July 2009 Archives

Wow, have I really not posted since the 20th? Really? Sorry about that. There has been a TON going on in my life, as many of you know. So here we go...

On Tuesday night, there was a spectacular pass of three spacecraft currently in orbit. The shuttle, having just undocked from the space station that afternoon, came first. It was bright, but the space station that followed just a few seconds later was even brighter. Five minutes later the unmanned Progress resupply vehicle flew by, much fainter but still visible, on its way to docking with the space station on Wednesday. It was awesome to watch three spacecraft and 13 people cruise 200 miles above our new house.

Yes, our NEW HOUSE.

Which we have now been living in for almost a week. Much of our stuff is still at the apartment, but the daily needs are all in the house. I'm looking forward to another weekend of getting things in order and having some friends over for a bit. Hopefully the weekend will be slightly calmer than last weekend, however. Last weekend felt very short -- and very long, because we crammed so many things into a scant 48 hours. By Sunday evening, both Jose and I were exhausted!

Where to start...

We closed on the house last Thursday, the 23rd. This part of the story requires some background, so here you go: homebuilders usually have a "preferred" lender that they recommend you use to secure your mortgage. You don't have to use them, but they are "preferred" -- and in an attempt to make it worth your while, the builder throws in an incentive. In our case, we would get 2% of the sales price of our house back at closing to apply towards closing costs or the price of the house. Sounds great, right? But of course it's not. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or in our case, two rocket scientists) to figure out that the reason the lenders are "preferred" is that they're giving some kind of kickback to the builder. To cover this, the interest rate they offer is higher and their closing costs are more expensive.

So we didn't use them. We went with Hometrust, a company recommended by many of our friends and coworkers. Hometrust gave us an interest rate that was 0.75% lower than the "preferred" lender was quoting, and their closing costs were $2,000 less. Plus, Hometrust actually called me back within a few hours each time I had to leave a message, compared to the "preferred" lender who always took a whole day to return my calls. In fact, the best service I ever got from the "preferred" lender was AFTER I told them we'd decided to go with Hometrust. Suddenly, they wanted to talk to me multiple times a day. Imagine that!

Our sales coordinator at our builder, Coventry Homes, is the only person we ever really had contact with throughout the build process. She told us multiple times that the consequence of using an "outside" lender -- aside from not getting the 2% kickback at closing -- would be that we would not receive the keys at closing. She would have the keys in the office (which is at the model home in our neighborhood), and would be able to give them to us only after getting a call from the title company saying that the loan was funded. "What does funded mean?" we asked. "Well, it just means we have to confirm that the money has been transferred and is there."

Ok. That made sense enough, even if it was a bit annoying. So we worked very hard with our mortgage broker to ensure that the wire transfer of funds for our house would occur on Thursday the 23rd. We were closing that day, and the funds would transfer, and voila -- we would be able to drive straight from closing (which of course had to happen on the complete opposite side of freaking Houston) back to our neighborhood, where we would get the keys.

Jose's sketch of our house on the "tablecloth" at Zio's

So we go to closing, very excited. It's just Jose and me, our realtor Mike, and some random lady from the title company. The builder doesn't come to closing unless it's the end of the month, we had learned a couple days earlier. Anyway, we sign the pile of paperwork and everything is happy and it's about 11:30 a.m. when we finish and THEN the title lady says:

"The paperwork will go to the builder this afternoon at 3:00 with our courier. Then they'll sign it tomorrow morning and send it back to us. Then we'll send it to the lender, and hopefully you'll have your keys by the end of tomorrow."

WAIT. WHAT?

Oh, she said, the builder should have informed you that this was the process, and it would take a business day for the paperwork to be completed.

NO, THE BUILDER DID NOT INFORM US OF THIS.

Oh, but this is always the way it happens. We have to confirm that the loan is funded. I've worked here for 8 years and it always takes a day.

THE BUILDER SAID YOU NEEDED THE MONEY. FUNDED = MONEY.

Oh, well yes, the money is here, but we need their signature.

WAIT. YOU HAVE YOUR MONEY BUT WE'RE WAITING ON PAPERWORK???

