March 2009 Archives

Jose and I spent the weekend in Corpus Christi. His cousin Kimberly got married on Saturday night so we got to celebrate and see the whole family. It was lots of fun. Immediately after the ceremony while everyone was milling around the tables, his uncle Mando walked up between us, put his arms around our shoulders, said "you're next," and walked away laughing ominously. His cousin Jennifer is getting married in July, so we're number 2 of 3 for the family this year.

I had heard nary a peep from Mexico so we were starting to wonder if Becca had pulled a runaway bride after all. But Karen posted photos so it appears that the Mexican wedding did happen. Congrats to Becca and Byron! I wish we could have been there.

We stuck around Corpus yesterday afternoon long enough to go to a family bbq, which was a great opportunity to enjoy the fabulous weather even if it meant we didn't get back to Houston until 11:15 last night!

Last night Jose and I went down to see Les Miserables to celebrate my birthday. He got awesome seats on the first row of the mezzanine! They were the best tickets I've ever had to a musical. For the first time, I could actually see their faces. You could tell who was singing not because they were in a spotlight but because you could see their mouth moving. It was awesome.

In addition to that, the cast was really quite good. I had been listening to my Broadway recording at home yesterday afternoon, and said to Jose that "oh, maybe I shouldn't have done that, because the people tonight probably won't be as good." But they were excellent across the board. I tried to pick one that sounded weak to me, but couldn't. Jean Valjean, Javert, Fantine, Marius, Eponine, Cosette...they were all great.

I can't remember how many times I've seen this show now. Probably four or five. But I hadn't seen it in at least 5 years so it was quite fun.

I think Jose was surprised to discover that I know ALL the words to Les Mis. On the way home, he would say "oh, I liked that song at such-and-such part" and I would immediately start singing it word for word. He said I'm like his own personal CD player.

(When I say I know all the words, my use of the word "all" is not really exaggerated.)

Happy Birthday to me! In celebration, I took the day off work, slept late, had sushi for lunch, and tonight Jose is taking me to see Les Miserables. He got awesome tickets on the front row of the mezzanine! These will undoubtedly be the best seats I've had for a show.

STS-119 gave me a great birthday present yesterday when they undocked (I was working it in the mission control center) and got the photos we've been waiting on for 20 years -- a fully functional space station with beautifully symmetrical solar arrays capable of generating enough power for 6 full-time crew members.

The final solar array was added last week, and as the shuttle flew around the ISS at 600 feet, it was a sight to behold.

I'll probably never fly in space, but today my picture made it there by way of today's execute package that got uplinked to the shuttle. Sure, I had a giant photoshopped afro on my head, but those are just details.

President Obama spent a good 20-25 minutes talking to the crew yesterday, along with some congressmen and a group of schoolchildren. At one point he commented on Sandy Magnus's hair, which of course looks like anyone with long hair looks when gravity isn't there to hold it down. Everyone loves a good afro.

Here's the original, more "professional" team photo. ;)

Every day, the shuttle crew wakes up to find that their onboard printer has spit out a dozen pages of information called the "execute package." It contains updates to their daily schedule, new or altered procedures, and anything else they need to know for the day. And each morning, the flight controllers on the ground try to put something funny on the front page. Normally, it doesn't actually end up being that funny, but hey, they try.

Yesterday the shuttle/ISS mated stack had to "deboost" itself -- in other words, they had to lower the vehicles' altitude very slightly -- to avoid a potential collision with another piece of orbital debris. The military, who does the tracking of all the debris in orbit, identified the offending item as a 4-inch piece of a Chinese rocket body launched in 2000.

And of course Yao Ming is a Chinese Rocket -- a Houston Rocket.

I think this may be the first piece of execute package humor that has truly made me laugh.

The fog was quite thick this morning as I drove to work, which did nothing to help wake me up. My shift is sliding earlier and earlier. In two more days we will be coming in too early for Starbucks. That's how I judge whether early is truly early -- if Starbucks isn't even open yet, it's officially earlier than the crack of dawn.

Yesterday seemed like a very long day. It was an early morning, followed by 8.5 hours at work -- 4 on console and 4.5 on call in the office. After work I managed to get out to enjoy the beautiful weather on a 4 mile run. It was actually on the warm side once I started moving, but the breeze kept things pleasant. We ate dinner and I did some work and only then was it time for our evening plans.

