November 2008 Archives

I've got just enough time to squeeze in a Happy Thanksgiving post before beginning my last night on console for STS-126. I'm feeling pretty good at the moment -- slept for 3 hours when I got off at 8:00 this morning, then joined Jose, Becca, Gavin and Carina for a low-key lunch of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and pumpkin pie, then slept for another 5.5 hours. Now I'm back and feel a bit like I never left, but such is life in the control center. It smells like turkey and burned coffee in here.

Becca made a huge turkey, mainly for Byron who, as it turned out, wasn't even in the country. He got put on a route to Peru at the last minute. Good thing he likes leftovers. The turkey was delicious, my sweet potatoes rocked, and Cari's pumpkin pie was quite tasty -- even though she was at home sleeping. Thanks for the pie, Cari!

Carina seemed to like her first bite of turkey, but later, I turned around to find her in her high chair making a face as if she'd just eaten poo. I'm not sure which of the items on her plate caused such a reaction, but I think it was my sweet potatoes. Oh well -- she's only 18 months old, what does she know about good food? ;-)

After I get off console, Jose and I are off to Corpus Christi for the rest of the weekend to see his family. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

Question for my female running friends: do you wear your engagement/wedding ring while running? So far, I've been taking mine off -- I can't help but think "ooh but it's so pretty and shiny and I don't want to get it all sweaty." But I don't really like taking it off, mainly because I'm paranoid that I will put it down somewhere and lose it. So I'm curious. What do others do?

It's been a weird couple days. I'd planned to work three days this week, with two of them being days on console. I was going to take Friday off. Then the mission slipped and one of my two days on console is now the Thursday night/Friday morning graveyard shift. So I took my day off yesterday! I haven't been to work in more than 48 hours (though I go in at 11:00 tonight), which makes me feel a little like I'm playing hooky. But only a little. I've taken advantage of the extra downtime at home to get some work done on my final projects for classes, go running during the day, catch up on America's Next Top Model (much to Jose's chagrin), do some wedding planning (I know -- already), and generally bum around my apartment.

I'm thinking of starting a sub-blog just for my wedding stuff. I'm no Bridezilla, but I do love the plan. (In fact, I think I'm often better at planning than I am at actually executing those plans.) I've got all sorts of thoughts swirling around that I want to get out, but while I know some of you will be interested, I also know that some of you will definitely not care. So we'll see. We're thinking early June, which means the planning starts now. My three biggest priorities are 1) getting a cool venue, 2) getting a fabulous photographer and 3) not spending my entire life's savings on a single day.

Boiling sweet potatoes. My favorite Thanksgiving dish! Mmmm.

We managed to salvage a bit of Thanksgiving. I get off work tomorrow morning at 8, and after a short nap, we get to go over to Gavin and Jen's for Thanksgiving lunch. Byron talked Becca into making a huge turkey with stuffing, and I'm making sweet potatoes, so it should be pretty tasty. I just hope I can stay awake! I'm not really looking forward to working these next two shifts, despite the whole "but I'm supporting people in space!" thing. Fact is, things are going very well from a rendezvous and undocking perspective. And when things go smoothly, we have very little to do. So while boring is good, it is still, well, boring. I've already got a list of little things to catch up on to keep me occupied during the wee hours of the morning.

If you're one of my aerospace/NASA buddies, Jose posted a new blog entry that might interest you. That makes 4 whole entries this year for him! ;)

The past three weeks have been awesome. I went on a fabulous vacation, I got engaged, we got to share the happy news and celebrate with our friends and family, and there's a shuttle mission flying which makes work more exciting.

But the past three weeks have also been three of the strangest weeks of my life, not because of events but because of how I feel. I'm not sure I ever fully realized how much a schedule affects my life. I'm not the kind of person that plans every minute of every day, but I am the kind of person who has a fairly standard "flow" to my days.