At that point, I was too upset to talk, and the title company woman was useless, so Jose called our sales coordinator to express our severe displeasure. It was to no avail. By the time we got to the car, I couldn't hold my frustration in any longer and burst into tears. All week, I had been anticipating getting the keys to our house on Thursday. We had built it up and built it up -- and who DOESN'T get their keys on the day they close?!? -- and the emotional hit of finding out we had to wait another day was too much.

I calmed down on the way home and decided to call Scott, our most awesome mortgage broker. He was absolutely LIVID to hear what was happening, especially since their company had just completed a wire transfer for quite a large sum of money for a house that we couldn't get into just yet. Alas, despite many angry phone calls and emails from him, we still didn't get our keys until Friday afternoon.

In the end, it was only a day. I realize this. But it was SO not the way things should have gone. We love our house and overall are satisfied with our house-building experience. But boy did they botch our closing. If anyone asked, I'd still recommend the builder -- but not wholeheartedly, and I'd make sure the person knew what they were in for.

In summary: Coventry Homes is so-so and Millenium Title is useless, but Hometrust Mortgage 100% rocks my socks off. The other day we even got a check in the mail -- a refund from Hometrust for 1 day of interest on our house. Since we didn't get the keys until a day after closing, they recalled the wire transfer and sent it a day later. The money was based on a closing date of July 23, they said, and in effect our closing wasn't completed until July 24. So we got a small refund check from Hometrust.

Hometrust Mortgage. Two thumbs up.

With the keys finally in our hands on Friday, we could start moving in! We'd originally planned to spend that night at the house, but decided against after running a million errands, getting tired, and deciding we wanted to sleep in a bed and not on an air mattress.

First meal in the house = Whataburger taquitos

Saturday it was! We'd bought a new bedroom set on Thursday and it was set for delivery only two days later -- but the catch for the quick delivery was that it could arrive anytime between 7 am and 10 pm! We were both pretty tired having to get up so early to go to the house, but we occupied ourselves with setting up a few of the things we'd already bought. Fortunately we got lucky and the bed delivery guys arrived at 11:30! Our new refrigerator was delivered only an hour after that, so we had the whole afternoon free for running errands. We also ended up back at the apartment to collect some things and get ready for the next day.

On Sunday, the movers arrived to take care of all our furniture. I can't count the number of times I moved myself in college and shortly after, and I hated it every single time. I HATE MOVING. It was great to not have to worry about any of the furniture. And, although we left almost anything non-furniture at our apartment, we have an entire month to move it bit by bit -- hopefully getting rid of all of the junk in the process.

On top of all that, I had to go in to work on Sunday and Monday nights to help prepare for the shuttle undocking on Tuesday. Let's just say I was feeling very sleep deprived. The up side of working at night was that I was home on Monday to wait for the cable guy and the internet guy. Less than 48 hours after really moving in, we had all our services going -- and hey, we NEED our internet and cable, people.

All in all, having a house is totally awesome.

MAN ON THE MOON
July 20, 1969

An estimated 1 billion people on the planet Earth are watching or listening to transmissions from the Apollo spacecraft in lunar orbit. All three U.S. television networks are on live. At 1:30pm U.S. Armed Forces Network radio is on live. In lunar orbit, Mike Collins has taken the controls of the Command Ship Columbia and gently undocks from the lunar lander, the Eagle.

In train stations and bus stations, ballparks and airports the sounds coming from the moonships and the crackling static are heard around the country. Briefly, for a fleeting moment in time, the entire American nation has come together as one to follow an event, not a national tragedy but a voyage of exploration: humans on their way down to the surface of an alien world.

"The Eagle has wings!" cries Buzz Aldrin. Slowly Columbia and Eagle pull away from each other but remain in the same orbit.

Now with both craft on the back side of the Moon, the Eagle's engine fires up and begins to break the craft down into a lower orbit. The engine fires at 10 percent thrust for 15 seconds, then is gradually increased up to some 40 percent of its 9,970 lbs of capability.

The crew is flying with their feet first, face up. The craft speeds across the barren landscape below just 60 miles up with a low point of eight miles. At that low point they are to fire up for the final descent burn, riding a rocket's tail of hot gas towards the lunar landscape.