We had tickets to the Rockets game last night, the 5th game of our 6-game package. It was nationally televised and didn't even start until 8:30. Since it started an hour later, Murphy's Law dictated that it go into overtime -- not once, but twice. We didn't even leave the Toyota Center until midnight. But it was a great game. The Rockets and Pistons basically traded baskets the entire night until the Rockets outlasted Detroit in the second overtime. I think Detroit just got tired. Anyway, it was a great win. We've really been enjoying basketball this year and are excited for the playoffs.

Fortunately, I work in rendezvous, where there is little-to-nothing to do while we're docked. So I get to take the weekend off and catch up on some sleep before coming in again on Monday to prepare for the undocking and flyaround on Wednesday.

Ever wonder what it looks like to approach the International Space Station? Well, it looks something like this:

Can't make out the spec in the middle? Here we are a little bit later:

And here's what's going on inside the shuttle:

Commander Lee Archambault was flying the shuttle in for a docking while Mission Specialist John Phillips was busy shooting the ISS with the handheld laser to get range and range rate data. Pilot Tony Antonelli stayed up front to make sure that all the rendezvous checklist steps were completed, while other crew members took pictures!

And me? Well I was sitting in Mission Control working as Rendezvous Procedures Support! And even though I don't have any photos to prove it this time around, I like to think that I was just as important as the guys onboard. ;)

We're docked with ISS!

It took 5 launches, but I finally got a photo of me working on console as ARD Support Officer. On my previous 4 launches, the photographer never came into our room, probably because it's completely swarming with people on launch day. 5th time's the charm?

After more than a month of being delayed by days at a time -- thus testing the patience and resolve of everyone working the mission -- STS-119 launched last night at 6:43 p.m. It's such a relief to finally get this mission off the ground and into orbit. In real-time I was only looking at data, but I watched all the replays on NASA TV. It sure was pretty!

Yesterday was my 5th launch as an ARD Support Officer. I think that qualifies me as a "veteran" by now. I still get nervous, but not like I used to. For my first launch, I was nervous for the entire 7-hour shift! These days, I don't start feeling butterflies until about 9 minutes before launch, when the count picks up after a planned hold and the voice loops get very quiet. It's not until that point that it really hits me: we are about to launch a space shuttle with seven people onboard. Whoa.

Everything went very smoothly. The fueling leak that happened last Wednesday did not reappear, and the weather in Florida was lovely. The countdown was uneventful for the flight dynamics team with only one anomaly -- and that was on the ground, not on the vehicle. In fact, the biggest "issue" was a tiny fruit bat that found a new home on the side of the external tank. We were all hopeful that he'd wake up and vacate the area -- fast -- at dusk, but as far as I know the little guy was still hanging on when the engines lit. What a way to go... The ascent was perhaps the smoothest of the five I've worked. The solid rocket boosters burned exactly as expected, and our performance trend was flat, flat, flat (just as it should be).

I'm also working the Orbit 1 shift for this mission, so my job has only just begun. That's the fun shift -- the one where the astronauts are awake and busy, and the one that does rendezvous and undocking. I'll be working from the back room when we dock with the space station tomorrow.

We're in space!

So we didn't launch, and it's been postponed until at least Sunday while they fix what's essentially a leaky pipe down in Florida. The sim tomorrow indeed got cancelled anyway, since the control center has to protect for a Sunday launch, so now I find myself with an empty Thursday and Friday. If I can work up the motivation to get a few of my less-desirable tasks done, it'll be a good few days. Still, it's disappointing to be looking at this:

When I was supposed to be looking at this:

But such is life in the space program. This flight has been pushed back day by day for a month now, which makes it hard to really plan anything significant because "I might be at work." There's a Soyuz launch later this month so we know that the shuttle launch opportunity window will have a cutout in it. (We never have a shuttle crew and Soyuz crew at the space station at the same time, though I couldn't tell you why. Probably just crew size and workload?) If we can't launch by Sunday or Monday, we'll probably be in for another few weeks of slip.

