back to get ready for the Astros game yesterday afternoon, so we just flew over Clear Lake and Kemah before heading south to the coast. I even flew the plane for about 10 minutes, just keeping it straight and level. Oh, but I did fly a couple shallow turns. Fun! Just before we hit the coast, we turned to head back to Pearland. I was looking at the map to figure out exactly where we were, but I never felt sick. Hooray! As we got closer to the airport, I actually spotted the runway before Jose. That doesn't usually happen, since he's got so much more experience looking for the place.

We had an exciting landing because the wind was entirely crosswind, but of course Jose did a great job and squeak -- our tires hit the concrete and we were back. We didn't have time to dawdle since we immediately headed home to shower and meet Jen and Jason for what turned out to be a miserable day at Minute Maid Park. The Yankees won 13-0. It sucked. I'm so glad that I paid twice the normal ticket price to see the Astros get swept. (Yes, tickets for this series -- and the Red Sox series in two weeks -- were twice as expensive as any other series.) Cooper even decided to rest Berkman, Matsui and Wigginton, three regular starters. For a sold out game. On Father's Day. It was crap. Just crap.

We had dinner over at Gavin and Jen's house before the third and fourth episodes of "When We Left Earth" on the Discovery Channel. Carina was still awake when we got there for dinner and big news -- she has started walking! We saw her take a couple very small steps on her own, and man was she pushing her plastic walker around the living room like noboby's business. It was great. Go Carina.

With all that activity, I didn't get a chance to go to Ellington for the STS-124 Welcome Home ceremony yesterday. But that doesn't change the fact that they are safely home after a beautiful landing in Florida on Saturday morning. My first mission as rendezvous support is officially over.

There are more photos of all the weekend activities on Flickr if you're interested.

Every time I pass an orchid -- at Lowe's, at a restaurant, anywhere -- I always stop to admire it. They are such beautiful plants, especially when they're flowering! However, I'd never bought one for myself, because I have always heard that they are hard to care for, and even harder to nuture well enough that it blooms again after the initial time. But there's a first time for everything, and for my birthday back in March, Jose gave me a gorgeous orchid. And I love it.

The problem is that the blooms have finally all fallen off, and I'm anxiously trying to figure out what I need to do to care for it in hopes that it will bloom again. (Side note: at first I was worried that I had done something wrong to cause all the blooms to drop. But then we were at Lowe's over the weekend, and I noticed that every single one of their orchids was bloom-less. So it must just be that time of year?)

Anyway, I've searched all over the web, but there is so much information, and much of it conflicts because there seem to be a zillion different types of orchids. The tag on mine said nothing but "dendrobium." Does anyone out there have experience with orchids? Do I need to cut the stalk now that the flowers have fallen off, or should I leave it? Do I need to do something special with fertilizer? Or just keep watering it weekly like I have been?

If I can keep this one going, I'm totally filling my apartment with orchids.

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I ran yesterday. At 5:15. I did the same workout that some BAM people were doing elsewhere -- a ladder of 200-400-800-400-200 with 200 rest between each one. I walked each of the rest portions. It was incredibly hot. After the 800, I felt like throwing up, so I took it slightly easier on the remaining 400 and 200. I did feel better by the time I got to my cooldown, and so I did the whole mile. Total running was 4 miles. That's the most in quite a while. Baby steps...

Last night I emerged from my STS-124 bubble and headed downtown with Jason, Cari and Jose to see Eddie Izzard at Jones Hall. I took a three hour nap yesterday afternoon, and without that I doubt I would have made it through the show awake. But I did, and he was very funny. I like his brand of comedy mainly because he takes ordinary things like religion and history and science and makes them funny. He doesn't just tell redneck jokes, or make fun of how women drive, or any of that. He does intelligent comedy, which I find hilarious. I'd heard from the Twitterverse that Eddie would come out into the lobby after the show for an informal Q&A session, but we were all tired and didn't stick around. We are lame.