Columbia's Mike Collins calls the ground and reports that the Eagle is "on its way down" towards the surface. At 260 miles uprange from the touchdown point, the LM's rocket engine fires again for its final burn, or PDI (Powered Descent Initiate). Now Eagle is dropping from 50,000 feet above the Moon to a low point of 10,000 feet. The engine is powered down to 6,000 pounds of thrust. But now, at 39,000 foot altitude, things begin to go wrong.

On the instrument panel, the Caution & Warning System alerts the crew that they are close to radar lockup. If this happens, their radar system will be unable to guide them towards the landing site. The crew quickly resets the switches for the system, and it returns to normal.

At 9,620 feet, the craft's computer begins to send a series of alarms to the crew. These "1202" alarms warn that the computer is becoming overloaded with data inputs that are taking too long to process. Armstrong clears the computer's memory and asks Houston control for a judgment call. Mission Control calls the crew: go!

Just above 2,000 feet Armstrong takes manual control of Eagle briefly to check out the flight controls. The spacecraft is snappy and responsive. Below 1,500 feet, the astronauts are now scanning the landing site below. What they see concerns them. The autopilot is bringing Eagle down into a boulder-strewn field. At 500 feet altitude, concerned that the landing site is not suitable, Armstrong reaches over and takes control of the spacecraft away from the autopilot and the computer: he is flying the Eagle.

Using the ascent stage thrusters, Armstrong brings the Eagle laterally across the surface looking for a landing site. At 100 feet he stops the rate of descent, then begins it again slowly.

At 30 feet, peering through a cloud of dust stirred up on the surface of the Sea of Tranquility, Aldrin calls out that Eagle has less than a minute of fuel left in its tanks. Should they abort? Peering through the clouds, Armstrong sees a smooth area through a break in the dust. He has moved more than 1,100 feet across from the original landing point as chosen by the computer. Armstrong is still looking out the window when Aldrin calls: "Contact Light!" A small light has illuminated on their instrument panel, indicating that a probe in one of the LM's footpads has touched the alien lunar soil.
With the engine still running, the LM drops down onto the surface. Armstrong shuts off the descent engine. All is quiet. In Mission Control Capsule Communicator Charles Duke calls to the crew "we copy you down Eagle?" At first there is only static. Then Armstrong calls across the generations: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed!"

On the east coast of the United States it was 4:18pm EDT. In Yankee Stadium in New York, 16,000 people rose to sing the national anthem as they stopped a baseball game in progress. At Grand Central Station, the thousands of Sunday travelers cheered so loud Aldrin's last words before touchdown were not heard. In Trafalgar Square, London announcers screamed "the Americans have done it!" In Japan, television viewers were told "a new age has now begun." In Mission Control Houston, flight controllers come to their feet cheering, breaking a tradition of silence.

It had been nearly exactly 8 years, 2 months since John Fitzgerald Kennedy had walked up the center aisle of the U.S. House of Representatives and made the lunar landing a national goal. In his CBS News control booth, newsman Walter Cronkite cannot speak. He turns to astronaut Walter Schirra and then says: "Man on the Moon!" It is Sunday, July 20, 1969.

The mission has been accomplished...

Mission Control founder Chris Kraft with Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins at the Air & Space Museum on July 19, 2009

(Here's Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

In addition to snorkeling and scuba diving, one other thing we'd hoped to do while in Belize was visit some Mayan ruins. Unfortunately (and this is really the only negative to the entire trip), we didn't realize that many of the tours available from the Turtle Inn depended on others being interested in taking the tour as well. While they were still willing to schedule activities just for you, the cost rapidly shot up if it was only for 2 people.

In the end, we decided to forego any trips to the Mayan ruins or to see wild monkeys and jaguars due to a combination of the cost and the fact that it was pretty hot and sticky during the day. Being in the water was lovely, but we'd already heard some guests complain about the bugs and heat when they went inland. Another day of honeymoon relaxation didn't sound so bad!