Over the past three weeks I have adjusted to Japan time, 15 hours ahead of Houston. I came back and attempted to stay on Japan time for a few days. It is hard to be asleep when the sun is up, but I did it, and made it through my graveyard shifts. Then the shuttle docked. So I started shifting back to normal hours. Then I got sick. A week later, I am still congested, and not fully shifted back to normal -- but close. Yet now I must figure out a way to make it through 2 more graveyard shifts. And the mission was extended by a day, which means those shifts are from 11 p.m. Wednesday through 8 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, and then 11 p.m. Thanksgiving night through Friday morning. Jose is working a different shift, which means he's got to work on Thanksgiving afternoon starting at 3:00.

We had planned to leave early Thursday morning, right after I got off work, to head to Corpus to spend the holiday with his family. I was very much looking forward to it, especially since the engagement, but it's not going to happen. It's unfortunate, and I'm disappointed, but I knew there was a possibility that the mission would be extended, so I can't really complain. After all, odd hours and the occasional holiday are part of the job description. And we'll still be able to go down to Corpus for the weekend -- even if it does mean missing Thanksgiving and the annual Black Friday shopping.

The real reason these weeks have been so strange is that since getting back from Japan, I have yet to feel normal. I'm either tired in the middle of the day or wide awake in the middle of the night, and I can't get rid of the lingering congestion in my head that makes me feel all fuzzy. All this makes me feel weird. And introspective. And make me think that I've reached a point in my life where I'm ready for some big changes.

I'm 30 years old and will probably never again have the freedom that I have right now, without a house, without kids. I've been working at NASA for more than 6 years full-time, and longer than that as an intern (I qualified for my 10-year government service award three months ago). By August of next year, or possibly earlier, I will have finished my master's degree in Digital Media Studies. What do I want to do with it? Though I complain about classes from time to time, I have enjoyed each and every one of my classes more than I remember enjoying any of my aerospace classes. So while I love science and math and technology, I can't help but think that it might be time for a change.

Oh, where to begin...

Note to all future spacewalkers: make sure you keep an eye -- and a tether -- on your toolbags. Or, as the women on some talkshow said this morning, "there's an astronaut in space and yesterday she lost her purse!" (I'm paraphrasing; Jose saw the show, not me.) Good thing we carry backups, eh?

Oh man, this trip report going to take a while to put together. And yep, I still owe you -- and my future self, who is really the person I write trip reports for -- a 4th and final installment about our trip to Alaska that was three months ago. While I start going through photos, here are some funny, interesting, or memorable little things that happened, just to tide you over:

• A man approached us right after we'd gotten off the train in the gigantic Shinjuku station. We were clueless about how to navigate to the next train we needed, and he could tell. He walked us through the maze of the station all the way to the track we needed, nodded, then turned and disappeared back into the depths of the station. He wasn't even heading in the same direction as us; he just wanted to help.

• Another example of how polite the people are: Jose witnessed what he called a "politeness battle" while we waited for a table at an unagi (eel) restaurant in Tokyo. There was only one chair left, and two women -- who fought not to take the seat, but to make the other person take the seat. They went back and forth saying "dozo (please)...dozo...dozo...dozo..." until one of them finally sat down.

• People-watching was always fun, and Japanese women are very fashionable. I was always the most under-dressed woman around in my jeans and tennis shoes. They wear lots of boots. One popular look was shorts, opaque tights, and calf or knee-high boots. I couldn't pull that off, but it worked for them. The men are often dressed in suits -- none of the "business casual" look that is so common here.

• We took a day trip from Tokyo to Nikko, a small town with a national park full of shrines and temples. We made the mistake of taking this daytrip on a national holiday -- Culture Day. I have never been in a national park where I was unable to move due to the crush of people surrounding me. It was interesting.

• When we got to Nikko earlier that day, we got off the train and boarded a bus that we thought would take us up the hill to the temples. It did not. In fact, it went straight where we thought it would turn left, and headed up into the hills. We sat there for a while debating what to do, and wondering where we were going. The bus was packed with people crammed in the aisle, so getting off would be difficult. Thankfully the person standing over us spoke a bit of English. "We want to go to the temples," we said. "You are on the wrong bus!" We finally figured out that we were heading to a waterfall and hiking area. We ended up going there, walking the half mile to see the waterfall, and then going back into town. It was fun, and really pretty. I'm glad we got on the wrong bus!