Now that the mission is over, it's time to catch up on life in general. It's already mid-June! When did that happen? This weekend will be busy but fun. We've got tickets to see the Astros play the Yankees on both Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Saturday morning is the BARC Predict Your Time - Pay Your Dues 5K. Sunday morning there's a triathlon in Clear Lake that I may sign up for, since you can register as late as Saturday. I'm tempted. But the more likely scenario is that I'll just go watch and cheer. The Y Tri is only two weeks ago, which is close enough for my summertime monthly tri fix.

After launch on May 31, rendezvous last Monday, and lots of little issues to work over the past week, my involvement in STS-124 finally came to a close this morning as the shuttle undocked from the space station, did a lazy lap around the ISS to take lots of pretty pictures, and then departed into the darkness of space. Discovery is headed for a landing in Florida on Saturday, assuming the weather there is good.

Undocking was completely uneventful, as it should be. Just before the second separation burn, the crew called down and thanked both the rendezvous training lead and the lead rendezvous officer (the front room guy) by name for their help in preparing them for flight. Since I was the third wheel on that team, I was excited to hear my coworkers get called out on the air-to-ground. Hopefully my own mission as lead (STS-129, which seems eons away) will be just as cool.

But to be ready for that mission, whenever it finally arrives, means getting certified as a Rendezvous GPO. And my first sim in the front room is in two weeks! I'm nervous already. I'll be working an undock sim (undocks are easier than rendezvous) and will have an experienced person with me, but I have to -- gasp! -- talk to the flight director! In 2.5 years of training and working flights, I've never had to talk to the flight director. It's a little intimidating. But I know it will feel really good to get out there in the front room and do it. I'll only get one lead flight before the shuttle program ends, but dang it, I'm going to make it count.

Tomorrow I am sleeping until a TBD time. All I know is that it will definitely be later than 7 a.m. I haven't slept later than 7 since Memorial Day, and most days have been much earlier than that! I'm exhausted. I don't know how all you early morning runners do it.

Ah, the iPhone. Apple introduced the "Gen 2" version yesterday, as you may have heard. It runs on the 3G network and it's got GPS. But other than that, there are no huge hardware changes. I don't really need 3G and GPS so for once I'll overcome my need to have all things tech -- gasp! -- So I'll be keeping my current iPhone and upgrading to the new firmware. Which looks great! Lots of updates and the app store is finally coming out so I can add 3rd party programs. I do adore my iPhone and now that it's only $199, I think they are going to sell a crapload of them.

In other news, after this morning we have all our ducks in a row for the undocking tomorrow. The events summary is finalized with times of all the important milestones -- when the Shuttle-ISS stack gets into the proper attitude for undocking, when the solar arrays are properly configured so as to avoid any damage from pluming by the shuttle's thrusters, when we undock. After that, we do a one lap flyaround of the ISS so that we can get some pretty pictures, and then it's time for the two separation burns that take the shuttle on its merry way away from ISS and towards a landing on Saturday. Undocking is scheduled for 6:42 a.m. Central time and should stay there, barring any problems. But this has been a very problem-free mission (knock on wood). Good stuff. And only one more early morning for me!

The only downside is that my odd hours have left me with little-to-no energy or motivation to work out. I'm not going to beat myself up about it. Instead, I'm going to jump back in after we undock tomorrow. I'm tired of beating myself up about what I do, how often I do it, and how hard I push myself. I'm also just tired. :)

It's 4:30 in the morning and I am currently contemplating whether there is really any value to having a slew of flight controllers on console in the wee hours of the morning when their mental and physical states are very likely compromised by lack of sleep. I first walked past the vending machines at 4:05 a.m. and noticed a guy attempting to purchase a snack. He put in a coin and it went straight through and came out the coin return. So he tried again. And again.

I just walked by the machines a second time, a full 10 minutes later, and the guy was still there, and still inputting a coin again, and again, and again. One would hope that he took a break somewhere in there to go find a different coin or something, but I'm not so sure. Keeping weird hours makes everyone a little loopy.