In other news, I am climbing back on the horse as far as running and triathlon goes. It's been too long since I was exercising with any regularity. So I've done well -- four of the past five days. I ran and rode and ran and rode. Tonight I planned to go running but it looks like the weather might be pretty nasty, so it may turn into an indoor ride on the trainer instead.

I made lemon coconut squares for the launch today. The launch which was scrubbed about 15 minutes after I walked into the office due to a leak in the hydrogen line that was filling the external tank with fuel. Word on the street is that we're now looking at launching no earlier than Sunday, which is a bummer because 1) I'm ready to get this mission off the ground and 2) it means I might have a cert qual (a.k.a. big evaluation) sim THIS FRIDAY.

Commence freaking out.

Yesterday I tried to give my officemates tickets to the Rockets-Lakers game tonight. The game I thought I wouldn't be able to go to. They didn't want them, so I gave them to Edwin, and then today they all laughed at me because now I've got nothing to do tonight, but don't have the tickets anymore! Oh well, I know he'll enjoy the game, and Jose and I will just watch on TV.

But the lemon coconut squares turned out quite yummy. I'd never made them before, and when the recipe said to mix flour and sugar and then "cut in butter" to make the crust, I had no idea what it meant to "cut in butter." However, a quick internet search turned up not only instructions, but photos of what the dough should look like. Thank you, internet! You saved my lemon squares.

So I ended up with an unplanned full day off on Friday. No complaints there!

Jose and I went to the design center on Friday morning to ooh and aah over all the options we can add to our house (for a price, of course). The problem? The design center is as far from Clear Lake as you can get while still remaining within the city limits. No exaggeration -- it's on the Sam Houston Tollway just north of highway 290, about a 50-mile drive. We took the tollway the whole way around and thankfully avoided any significant traffic, despite the fact that we were in the middle of the morning rush hour. We got there at 8:45 a.m. after exactly an hour of driving. Since we had an appointment, our names were listed on the computer screen at the front desk, so that was sort of neat. :)

It was scheduled to be a 3-hour appointment. What I didn't realize is that yes, we really would need all 3 of those hours, plus another half hour beyond that! By the time we'd left, picked up lunch on the way back, and navigated the maze of Houston highways back to Clear Lake, it was 2:45. (The most exciting part of the drive home was that we finally found the entrance to the Gulf Freeway HOV lane. It is not exactly easy to find, as signage pretty much sucks. But we perservered and it was awesome, just us and the taxis since rush hour hadn't started yet.) Not much point to going back to work after that, so I just took the rest of the day off too!

We spent the vast majority of our time there looking at the options for the kitchen. Cabinets, countertops, backsplash, floor tile...there was a lot to consider. After that, we checked out carpet, bathroom options, light fixtures, and a few other odds and ends.

The bottom line is that we want to upgrade kitchen items now, and for almost everything else we'll do it on our own later. We like the standard cabinets provided; they're made of oak that will be stained a very, very dark brown. We're going to upgrade our granite countertops to "New Venetian Gold." Fancy, eh? We chose to repeat the color and pattern of the granite on the tile around the fireplace in the family room, since it's one big space.

For the backsplash, we chose a 2" tile mosaic look and for the floors, we upgraded the tile in the kitchen/breakfast/utility area and in the entryway. We're still debating whether we want tile in the dining room. If we do, we need to get it now so that it all matches -- the dining room would connect the entryway to the kitchen as one big tiled area. Here's a crappy photo of the tile color/pattern that I found on a random website. We still have to decide how we want them to lay it down -- straight, on a diagonal, stair-stepped, whatever.

We're not upgrading anything in the bathrooms, so we'll have the same ebony-stained oak cabinets with a white marble countertop. We'll have tile in there as well, but we're sticking with the standard level. It'll be a similar color to what we picked for the kitchen, but more uniform and less "splotchy," or, as the design lady said: "It has less movement." We're sticking with standard fixtures too, in hopes that at a minimum we can handle changing out a faucet if we ever so desire.

After the kitchen stuff was selected, we were pretty exhausted in the decision-making department. We chose a front door and got pricing on blinds, which is of course way cheaper to do yourself or hire someone else than to have the builder do it. We stuck with the standard light fixtures for the dining room and breakfast room, even though they are pretty hideous. We'll go buy two new chandaliers and install them ourselves later on.