We split our final two days between another day of lounging at the resort and another snokeling trip. The lounging day was greatly enhanced by the fact the morning after the earthquake, we'd packed up our things and moved from our seaview cottage to the seafront "Chinese Matrimonial Suite." As fabulous as our first cottage was, this one was even better!!

It was SMACK on the ocean (note the proximity of the hammock to the cottage, and that same hammock to the shoreline) and was rather appropriately named the "Iguana" cottage, probably based on this guy and his friends, who we saw on multiple occasions throughout the week:

It also had this behemoth of a bed, the namesake of the "Chinese Matrimonial Suite" in the first place. It is a Chinese fertility bed. (Don't get any ideas people, there are no buns in this oven yet.) Anyway, the real point of showing this photo is to demonstrate the mosquito net, which we only used on our final night in Belize. The bugs, which were not bad for the first part of our trip, took to my legs with a vengeance over the final couple days.

After we moved to this cottage, we didn't need to sit by the pool anymore. Between the hammock out front and the many comfortable chairs on our porch, we were happy to stay at our own cabana. The short move from our original cabana to the oceanfront also gave us access to the constant, pleasant breeze off the ocean. Sitting in the shade with that breeze was heavenly.

That afternoon I finally decided to try the outdoor shower, which we hadn't used in the previous cottage. I walked out into our private garden, turned on the water, and stuck my head underneath. Immediately, a FROG fell on my head. While I'm don't usually have a problem with frogs, let's just say that the frog was not something I had planned on getting up close and personal to while I was naked. And thus, that was the end of the outdoor shower experiment. :)

The infamous outdoor shower

Before we had to leave Belize, we also went snorkeling a second time, and were fortunate enough to get to visit a different island. After a 45 minute boat ride, we approached the Silk Cayes. The island we pulled up to looked like this:

Seriously. That was the ENTIRE island. I walked around the whole place during our lunch break and it took me three minutes. That, my friends, is a small island. Doesn't it look like something out of a cartoon, where you'd expect to see a guy with a long messy beard writing messages in bottles?

Sadly, we did not have another underwater camera for this trip, and the battery in my digital camera died just after we arrived so I only have a couple photos from that day. The snokeling, however, was amazing. Because we'd traveled farther offshore -- 20 miles, all the way out to the edge of the reef, instead of the 12 miles on previous days -- we were lucky enough to see a wider array of sea life. In additional to the many kinds of fish we were used to seeing at this point, we saw:

• Reef squid! A half dozen of them, all in a line, and I swear they were looking at us. As I swam around them, they seemed to turn their bodies to keep their eyes on me.
• A bright green moray eel! Our guide saw him free-swimming, but by the time we followed his pointing finger, the eel had retreated into a hole. We still saw his head sticking out though.
• A nurse shark! At the end of the day, we motored over next to a fishing boat that was cleaning its catch. The shark was there, and we splashed into the water for a closer look. He kept his distance, and so we really only saw the shadow of a shark, which in a way was creepier.
• Sting rays! And spotted eagle rays! They were attracted by the fishing boat as well, and swam in circles around our group. They were awesome, and could put on quite a burst of speed if they wanted to.

As a bonus, on the boat ride back in our guide spotted dolphins leaping out of the water a quarter mile away. We zoomed over to them to watch, and then played a game of chase. Apparently the dolphins like to "race" the boat, so he revved the engine and we drove around in wide circles while the dolphins zoomed back and forth alongside. It was awesome.

Sadly, the time finally came to leave the Turtle Inn. (I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good quiet place to relax.) In talking to one of the women who worked at the resort earlier in the week, we'd learned that Belize does have a kind of rainy season that starts in June. Some years it starts right on June 1, she said, and some years it is a few days later. We left on June 1 and, as if on cue, there was an enormous thunderstorm the night before. The lightning and thunder were constant, and when it woke us in the wee hours of the morning, we noticed that someone had come around during the night to pull down the curtains surrounding the porch. Despite that, our porch was still covered in puddles the next morning. It was the first time it had rained all week, and the first time we'd woken up to a cloudy sky. After a final relaxing breakfast, we headed back to the Placencia airstrip. I think this picture below captures the first time in a week that Jose had anything on his feet besides sandals.