I like flight control. But I'm not so in love with flight control that means setting my alarm for 3 a.m. (and 2:30 a.m. tomorrow, and 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday). It's not that I'm particularly a morning or a night person -- I've found that I can be either if I adjust my schedule accordingly. No, it's mainly that I just don't do well with a lack of sleep. It may be an obvious statement, but that doesn't make it any less true. As a freshman in college, I went to bed around midnight every night -- which was quite a bit earlier than most of the people on my hall. By senior year, I was staying up until the wee hours of the morning on a regular basis and even pulled a couple all-nighters. Looking back on it now, I can safely say that I was a complete and total basket case during my last semester at Georgia Tech. I was already anxious about graduating and what the future held. Add the incredible lack of sleep I subjected myself to for months on end, and I was a physical and emotional mess. UGH. I shudder just remembering those days (which, to be fair, had some spectacular moments as well).

But old habits die hard, and I stayed up too late last night -- 10:30! -- but it was because I had to watch the first two episodes of "When We Left Earth." I had built up such high expectations of what the old footage should/could look like in HD that I was a little disappointed to be reminded that HD is only as good as the original film. Some clips looked really good, but others were still as grainy and oddly color-balanced as ever. Still, there was a lot of footage in both episodes that I had never seen before and it was fun to watch. I can't wait for the last couple episodes dealing with the shuttle program though, primarily because I think the HD there will really be high definition as we've come to think of it.

I think this is the preview Karen is referring to in her comment on my last post. There is a short clip of someone on the Vomit Comet, but it is not me. The majority of the footage that Discovery has cleaned up and digitized in HD is from the early NASA programs. The clip of the Vomit Comet looks, to me (based on other video I've seen), like something from the early days of the shuttle program.

Nonetheless, When We Left Earth looks like an awesome series and I hope many of you will check it out. It is one of the coolest things I've seen thus far being done to celebrate NASA's 50th birthday this year. The series begins this Sunday night on the Discovery channel, and I totally invited myself over to Gavin and Jen's place to mooch a viewing on their HDTV. You can come too! I'm sure they won't mind. ;)

The early hours are starting to get to me, less because of the earliness itself and more because it's just hard to go to bed at 8:30 p.m. and thus be prepared for the 4:30 a.m. alarm. Thankfully, I get to take tomorrow and Sunday off. This is the 11th day in a row that I've worked (my last day off was Memorial Day) so I'm looking forward to my weekend. I'll still be getting up early, since on Monday our on-console time is 4:00 a.m. Here I am looking a little more awake, since this was taken last Monday in the middle of the rendezvous. This is the first time I've actually gotten a photo of me on console working, since the photographers never come into our back room during the launch shift (too many people).

If you want to know I'm doing, well, I'm watching my displays. I'm also trying to ignore the fact that there is a camera in my face, and I'd really like to talk photography. But we're in the middle of a rendezvous here, people! :)

NASA TV is currently showing replays of the video taken from the solid rocket boosters on launch. It's pretty cool -- watching the liftoff and first couple minutes of ascent, followed by a gorgeous view of the shuttle leaving the booster behind as it begins to fall back to earth.

Today the crew is working on installing more equipment inside the new Japanese module. Here's video from Wednesday, when they opened the module for the first time and the astronauts got to bounce off the walls for a while. Now that they are installing lockers and other equipment on each side ("floor" and "ceiling" too), it doesn't like quite as spacious. Still big though.

So I fell off my bike last night. Off my bike that was stationary on my trainer. Actually, I suppose to be more precise, I should say that my bike fell off the trainer, and I happened to be on it at the time.

I was on my new tri bike, which I have put on the trainer without issue twice before, and was only about 8 minutes into my almost hour-long session. Suddenly, I felt myself shifting. Amazingly, my brain processed what was happening very quickly. Things went into slow motion. "I'm falling," I thought. And so I was.