• You come across a vending machine at least every few hundred feet. There are thousands of them. But the vast majority are drink machines -- no snacks or candy. You can get both hot or cold drinks, which we only figured out when Jose ended up with hot milk tea. ("I was not expecting hot," he said with a perplexed look.) We quickly figured out that the buttons were colored to let you know -- blue for cold, red for hot. However, despite the abundance of drink machines, it's nearly impossible to find a trash can to dispose of your empty drink bottle. The entire country is astonishly clean, yet there are no trash cans! I don't understand how this works.

• Meals in Japan involve tons of tiny dishes. The day we got engaged, we went to dinner at a fancier restaurant than usual where we had a full course of appetizers, shabu-shabu (meat cooked in oil, sort of like fondue), and dessert. I swear, between the two of us, we probably went through 50-70 individual dishes. Each of the 6 or 7 appetizers was only a couple bites in size, and thus each was in its own tiny dish or cup. Dessert consisted of three more mini-courses in tiny bowls. The entree itself involved multiple dishes for sauces, etc.

• Anything you buy is exquisitely packaged. Take, for example, a pair of funny striped kneesocks that I bought. They only cost $3, yet they were folded, wrapped in tissue paper, and placed in a plastic bag which was then sealed by a small piece of tape.

What day is it? What time is it? Both of those questions require a lot of thinking on my part before I can come up with an answer. It's sunny outside, so it must be daytime...Monday? Just in case you've never been so fortunate as to work a middle-of-the-night shift, let me tell you: it sucks. Working in Mission Control is fun, and working a space shuttle mission is fun, and I hate to complain about the one part of my job that makes the whole thing worthwhile...but the night shift? S. U. C. K. S.

And did I mention that I now have a cold as well? So add sniffling and sneezing and general achiness to my overall fatigue and I'm probably not a fun person to be around at the moment.

The good news is that we docked successfully yesterday to the space station, so I was able to go on-call starting last night. I had planned to stay up to watch the rendezvous, but that didn't happen. I sat down on the couch and the rest of the afternoon went like this:

Fall asleep.
Wake up briefly.
Think "oh look, they're about to do a burn."
Fall back asleep.
Wake up briefly.
"Oh look, they just did another burn."
Fall back asleep.
Wake up briefly.
"Oh, they're doing the backflip to get pictures of the heat shield tiles..."
Fall back asleep.
Wake up.
"Oh, they're docked."

The TV was on, showing the rendezvous, but I was most definitely not watching as I'd planned. Oh well. I'm hoping I can now finally let my internal clock readjust to Houston time. I figure that about when I'm finally readjusted, it'll be time for me to power through two more night shifts I have to work leading up to undock. You know, the astronauts flying a mission get all sorts of help when they have to shift their schedule -- special place to sleep, all contact with them is controlled so that they can shift, etc, etc. But flight controllers? We have to somehow do it on our own. Suddenly I start wondering how my dad has worked odd hours for so many years, especially when my siblings and I were still at home...

Well, that's enough talk about my screwed up schedule and internal clock for today. The engagement news has spread all over and the most popular question is "so when's the wedding?" I know that people don't actually expect us to have a date yet...I know that it's just the standard question to ask in a conversation about getting engaged, just like you'd ask a pregnant woman when she's due. But the repeated question makes me want to start planning! Because I do love to plan. So I've started pondering a couple different things, and holy crap are weddings expensive or what?!

First up is choosing a venue, I guess. We have a few ideas, but I'm definitely open to suggestion. For those of you who live in the Houston area, have you ever been to a wedding in a cool or unique location? I'd love to hear about it. Neither Jose or I are churchgoers, so we need to find a place for the ceremony as well, and we're hoping we can find a cool place.