We had a couple hours to kill in the Belize City airport, so we bought a few final souvenirs from the airport shops and Jose enjoyed a final Belikin Beer before we bid Belize adieu. I certainly hope that we'll be back someday.

You can enjoy my entire set of Belize photos on Flickr, or just use the photobrowser below:

If you missed them, here are Part 1 and Part 2.

When I last left off, I not-so-subtley mentioned that our scuba diving plans were delayed by an EARTHQUAKE. We were supposed to go scuba diving the day after our most excellent snokeling trip, but plans changed at 2:30 a.m. when Jose and I were literally shaken awake.

I had felt an earthquake once before while in grad school at Stanford, but it was a tiny one that did no damage and felt more like a low level vibration than anything else. I remember wondering why someone was jumping up and down and shaking the whole building, and it was only after it stopped that I realized it must have been a quake.

The 7.3 quake we felt was NOT minor. The epicenter was between 100-150 miles from our location on the coast of Belize and the shaking was intense. Because it was in the middle of the night and I was groggy from being shaken awake, I didn't realize at first what was happening. "What's going on??" I remember half-shouting to Jose, who responded with an equally alarmed "I don't know!" It felt like we were on the deck of a ship in very rough seas, a ship that was being shaken at high frequency in addition to the rolling waves.

Somehow Jose managed to jump out of bed and open the doors to our cabana to check outisde, as the quake died. I think we both half-expected to see a huge storm brewing, so it was strange to see that things outside were dead calm. Only the palm tree branches were moving, still swaying from the after effects of the quake. Finally, I was fully awake and was able to put a coherent thought together. "I think that was an earthquake!" I exclaimed. "Really?" said Jose, who was still thinking it was some kind of mini-hurricane. "What else could it have been," I reasoned.

Here I am reenacting the earthquake the next morning

The power went out, and it was very, very dark. We sat on our porch for a while, debating what to do. A few guests walked by and confirmed that yes, that had in fact been an earthquake. After a while longer, the resort sent a guy around with lighters and candles, but the power actually came back on pretty quickly since everything was run on generators in the first place. It didn't take long to get those running again.

With nothing else to do, we went back to bed despite slight worries of a tsunami. (If there had been one, there was no where to go except the roof -- we were on a very thin peninsula and there was no higher ground.) The next morning, it was as if the earthquake had never happened. We got up and went to breakfast as usual. There was no damage at the resort, so we were sort of insulated from it. There was damage in Placencia itself, elsewhere in Belize, and of course in Honduras, where a handful of people were sadly killed.

Our scuba diving was cancelled for the day due to uncertainty about what the ocean currents might be like, but we were able to reschedule for the following day. Instead, we had a second day of relaxation at the resort. This involved a lot more sitting next to the pool, reading, swimming, drinking fruity drinks during happy hour, and eating more delicious food.

Finally, it was time to scuba dive! Neither one of us had ever done this before, so we signed up for a "Discover Scuba" course through the Turtle Inn's excellent dive shop. We again went to Laughingbird Caye, where we'd been snokeling two days before. Most of our group went snorkeling, but we joined our guide, Arthur, for a short intro session in some shallow water by the shore. He had gone over all of our equipment on the boat ride out, and now it was time to practice. We went over how to clear your regulator, clear your mask, use the buoyancy vest, and how to keep popping your ears every 5-10 feet on the way down to equalize the pressure. We got him to snap this photo of us with our cheap underwater camera before we headed into deeper water.

Look ma, we're breathing underwater!

I have to say, scuba diving was FREAKY at first. For about 20 minutes, it was very, very difficult for me to overcome the urge to pop my head above the water to both 1) take a breath and 2) check on my surroundings. At one point, Jose had to pop up to the surface because his first attempt to clear his mask was unsuccessful (he got it the second time around) and our guide went with him, leaving me underwater. I couldn't help myself -- I popped up to join them. I didn't want to be alone under there! And I remember saying to them: "I have to be honest, I'm a little freaked out. I don't know if I can do this!" But we went back under to practice the skills one more time, and I put on my big girl pants. By the time we headed out to deeper water, I was feeling much calmer and felt like I had the hang of things.