As you can see in this photo from a year and a half ago, my apartment is pretty tiny, and my bike is set up between a chair and the coffee table. I fell to the left, and so it actually wasn't too much of a disaster. My left hip landed on the coffee table, and my reaction was quick enough that I was able to catch myself with my left arm. My left foot came out of the pedal, but my right foot remained clipped in. One side of the trainer ended up stuck between the spokes of my rear wheel, but upon removing it and inspecting it closely, there does not appear to be any damage. No damage to the bike, yes, but I did not escape the fall totally unscathed, and I now have a bruise on both sides of my left knee -- one from hitting the table, and one from the bike hitting me!

I quickly figured out the culprit. One side of the rear skewer that I thought was a metal cap that screwed onto the end of the skewer to hold it in place is actually just a plastic cap covering a very small metal nut. It was only a matter of time, it seems, before I fell off, since obviously the plastic was not capable of holding the load of the bike plus me. A quick trip to the garage to retrieve a different skewer remedied the problem, and I was riding again within 10 minutes.

All in all, a funny story, although the bike ride itself was not good. I felt totally worn out and lacking energy. My usual plan on the trainer is to pull up an hour-long show on the Tivo, and cycle hard through the commercials as intervals. After the first commercial break, I could not maintain it. I tried to cycle hard through the remaining breaks, but I kept on having to use lower and lower gears. I was pooped, so I stopped at 15 miles, or just shy of 55 minutes. (I recently got around to installing the Garmin speed/cadence sensor, and now in addition to cadence, which I never had before, I can also get speed and distance even when I am indoors.) I spent the rest of the night in a funk because I felt fat, slow, and tired. Ah well. Just one of those days.

In other athletic news, my name was not drawn in the NYC marathon lottery. This is actually an ok thing, since I will be in Japan the same weekend that the marathon takes place! This is year #2 that I have not gotten in. One more year of rejection and I get an automatic spot. If I don't get in next year, I'll be automatic to get in for 2010. I'd really like to run this race sometime, so I'll keep playing the lottery! Congratulations to June, who did get in this year. I know how badly she wanted it, so I was very happy to see "accepted" next to her name. She's gonna do great.

I've been admiring some fun composite photos by one of the people I follow on Flickr, so this morning at 6 a.m. while on console, I decided to try it myself using my iPhone as the camera. I put them together in Photoshop and this is the result. It was a fun little project to do, so expect to see more various scene composites in my photostream.

The new Japanese module, Kibo, was just "ingressed" today -- meaning they opened the door and went inside. It is huge! The crew looked like they were having a lot of fun bouncing off the walls -- literally. There aren't even any wall lockers installed yet, so the module is nothing but empty space in which to play. I bet those are the most fun times to be an astronaut.

On Sunday afternoon after I got off work, I went home just long enough to change clothes before heading out to meet my BAM buddies at Twin Lakes. I've known about the place forever, but never actually took a trip out there. As much as I know that open water swim practice is worthwhile, 1) it's a 30-minute drive, absolute minimum, to get there and 2) I don't actually like open water very much. It's not that I don't trust my swimming ability, but rather something about not being able to see, not knowing what's below me in the murk, mud, and FISH. Ew. I'm just not a huge open water fan.

But it was fun to finally make it out there. There were tons of people out enjoying the brilliantly sunny day. There are picnic tables and grills (at least I assume so, since I smelled grilling) and multiple docks to jump in from. Some parts of the lake are very deep, but other parts were so shallow we had to wade through the muck to continue swimming. It would be a great place for a group get-together and/or picnic.

Anyway, I ended up swimming two laps around the perimeter of the lake, which I estimate to be about 1800 meters, in 42 minutes. It was my longest swim workout in a few weeks, so I definitely needed it. My arms were even a little sore yesterday. After the swim I sat around on the dock for a while talking tri and enjoying the day. It won't be my last visit to Twin Lakes.