It's the middle of the night and I'm at work. This is the first time I've been so "fortunate" as to get the middle-of-the-night shift, and the only thing that's making it bearable is the fact that my internal clock is already completely screwed up thanks to the jet lag associated with the trip to Japan. I'm working Orbit 3 for the first time, which is the "planning" shift. The crew is asleep, and down here on the ground we're getting everything planned and prepared for Flight Day 2 tomorrow. Since the crew's asleep, it's pretty quiet. Today's shift is 2-11; tomorrow is 1-9:30. Since I work in rendezvous, I get to go on-call after we dock for a while. Then I'll have to do two more nights prior to undocking. Unfortunately those two nights will probably include Thanksgiving. But that's life in the space program.

While waiting on some data, I was reading through an article that talked about each crew member on the current shuttle mission and realized that this is a big flight for my alma mater, Georgia Tech. Three of the crewmembers -- pilot Eric Boe, mission specialist Robert Kimbrough, and mission specialist Sandy Magnus (who will remain on the space station until February) -- have graduate degrees from GT. Maybe they can all get together and sing the Ramblin' Wreck.

The launch was a beauty. This was the first in a while that I've watched from the comfort of my couch (instead of from my console in Mission Control), and it was nice to be able to watch the camera view instead of data. I've been lucky enough to see two launches in person -- in 1997 and 1998 when I was an intern. Both were thrilling, but the first was a night launch, and I still remember how spectacular it was. The pad was miles away, but when the shuttle lifted off, it was like a sun rising in the darkness. Everything around me was silhouetted against the bright light of the engines. It was absolutely silent for a moment as we all watched the bright ball of light rise into the sky, and then came the sound, delayed due to the distance it had to travel to reach our ears. The sound of a space shuttle main engine burning is hard to describe. It's not quite a roar, not quite a growl. It doesn't whoosh like a model rocket engine, buzz like a small plane's propeller, or scream like a jet. Instead, it is crackling, popping, creaking, and rattling accompanied by a heavy rumble so low in pitch that instead of hearing it, you feel it. The vibration shakes you even after originating miles away.

Maybe that description can help you enjoy this HD video of last night's launch! It picks up 9 minutes before launch, but you can fast forward to the good stuff if you want:

I've managed to catch most of my family and close friends either in person, on the phone, or via email, and the big news is starting to make the rounds, so I suppose it's time I post it here:

Jose is no longer my boyfriend...because he's now my fiance!

We're engaged!

(After about 5 minutes, and after I stopped crying, I made him pose for a picture.)

Last Saturday, we spent the day wandering around Nara, Japan. The small city is less than an hour by train from Kyoto and was the capital of Japan for a short time about 1300 years ago. (Yes, 1300 years.) There is a huge park there full of temples, shrines, gardens, and "sacred" deer that follow you around looking for handouts. The day was chilly and rainy, but it was the only day we had left to make the trip to Nara, so off we went. The rain stopped around lunchtime, but the skies remained thick and overcast for the rest of the day.

We walked from the train station to the park and temple area and started to explore. We saw a few shrines, a pagoda, and then headed to Todai-ji, an enormous temple that is the largest wooden structure in the world. There's a bronze statue of Buddha inside that's almost 50 feet tall! From there we walked up the hill to Nigatsu-do Hall and had a great view of the city below and the mountains beyond. It was around this time that Jose starting talking about wanting to find a garden and sit down on a bench for a while.

We both like strolling through Japanese gardens (we'd already seen a couple), so that request didn't strike me as odd. And his wish to find a bench didn't seem strange either -- by this time we'd been in Japan for a week, and had been walking all day, every day, on our feet for hours and hours at a time. Each night when we got back to our hotel or inn, we'd collapse on the bed and lie there until our feet stopped throbbing. And that did not always happen quickly! So when he mentioned wanting to find a bench and sit down in a garden, I figured he just wanted a rest. Heck, I needed a rest too.

We wandered through one more shrine before coming upon the Manyo Botanical Garden. We paid the small fee to go inside and were soon wandering along the trails. It was still overcast and everything was wet, but it was one of those rainy days that was actually sort of pretty. We'd been having such a great day in Nara, exclaiming on multiple occasions to each other how beautiful we thought the gardens and temples were. The Japanese really know how to work with nature, when they choose to (which is often).

Finally we came across a stone bench in the trees. No one was around, and Jose started to sit down. What did I do? Like the clueless idiot I sometimes am, I shot him an odd look and said "don't sit there, it's all wet!" So, still standing up, Jose said a few quick words and asked me if I would marry him.

Now, I admit that I had a few quick thoughts over the past few months about whether he might propose in Japan, but I really was not expecting it. I was so surprised that I forgot to say yes right away -- I think I squeaked out "really?" and then as I got a good look at his hand and realized he was holding a ring, I repeated a louder "really?" Then I realized that I hadn't actually answered.

"YES!"

And thus we are engaged. :)

We never looked at rings together, and had only talked about it a bit, so even the ring was a total surprise. It's a simple solitaire and aside from being completely paranoid that I am somehow going to knock the diamond off (I've never worn rings before), I absolutely love it.

p.s. The entry title is a quote from the movie Playing By Heart (and other sources in other forms): "Talking about love is like dancing about architecture." True, but it doesn't mean we don't try to talk about it anyway. :)

Jose and I made it back from Japan safe and sound this afternoon just before 2:00, which was exactly 3 hours before we left Tokyo. Gotta love that 15-hour time difference and crossing the international date line! We made great time on the return flight thanks to a 200+ mph tail wind in the jet stream.

There is so much to tell! Where to start, where to begin...

Here's a quick and dirty slideshow with a handful of photos to give you a glimpse of the many, many more photos to come...

This keyboard is really annoying the crap out of me. It`s almost the same as an English keyboard, but the space bar is smaller, and on either side where I`m used to having the spacebar continue, there are buttons with crazy Japanese characters on them. And every so often I accidentally hit one and the keyboard mode switches and everything starts typing in Japanese and I can`t figure out how to turn it off! Then I have to open a new window and copy, paste, start over. Blargh.

Hard to believe our trip is rapidly winding down. Only 3 nights and 3 days left before we have to go back to the real world. We have spent the past 4 days in and around Kyoto -- 3 days in Kyoto itself, and then today we took the train to Nara. Nara is an hour away and was capital of Japan for about 100 years in the 700s. It`s chock full of shrines and temples, most of them located in one very lovely park. It was rainy and overcast today, but it was still beautiful despite the weather -- the leaves are starting to change colors so there are greens and yellows and reds all around. We saw Todai-ji, the largest wooden structure in the world apparently, and home to Japan`s largest Buddha. It was HUGE. We also saw a cool temple surrounded by thousands of lanterns. It would be very cool to visit that one again during the lantern festival that they have twice each year. I can`t even imagine how many people it must take to light them all.

The rest of the trip is a whirlwind. Tomorrow we head to Hiroshima and then spend the night on a small island nearby called Miyajima. Monday we head back to Tokyo on the bullet train, and spend a final morning there before flying out Tuesday evening. We get back home a few hours earlier than we left -- on Tuesday afternoon. Crazy time zones and date lines.

Yesterday we rode the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. The ride only took 2.5 hours as the country sped by. Note I said country, not countryside, since the latter would imply farms and fields and the train corridor was not that -- it was built up the entire way. If I had to sum up Japan in one sentence so far, it would be this: there are SO MANY PEOPLE, which should make you feel crowded and cramped, yet they are all so polite and considerate that everything just flows. Trains are always on time. Trains are silent -- no one uses their cell phone onboard! We've had people walk us to our destination multiple times. Everyone welcomes us and thanks us profusely at restaurants. And the cities and country itself are beautiful.

After 4 nights in a western hotel, we're now staying in a ryokan -- a traditional Japanese inn. They range from super fancy to bare bones; the one we're in is like a hostel with a very Japanese flair. The beds are futons on the floor, and the floors are tatami mats.

Gotta run off to explore!