After I got past the intial freakiness, scuba diving was TOTALLY AWESOME. It was a little tough to stay exactly neutrally buoyant since we were so inexperienced, but we did a darn good job for first-timers, and even our guide complimented us on how well we did. (Pat on the back for us, hurrah.) We swam around for almost 45 minutes before surfacing, and saw all kinds of cool fish, sea creatures and underwater plants. Because of the way the island and reef sloped down into the sea, it felt like we were flying alongside a mountain range.

There was a whole school of fish in front of Jose in this picture, but they sadly didn't show up on film

We joined the rest of the group for a lunch break before heading back out on the other side of the island for a second dive. We were down for another 40 minutes and went deeper this time -- and deeper than we'd planned! On the first dive, we got down to around 25 feet. On the second dive, we got all the way to 55 feet! I'm not sure our guide had intended to take us that low, but we were both doing well and there was a gigantic grouper that was just sitting on the bottom that we all wanted to check out. This particular kind of grouper is endangered so you can't fish for them, and by the way this dude just sat calmly on the bottom looking at us, he seemed to know that he was safe from harm. I don't have any photos from the second dive because we'd used up all the film the first time out!

Lunch break!

On the second dive, we also got to enter the water by doing the whole fall-off-the-boat-backwards thing. On the first dive, we'd jumped into the shallow water and put our gear on while standing, but this time the water was deeper. It was a little tough to climb onto the side of the boat with all the heavy gear on, but once I got up there and was ready to go, there was no stopping me. One small lean backwards was all it took to get me falling backwards into the water. I had the regulator clamped pretty hard in my mouth and it was definitely a strange but fun sensation.

Overall, scuba diving was totally awesome and we both came home interested in getting scuba certified. The only problem is that I don't think I have much desire to scuba dive in any of the water in Houston. Only clear, turquoise water filled with pretty fish for me!

Fourth and final honeymoon recap post coming soon...

There's a fairly long list of things I have backlogged to post here, mostly involving trips and other fun occasions. I'm going to try to squeeze everything in at some point, but figured I can give you a look at what's coming. Then you can hold me accountable! In no particular order:

• Wedding recaps. We got our CDs of all the photos from Christine last week! I'll be posting these over at the wedding blog. In fact, I just made my first post in 7 weeks over there tonight.
• Finish the Belize honeymoon report. I've still got to tell you about scuba diving!
• Finish the Alaska trip report. I never did the final part. Never even posted the pictures. And it was almost a year ago.
• Write the Japan trip report. Since it was 8 months ago.
• Talk about my upcoming plans for running/biking/swimming.

I've also been meaning to make the switch to Wordpress for quite some time. That might take quite a while longer though.

I ended up taking yesterday off work. See, if the shuttle had launched yesterday, I would have worked overnight starting at 1 a.m. But it didn't, so I ended up with an unscheduled day off. Let me tell you: it is REALLY hard to plan your days when the shuttle can't seem to get itself into orbit thanks to typical Florida summertime weather. Knowing that my shift is in the middle of the night, I attempted to shift this weekend. I stayed up until 3 a.m. on Saturday night, and 4 a.m. on Sunday night. But then? No launch. And the next attempt isn't today, but Wednesday. I can't very well keep using up my vacation for no good reason, and there's no point to working night hours if there's not a mission to support. So I'm back in the office and will just have to slam myself onto the night shift when the time comes.

Thus I will just whine about it. And there you go.

That was the only annoying part of an otherwise lovely weekend. On Friday night we had tex mex with some friends and then headed over to their apartment to swim in the pool. After a while, another group that was also hanging out asked us if we wanted to play some pool volleyball. So the 6 of us joined the 5 of them and were having a great time...until the COPS showed up. Yes. The cops -- and not just one, but THREE cars. Obviously there was nothing else exciting going on in League City on Friday night. Apparently someone called and said we were being too loud. I think this may be the first time this has ever happened to me, so it was unbelieveable and actually quite funny. We were drinking but no one was drunk, and it wasn't even 10:30. And no, we weren't that loud.