We docked to the space station today! I half expected it to be boring, since in real life there are far fewer issues and problems to work on during the 6-hour rendezvous. But then again, for the first time ever, I was sitting on console for a rendezvous that was happening for real. Like, in real life. And that was very exciting.

During the first part of the rendezvous, as we began to take data with the star tracker, the crew "invited us onboard." What that means is that they had a camera running on the flight deck that we were able to downlink to the ground. It was fun watching them on TV. Mark Kelly, the commander, was having fun spinning his rendezvous procedures book around in zero g, and I saw a lot of smiles and laughter. I'm sure they were very happy to get to the ISS without incident.

(That book he's holding, by the way? It's the rendezvous procedures book. And for this mission, I was the rendezvous book manager, in addition to working the flight from the control center. That means I made sure that everything in that book got updated correctly. Two weeks ago, I was looking through that book -- the very copy he is holding on the space shuttle -- to make sure that the official flight copies were accurate. Then it got shipped to Florida, loaded onto the space shuttle, and now it's in orbit. Pretty cool.)

It was an eventful rendezvous. Everything went very smoothly, but there were a couple things that were "normal-but-unusual," meaning that there were a couple things that we (and the crew) are prepared to handle, but don't always happen. The first interesting thing happened during the star tracker pass. We use a star tracker, normally used to track stars (duh) and use it to track the space station instead, since at a distance the station looks like a very bright star. The data we get from the star tracker helps us update our position in space to be as accurate as possible relative to the space station. During our star tracker pass today, there were 5 stars that passed through the field of view! This is interesting because there is always a chance that the star tracker could get confused and lock onto one of those stars instead of the space station, and screw up our navigation. That didn't happen today, but we had to watch the data very carefully just in case.

We also did two of our rendezvous burns using the right OMS engine. Again, this isn't a big deal, but we usually use the left engine. The left engine had a minor problem during ascent, so to be safe, we aren't going to use it again until it's time to deorbit. Because we used the right OMS engine, we had to be in a slightly different orientation during two of our burns. And that slightly different orientation meant that there was an increased chance that our radar would lose its lock on the space station. So we had to do a couple slightly different steps to protect for that case -- even though it turned out that the radar never lost track of the ISS.

The final interesting thing is that due to various dispersions, our approach trajectory was a little bit shallow. This meant that one of our midcourse correction burns did not fall into the nominal 10-minute window -- the onboard guidance calculated that it was late, almost a minute beyond our accepted window. To correct for this, we had to load a different set of targets and perform that burn right at the end of the window. Again, not a big deal since the crew is well-trained for this type of thing, but it was still an interesting case to see in real life.

Some days my job is not that exciting. But today was different. Today was a very good day!

Happy Birthday to my "little" sister and brother, Katie and Brian, who are turning 25 today! I was just thinking about them as I sat here on console watching the sunrise from orbit on TV. Very cool.

Speaking of cool, here's a photo of Woody waving goodbye to Buzz Lightyear, who travelled into orbit on STS-124 yesterday to take part in some of the educational activities planned for this mission. To get it, a photographer from the Orlando Sentinel strategically positioned Woody in a tree while he was setting up his remote cameras prior to the launch.

Jose and I were browsing at Best Buy on Friday night and I stopped to check out the Flip, a no-frills digital video camera. I'd heard good things about it, and I've been interested in playing around with video lately since Flickr can now handle short video clips. But in looking at the specs, I am less impressed. The resolution is only 640x480. Which is twice the video resolution of my current point-and-shoot and equal to the resolution of newer point-and-shoots. I've been considering buying a new p-n-s anyway, and the one I want is only $70 more than the Flip. So why not just get the new p-n-s and do some video with that? The only issue I can see is that the Flip can do up to an hour of video, while the p-n-s would be limited to the size of the memory card. But that's no biggie. So I'm leaning towards just going ahead and getting the Canon SD1100 that I've had my eye on. We'll see. Anybody have a Flip and want to share your feedback?