The other big decision was carpet. I was really, really hoping that the builder's standard carpet would be of reasonable quality, but alas -- it's the same crap that's been in all my apartments down here. You know, the stuff that looks fine when it's brand new...but then you actually start walking on it (gasp), at which point it wears down very quickly. But I'm extremely hesitant to roll upgraded carpet -- which still won't last forever -- into our 30-year-mortgage. So we're just going to live with the crappy carpet for few years and install better carpet down the road.

Last night we finally chose an elevation as well. After much discussion, another drive over to the neighborhood to check out the existing versions of our floor plan, and a lot of fun with Photoshop, we decided to stick with Elevation B. Here's what we think it will look like with the stone we want...

You totally want to hire me for my Photoshop skillz, right? Good thing I'm better with Illustrator, In Design, and Dreamweaver!

Anyway, I think that's the last of our house-related tasks for a while. The process is very front- and end-loaded. Now we wait a month until building starts!

So the STS-119 launch is pseudo-officially set for next Wednesday, March 11. This means that I'll be working on Sunday and maybe even for a few hours on Saturday, depending on when the products get delivered. Which means I will not be running the Texas Independence Relay with my team of blogger buddies. I'm bummed, and sad to leave them a runner short. But such is life in the space program I guess.

Instead, I plan on staying put in Clear Lake this weekend and avoiding the interstate at all costs. As part of the ongoing construction, they are shutting down I-45 at Nasa Road 1. Yep, shutting down the entire interstate. Traffic is going to SUCK.

Last night Jose and I got to do the most fun part of wedding planning so far -- cake tasting! Yummy. You can read about it on the wedding blog. Sadly, by the end of the night Jose was not feeling good and he ended up staying home sick today. At least he got to eat some cake while his taste buds were still working. Now he's all stuffed up and congested.

Jose at the site of our future house!

Looking out from our future front yard

Looking over our future back fence

So we drove over to admire our empty lot again last night.

Ok, so we did have a better reason than just to admire our patch of dirt, though that played a big part. In reality, we need to finalize our decision on an elevation as well as a brick/stone color/pattern by the beginning of next week, so we wanted to check out all the other houses in the neighborhood. There are three elevations we like.

First is Elevation B, which is one of the "free" elevations (meaning it's already included in the price of the home):

It looks lovely and we of course will get to pick our own brick color and what type of stone we want (if we want stone at all). We like this elevation a lot, and I especially like that it means two windows in each bedroom, but we have one hesitation -- there are at least 4 or 5 other houses within the neighborhood with the same elevation. See, the floor plan we picked used to be one of the model homes, so everyone saw it and therefore it was a very popular choice.

Then there's Elevation X, which we also like quite a bit:

It has the advantage of a double-wide garage door, as opposed to the others, which separate the garage into two bays with a column. I hate the column. It's pointless, and does nothing but make your garage less usable. However -- there's already an X just two houses down from where ours will be. So X is out, not even allowed by the builder in the interest of maintaining at least some distance from a truly cookie cutter neighborhood.

Then there's Elevation D:

The big selling point of this one is that it comes with a true front porch, big enough for a couple rocking chairs or similar, instead of just a front stoop. Another advantage is that we have yet to actually spot one in the neighborhood, meaning it would help our house with the very common floor plan look a bit more unique from the street. The big downside? Yes, we're back to a two-bay garage, but more than that, there's a hefty price premium on this elevation.

Decisions, decisions...

One of the design classes I am taking this semester is an independent study in the sense that we rarely meet with the professor; however, our first project was done in groups of 4. The assignment was to create a board game -- board, rules, cards, pieces, box and all.

The game is called Logo A Go-Go and it's all about marketing and logos (yeah, we may be able to design but we're not game-makers, what can we say). There are 4 categories, a la Cranium or Trivial Pursuit -- old logo identification, sketch the logo, logo trivia, and logo typography. (We did come up with better names for each of those.)

Each person in the group came up with 25 questions and then I designed the cards themselves, all 100 of them. As a team, we each designed potential icons for the categories and the group chose mine (seen on the backs of the cards and on the game board) to use for the final product. I also designed the ink splatter pattern. My other group members designed and put together the game board, pieces, rules, box, and puzzles (which you assemble as you answer questions correctly). Since I designed most of the elements that are repeated on everything, like the splatter and the icons, it was really cool to see it all come together.