Count 'em. 1, 2, 3. We're such rebels, yo.

We had the house inspected on Saturday morning and all is well. There are a couple minor things that the builder will fix this week, but no showstoppers. We're scheduled to close next Wednesday or Thursday and I can't wait. In fact, we spent another few hours of our weekend browsing furniture stores and imagining the possibilities. After months of planning and watching it grow, I am SO ready to be in this house.

WHEW. It has been crazy 'round here. To recap the last two weeks:

On the job front, I worked 3 STS-128 sims. I'm scheduled to work that flight (launching in August) as a Rendezvous Officer. It will be my first time in the "front room." Maybe you'll see me on NASA TV. :) I've also supported all sorts of meetings for STS-129. I'll be the lead Rendezvous Officer for that flight (launching in November).

I've done a ton of tasks as part of the final push towards getting certified as a Rendezvous Officer, which needs to happen asap in order to work the missions I just mentioned. You can think of "tasks" as a series of mini-quizzes. There's a long, long list (think hundreds) of topics that you have to go talk through with an already-certified person before you can be certified yourself. Of course I procrastinated, and am now having to cram them all in.

Plus, yesterday I had my cert sim. A cert sim is like a flight controller's final exam. If you pass, you get certified! If you don't pass, well, that's bad. I PASSED! Hooray. Now the only thing holding up my certification is the afore-mentioned tasks. Guess what I'll be doing at work for the next week....

So what else?

A couple weeks ago we joined Becca, Byron, and a bunch of other friends for an evening of sailing. We went out into the bay and then watched Kemah's Friday night fireworks from the water while grilling burgers. (Yes, there is such a thing as a boat grill. Neat, huh?) Though the weather's been nasty hot for weeks, it was actually rather pleasant out on the water. We packed Byron's boat to max capacity with 9 of us onboard, that's for sure.

Last weekend we headed down to Corpus Christi for Jose's cousin Jennifer's wedding. For those keeping score at home, that's three weddings in four months for his family! There are no more scheduled for this year -- but his cousin is having a baby, due in October, so there's still another major life event to come in 2009.

Cousins & significant others

The wedding was lovely and we all had a great time on the dance floor. It was fun, since I really didn't get a chance to dance at my own wedding! Both the ceremony and reception were held on the top floor of a hotel downtown, and there was a great view of both the bay and the Harbor Bridge. And, since the wedding was on the 4th of July, we got to watch the fireworks! There was a building blocking some of them, but we could see anything that was shot up high. It was cute to watch all the kids with their faces pressed against the window, going "oooooooh" with every explosion.

View from the wedding

As for today...well, our house is done! We had our introductory walkthrough this afternoon and it went really well. We brought our realtor along, which was cool because he hadn't actually seen the house yet (other than pictures Jose showed him, since they share an office at work). The one issue we're still working on at this point is the roof, which looked pretty shoddy during the pre-drywall inspection back in April. The builder has made a couple fixes, but there are still some off-looking (to our eyes) spots. We're taking our inspector over on Saturday morning to check things out, so we'll have him take a very close look up there.

Oh, our appliances have finally arrived.

Everything else we saw today was minor. There were spots that needed to be repainted, a couple spots that needed caulk, some fixtures (mainly the ceiling fans) that were filthy from all the work in the house, etc. But everything was really no big deal. Even if they didn't fix it, we'd still buy the house. Hopefully our inspector won't turn up anything new -- we don't think he will, since we've been watching the construction process all along and have already had the place inspected once.

Of course wrapped up in buying a home is all the other stuff, and I've spent a lot of time over the past week and a half dealing with homeowners insurance quotes and mortgage rates. Buying a house is hard work!! But things are moving along, and we should be handing over a massive amount of cash and getting the keys to our new house in about two weeks.

And I can't wait. :)

Where have I been all week?! Well, to be honest, I've been having the life force drained out of me as I drone on endlessly about rendezvous in an effort to finish my tasks before my cert sim next week at work.

ANYWAY.

Last Sunday morning I headed over to Pearland (with #1 fan in tow) for the Y Freedom Tri, my first triathlon of the season! That in itself is unusual, since in recent years I would've done at least two or three tris by this point in the summer. But this year, I've made no secret of the fact that my training has been zilch. Knowing that, my goal was simply to finish. I knew I had absolutely no shot at matching my time from last year, and probably wouldn't match my time from 2007. But since I've done this race every year since it started and the course hasn't changed, I can compare results!

SWIM
2007 - 6:34
2008 - 6:41
2009 - 6:14

My swim on Sunday was pretty normal. There were faster swimmers racing this year, since I moved from #106 last year to #152 this year -- and I entered the same 300m swim time I always do. I ended up passing the guy in front of me halfway through the swim. After that I had open water to myself until the last 10 meters, when I was significantly slowed by a girl who had flipped onto her back. Since there were only 10 meters left, I didn't plan to pass her so I slowed and started breaststroking. This didn't work, because she was kicking so violently that torrents of water were flying into my face and I couldn't breathe. I actually ended up just standing up in the pool and walking the last 15 feet to the wall. Oh well.

The big drop in my time this year is only because this year they finally moved the chip mat so that we crossed it immediately after getting out of the pool, instead of a few hundred feet away. This leads to a very interesting conclusion that validates what I have said all along -- for short distance races, it doesn't matter how much I've been swimming lately, because I always swim at pretty much the same pace! In 2007, I was only a couple months removed from a half ironman and had continued to train like crazy. I was in great shape. But this year, before Sunday, I had been swimming exactly ONCE in the last 6 months.

So, the new conclusion that I state with some degree of seriousness: unless I'm training for a half ironman and need to build my endurance, it's not even worth spending time in the pool.

T1
2007 - 1:35
2008 - 0:52
2009 - 1:34

I took it a bit easy in T1, jogging very slowly over to my bike (though I did luck out with a spot right on the end of the rack). Again, they moved the swim-to-T1 timing mat, which explains why last year's T1 was super quick. And back in 2007, I hadn't fully streamlined my transition yet so I probably was putting on a lot more stuff.

BIKE
2007 - 42:32
2008 - 36:22
2009 - 38:54

I was really happy with my performance on the bike on Sunday. My Garmin displayed an average of 19 mph, and I was only a couple minutes worse than last year. Overall, it felt good. There wasn't much wind so my speed stayed consistent. I leapfrogged back and forth with a guy who would ride really hard for a while, and then coast for 15-20 seconds. Ride hard, then coast. Again and again. I did not understand his riding technique at all, and by the end of the bike I was just tired of hearing the "whirrrrrrrrrrr" of his gears when he took a break from pedaling.

Oh, and for reference, the big drop in my time on the bike from 2007 to 2008 is due to my awesome tri bike that I started racing with in 2008. For better or for worse, in some cases you really CAN buy speed.

T2
2007 - 1:08
2008 - 0:50
2009 - 1:14

I'm not gonna lie. I was tired coming off the bike. I took a moment to catch my breath, and walked to the exit instead of jogging.

RUN
2007 - 32:47
2008 - 33:55
2009 - 38:23

OH MY. There are no words to describe the levels of SUCK that I attained on the run this year, so I will just leave it at that.

OVERALL
2007 - 1:24:45 - 1st place Athena
2008 - 1:18:34 - 1st place Athena
2009 - 1:26:20 - 3rd place Athena

If I'd matched my time from last year, I would have repeated as 1st place Athena. Alas, I didn't come close, and hadn't expected to. Had I not attained the previously mentioned high levels of SUCK on the run, I would have still beaten my time from two years ago. Alas, I did not.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how the race went, aside from the run. 1:26 was as good as I could have reasonably expected given the hot and humid conditions combined with my almost complete lack of training. I didn't end up getting my award, because when I looked at the posted results at the race, I was listed in 4th place. It was only getting hotter, so Jose and I decided to head home. Oh well.

Overall, it was really fun to get back into tri mode and get one under my belt for 2009. I came home that day and signed up for both Tri Girl and the Clear Lake Sprint in August, so I have a couple months to get back into the swing of things, and hopefully improve my performance!