Later in the semester we will all get together to play our games. The other group will play ours and we'll try theirs. Who knows how that will go, but at least it looks good. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out!

Whew! Last week was busy. I had three sims plus it seemed like something was planned after work every single night. On Monday I had to meet with my group for our class project. I don't mind group work too much, but it's nice that our next project is individual -- it's just easier when I don't have to schedule meetings with other people. Tuesday was wedding dress shopping, not for me but for Becca. Fortunately for all involved, we found one quickly. Wednesday was a big group dinner at the new tapas place down the road in honor of Becca's 30th birthday (or, as she likes to call it, the 5th anniversary of her 25th birthday). And Thursday we headed downtown for dinner at the House of Blues followed by the Rockets game. They were playing Cleveland, which really means it was more like the Rockets vs. Lebron James. I thought it would be a tough game, and John, Kelly and Melissa (aka the native Clevelanders) were all pumped up for a Cavs win. So it was surprising all around when the Rockets won by almost 20 points! Awesome.

Here's the gang at the Rockets game:

On Friday we hooked up with the same group for dinner at Boondoggle's, but I quickly started fading around 9:00 after my long week. I got home a little after 10 and was asleep by 10:30. On a Friday night! I'm so boring.

The weekend arrived and somehow turned just as busy, but it was all good things. On Saturday I spent two hours outside On The Run for the BAM 2009 kickoff. We had a great turnout, signed up almost 25 new people for the club, and had a lot of fun enjoying the cool weather and bright sunshine. From there, I met Jose and our new realtor/buyer's agent at Starbucks. It turns out that one of Jose's new officemates has a second job as a realtor. How convenient for us! He was really helpful and answered a bunch of our questions. In fact, he gave us all the final pieces of information, because as of yesterday...

We're homeowners! Or, to be more accurate, we are home builders. We'll be homeowners once it's finished this summer, probably in late July or August. After much debate, we decided to forego the house I posted about last week and return to the one we liked the best two weeks ago, still a Coventry home in Magnolia Creek. There was just something that felt awkward about the rotunda house, as cool as it was. We like the layout of the one we chose much better, and to make it a little more spacious we decided to add a bonus room on the second floor. Jose's already dreaming of lining the walls up there with bookshelves to make his own in-home library.

We had two lots to choose from, and it was a tough decision. One lot was in the back of the neighborhood, which meant that the only people driving down the street would be those who live in the surrounding dozen houses. There was also nothing behind the lot; although it will be developed eventually, it'll be empty for at least a few more years. The other lot was on a marginally busier street that will carry traffic for the ~40 homes in the back part of the neighborhood. It backed up to another neighborhood, but by luck of the street and lot layout, the back fence bordered two large cul-de-sac backyards. It's hard to explain without actually seeing it, but it means that there is no house immediately behind us, and no one can stare into our back windows. We also liked the view from the front of the lot better as well -- we can see down the street instead of looking at a plain old wooden fence. So we chose that lot because we liked the view and because we knew with certainty what would be behind us. The funniest part is that we are literally about 400 feet from Kelly and John's house. You can't get to their house without walking or driving around, because they are actually in a different subdivision -- but we can practically see their roof from our yard.

In the next few weeks we'll go to the design center to pick out tile, cabinets, countertops, and all those items. Then we'll wait for a while until they go through the whole permitting process with League City and Galveston County. If things go as planned, construction will start by the end of April, which means our families will be able to see at least some of the house when they're here for our wedding at the end of May. We're very excited. I can't believe I'm going to have a house!

Here's the floor plan:

Looking from the back of the family room to the front door. The room on the left is the dining room.

Looking from the doorway to the master suite back into the family room. Breakfast area on the left, kitchen in the middle, and dining room through the arch on the right:

Master bathroom. Sinks on the right, closet and toilet on the left:

Master bedroom. I love the bay window and high ceiling!

Looking from the breakfast area back into the family room. Kitchen on the left. The stairs go up to a huge bonus room and the arch farthest away leads to three bedrooms: