Daily: January 2007 Archives

Bini is the new ARD Support trainee, and I'm her primary mentor. She took her first run ever at the end of the sim last night, and I got really nervous -- as if it was my first run all over again. I realized that training her is going to be fun.

I got home at 10 (these late night sims seem to be showing up more and more on the schedule as the training division tries to accomodate missions plus a zillion training objectives) and my new bike trainer was sitting outside my door. Woohoo! I opened it up and took everything out of the box, and immediately got frustrated. Why is it that the more expensive the item is, the fewer clear instructions it comes with?? There were only a handful of separate pieces, but it took me more than half an hour to get everything together correctly.

I must admit here that bikes intimidate me, for reasons I can't quite explain. I have a perception that they're really complicated, and really easy to screw up. I don't think it's true, but I can't quite get over it. I was terrified that I'd set the trainer up wrong, strip one of the screws, or put my bike on incorrectly. To work with the trainer, the rear wheel skewer on my bike had to be replaced with the one that came with the trainer, and I had a mental image of all the gears just falling apart in my hands at the moment I took the old skewer out.

Of course that didn't happen, and Jose gave me weird looks the whole time. In his attempts to help, I felt like he was rushing me, and I was unreasonably worried that he'd mess something up. Finally he sat back and smiled and said: "So you do slow down when you care about something. Just like I wanted to go slow when I first set up my iPod. You want to check everything twice before you set up your trainer." He looked rather satisfied. I guess he's right.

The trainer is pretty cool, though I only rode it for a couple minutes last night (mainly because I needed to put air in my tires; the slightly deflated tires made the wheel slip occasionally on the roller). One problem I immediately realized is that my speed sensor is on the front wheel, which isn't moving, and therefore I have no feedback on my speed and distance. I'll have to switch the sensor; I hope the wire is long enough. The trainer does cause a fairly low-level hum and vibration, so it'll be interesting to see if I get any complaints from the downstairs neighbors.

If I can't get the sensor moved tonight, I'm going to do my workout anyway. I'm planning on 10 miles, which, assuming 15 mph (which is on the slow side) whould take me 40 minutes. So I'll just put the bike in a medium gear and go for time.

Ah, there's nothing like unsolicited advice. You ask for opinions and advice about bikes; you get opinions and advice about finances. Thanks to those who commented, but I'm very well aware that money doesn't grow on trees and that I can't buy a house with a bike.

Even if I don't buy a new bike, there are a number of maintenance items that need to be done to my current bike, including buying aerobars and new tires -- aerobars for the triathlon, and tires because my current tires are four years old and worn out and bordering on unsafe. That's the minimum necessary. I've also been thinking about upgrading the components since the bike was 6 months old, because I've currently got the lowest level components and have had a lot of problems with them staying true and aligned. In one triathlon, I couldn't get into my lowest gears because the chain would fall off if I went there because the gearing had gotten so far out-of-alignment; it was in Austin, so yes, I needed the low gears.

So, considering that there is already money to be spent, and that I was already planning to spend at least that base amount, and considering that Bike Barn has a trade-in program, it may very well be possible to get a brand new bike for only a couple hundred dollars more than I'd spend on upgrades. A couple hundred dollars is only a portion of my tax refund, which still leaves plenty for savings. To me, that's getting close to a no-brainer if I can find the bike I want at the right price.

I know that people think I spend money with abandon, but believe it or not, I do actually live within my means.

Speaking of bikes, my trainer arrives today! Thank goodness -- I can't take much more of the stationary bike in the gym. I had to ride a couple miles on the recumbant version last night until I could snag one of the four upright bikes to finish my workout. I did 21 miles total in about 1:10. The stationary bike obviously requires a different level of effort than a real bike; if I did 21 miles in 1:10 on a real road, it wouldn't be unreasonable, but it'd be on the fast side for me.

No workout today. It'll be the first day I've missed, but there wasn't much of a way around it short of getting up at 6 a.m...and yeah, not so much. I know a lot of people are morning runners, etc, but not me. I was here by 9, will leave at 3:30 to go to class, and then as soon as I get out of class I'm coming back to work to watch the ascent sim from another position's backroom. Tomorrow all my boxes will be checked and I will be a certified flight controller! Finally.

I am mere days away from getting all of my paperwork signed and officially becoming a certified ARD Support Officer. I just have to watch one more sim from the Booster backroom (a different position, but their problems become our problems so they are important to us).

This morning was my coworker's Ascent FDO Cert Sim. This was a big deal, I mean BIG DEAL, with capital letters. Ascent FDO cert sims happen, at best, once every couple years. This particular coworker is a great guy and a great flight controller, and we all knew he would do well. But earlier this week we all had fun teasing him, because he's a bit high-strung. By Tuesday, we were talking about scraping him off the ceiling, and yesterday I thought his head might explode. ;)

He passed with flying colors, of course, and the flight directors sang his praises and he'll be working his first launch this summer. Becoming an Ascent FDO is a 10-year process, so it's the culmination of many, many years of work and training. Pretty cool to think about.

Because it was his cert sim, and he is the front room controller that I answer to, it meant that I saw a bunch of difficult cases as well. I left feeling almost as if I'd just had my own cert sim all over again. I actually did well and was pretty happy with my performance; it was personal confirmation that I'm ready to do this job for STS-117. But what happened next made me feel even better.

First, the newly-minted Ascent FDO thanked me for doing such a great job today and helping make things easier for him. It's always good to hear praise from your team lead, and know that he's happy with your performance.

But then something happened that has never happened before. I sit in the back room (right now anyway), a place that doesn't usually catch the attention of higher-ups like the flight director. This afternoon I'd just gotten back from lunch when one of my managers walked in. He'd been watching the sim this morning as an evaluator, along with an already-certified FDO and an Ascent Flight Director (in addition to the one flight director who was working the sim and the two other flight directors who were training via watching).

"The flight directors were very impressed with you this morning," he said. "And they scolded me for letting you become a GPO instead of a FDO. Just thought you'd like to know."

So yeah, that pretty much TOTALLY made my week.

I ran 4 miles last night -- outside! Hooray for no treadmill! After all the rain, the stars looked particularly bright, shiny, and beautiful. I don't remember the time, but it was just under an 11:00/mile pace, so something like 43:xx. Today I am doing nothing! Rest day! Woohoo!

This morning I woke up and there was a strange yellow ball in the sky. I'm told that it's called "the sun." Oh sun, I missed you.

On the Chronicle's site this morning, a particular headline caught my eye: "At 161 pounds, Tyra Banks says 'fat' pictures are hurtful." It seems that Tyra Banks, yes that Tyra Banks, the absolutely gorgeous model, has gained some weight since her modeling days. She now weighs 161 pounds, and has fluctuated between 148 and 162 since retiring from her modeling career. I find this notable for two reasons.

1) Tyra Banks is beautiful.
2) Tyra Banks, former model, weighs 161 pounds.

I've long said that all men -- and even a lot of women -- have no idea what normal weight for a woman is. People think women are supposed to weigh something like 120 pounds regardless of body shape, body type, height, or lifestyle. Which is funny because I'm 5'8" and weigh 185. I could stand to lose 15-20 pounds because my body fat percentage is higher than it should be; at my lowest point in the past decade I was 169, and I felt very good there. Anyway, suffice it to say that I haven't weighed 120 pounds since I was about 10 years old. To weigh what "normal" is, I'd have to lose a full third of my weight.

A third! People, that is just crazy. I wonder what it will take for people to start getting a realistic idea of weight.

I've been pondering this issue even more lately as I do some research on wetsuits for the Half Ironman. Sizing for wetsuits is determined via two things: height and weight. I've looked at many different brands -- Orca, Blue Seventy, Zoot, Xterra, etc -- and while my height is always in one of the ranges specified, my weight never is. For every single one of them, their specifications list the largest size as covering something like "145-163" or "155-170" or "160+" or something else that, while called "extra large" or even "extra large/Athena," is not really extra large.

Now, I'm chubby but not fat. And triathletes as a whole are a pretty skinny bunch of people. But I do know people who do races like this who are larger than me. What the heck do they wear??

Anyway. I suppose that's enough ranting about the absurd weight standards for women and the ineffectiveness of sizing things based on height/weight. Last night I rode 15 miles on the stationary bike. This is the first time I've ever ridden the bikes at Gilruth and I found one major problem -- they are too close to the front wall, thus too close to the TVs. So you end up having to look up at an odd angle, which leaves your eyes feeling really strange after a while. Hmm. They also have a half-and-half bike selection -- 4 recumbant bikes and 4 upright bikes. The four "good ones" (i.e. not recumbant) were taken when I arrived, so I rode 5 miles on the recumbant bike. After that, one of the upright bike freed up so I quickly switched machines for the remaining 10 miles. It took me about 54 minutes, which seems pretty well calibrated to what I would do on the road (where I average somewhere between 15 and 18 mph depending on weather and wind conditions).

Jose left this morning to spend the weekend at home, so I'm all alone. While it will be nice to get some me-time to clean up my apartment and get some little projects done, it always feels weird when he goes away. I mean, who will I eat dinner with? Who will laugh at me when I imitate the crazy dance that Stephen Colbert did on last night's Conan rerun? Who will play the bass line on Guitar Hero II while I play lead? (By the way, that game is awesome.)

Oh well, he will be back on Sunday, and my brother will be here in the meantime. Last night I was worrying about what I would do to keep Brian entertained for the weekend (a habit that is totally blamed on my mom), especially when I need to do my long run and long bike. Then I remembered that this is the same Brian that played Burnout (a race car game) for like 10 hours straight while we were home for Christmas. Something tells me he'll entertain himself.

My brother is coming to visit this weekend. He called yesterday and said "What are you doing this weekend? I have to be in Nebraska later this week, and next week. Instead of flying back to DC for the weekend, I thought I'd come to Houston." I was a little confused, since he has to fly either way, but maybe he just wants to go somewhere different. In any case -- my brother is coming to visit this weekend! That will be fun. He's only been here once, when I was still a co-op in...2000? I think. I have no idea what we'll do, since I didn't have any plans, but I hope Brian doesn't mind if I abandon him for my long run and bike. Maybe he'll be interested in going to the zoo on Saturday with the photobloggers. We'll see.

I just hope he's not coming full of hopes of meeting Jose, since Jose will be in Corpus. :(

I had class last night. We had to show-and-tell a piece of typography that taught us something about the subject. I took one of my Harry Potter books, to prove the point that fonts are a large part of identity, so we should choose them wisely such that they enhance the feel and message and tone. Can you imagine Harry Potter typed in plain old Times New Roman or Helvetica? Or even something like Comic Sans? I think not! I could type anything in the "Harry Potter font" and though you might not recognize it from the books and movies, you'd probably react with a "...something about that looks familiar..." Why? Because it's become part of Harry Potter's identity. It was well-designed. I'm not saying that the books became popular because of the font (though wouldn't that be funny!), but I am saying that the font enhances the book. For less-well-known books, font (and overall cover design) is even more important. Just because we're told not to judge a book by its cover doesn't mean that we follow that advice.

I ran last night after class; the cold rain again forced me inside onto the treadmill. Whennnnnn is it going to stop raining? If I wanted more than a week straight of rain, I would've moved to Seattle. Anyway -- I did 4 miles on the treadmill in 45:48. That's a mile at 5 mph, followed by a mile at 5.5 mph, and repeat. I run slower on the treadmill, and I am finally just deciding to accept that. I don't know why (temperature? boredom? just less comfortable?), but I am always slower. And seem to fatigue faster. Who knows. On the biking front, my new bike trainer is in transit, but UPS says the scheduled delivery is next Tuesday. Argh! I really thought it would be here by the weekend. Bummer.

I just got an email at the HARRA webmaster address that says (typos included):

"This is bad if your websitehas not been updated. My god get with it or let some one else do the job, No excuse"

It was in the junk folder, but so was a legitimate email. So I can't tell if it's spam, or if someone is actually upset. I must admit that I'm not quite sure what they're getting at here, since the website has been updated far more frequently in the past 6 months than it had been before. I suppose if they have a legitimate complaint, or care to point out what they're looking at that needs to be updated, then they'll email back a more complete comment.

Oh well, people are weird.

Work is going horribly slowly this week. I'm down to mere hours of ARD tasks still to do, which means that hopefully I'll be officially certified by the end of the week. The downside to finishing, however, is that it means that I begin a month-long period of reading, reading, and more reading. I won't start sims until March at the very earliest. Sigh. Why does there always have to be a downside to starting a new job? Why can't I just jump in?

Becca and Jen joined me for swimming last night. I did 1250 yards in about 25 minutes. I need to go buy a cheapo watch that I can use

Next time, I'm going to try to remember to take a thermometer to measure the temperature of the pool water. It's on the chilly side -- cold when I first jump in, then perfect as I swim my laps (I don't get hot), but then it gets cold again as soon as I stop. I need a calibration point to get an idea of what "average water temperature is 68-70 degrees, wetsuits are highly recommended" really means. Becca and Jen both independently guessed about 75 degrees, which isn't much warmer than the Half Ironman predicted temperatures. In that case, I should be fine with a sleeveless wetsuit.

I also looked up exactly where the swim course is. The name of the body of water is Offatts Bayou, but as you can tell from the map, it's less of a bayou and more of an inlet! Seems to me that the temperature should be pretty similar to the temperature of the Gulf, or maybe a few degrees warmer. Fortunately Gulf temperatures are readily available and list the average March and April temperatures as 61 and 71 degrees, respectively. So 68-70 seems like a good prediction.

Tuesdays are looking to be fairly hectic this spring. I have class from 4-7, which means coming in to work early and going to the gym late. I'm already looking forward to the weekend to get some headway on my long to-do list of stuff outside of work. Jose won't be around this weekend, which is sad, and yet means that I might actually clean my apartment... I'm going to stop this train of thought before I get too overwhelmed by all that I need to do.

I'm going to need a wetsuit for the Half Ironman. They say the water will be 68-70 degrees and wetsuits are highly encouraged (and if they're allowed, I should wear one -- they make you faster). The problem is that I have no idea what to get! And triathlon wetsuits ain't cheap!

I'm not sure how much I'm willing to spend, and I'm not sure what size I am. But my biggest question is: sleeves or no sleeves? I read somewhere that sleeves are really for water below 60 degrees. But if I'm buying a wetsuit, a part of me says that I might as well get one with sleeves in case I decide to do any other cold water triathlons someday...

If any of you out there have an opinion, let me know!

I have a fairly lengthy post churning around my head about the Half Ironman, my hopes and worries, and why I want to do it in the first place. But I don't feel like writing it all right now.

I am ready for all the Resolution Runners -- the people that decided to start running as a New Year's resolution thing -- to just give up already and stop taking up all the machines at the gym. Ha! I know, I know, I should support them, but let's be honest -- there's a reason the gym is most crowded in January, and there's a reason that it drops off quickly after that first month.

Anyway, once again I didn't have my cold weather clothes with me last night, mainly because running in very cold temperatures seems to do a number on my lungs and leaves me coughing all night. I planned to run inside on the treadmill, and I had to wait 10 minutes for a free machine! The gym has about a dozen of them (I'm guessing at the number, but it's close) and they were all full. All the ellipticals were full too. I was annoyed.

I did end up getting on eventually. Last night was fish night and the debut of Gavin and Jen's new HDTV, and I'd already told them I'd be a little late, but with the waiting for the treadmill, I knew it might make me even later. "Oh well, I'll just cut this run short," said my head. Honestly, with all the people in the gym, I figured I'd be limited by the 30-minute time limit during peak hours! But as a half hour came and went, the gym thinned out enough that there were always at least one or two treadmills available, and I decided that I could take the fastest shower ever and thus get to fish night only a half hour late. So, I never got off the treadmill easly, and I didn't get to wuss out of the workout after all.

I did my 5 miles, the first mile at 5 mph (12:00 pace) and the next 4 at 5.5 mph (10:54 pace) for a total of 55:36.

Now, I've always considered myself to be pretty decent at math, but I can't figure this one out: if 5 mph is 12:00/mile and 6 mph is 10:00/mile, why isn't 5.5 mph equal to 11:00/mile?? Now, I can do the math one way and say, well, 11 minutes per mile. 60 minutes divided by 11:00/mile is 5.4545 miles... which, of course, is not 5.5. And 60 minutes divided by 5.5 miles is 10.9090.../mile which, of course, is not 11 minutes.

But 5 mph is 10, and 6 is 12! Halfway between each is 5.5 and 11! I must admit that this has puzzled me for quite some time. Don't tell my bosses.

In my first week after the half marathon, I've already run 8 miles and will run 4 more tonight. For me, this is unheard of. I usually take the whole week off, but not this year. I am going to be a Half Ironman.

Houstonians are crazy. I don't claim to be a cold weather expert -- after all, the farthest north I've lived is Charlotte, and while the temperatures reached freezing fairly regularly, snow was more of a rarity. But come ON. Houston has gone weather crazy this week, and it's a little absurd.

Don't get me wrong -- it's damn cold outside, unusually cold for this area. Temperature hovering right above freezing, and a wind chill of around 20. But after watching the news at various points throughout the weekend and yesterday, you'd think the apocalypse was upon us. They were probably disappointed to wake up this morning and see that we didn't have ice on the roads.

That said, it'd a bit annoying that my employer can't bring my office (or the cafeteria, for that matter) to a comfortable temperature. At the moment I'm thinking about putting on gloves, and my toes are chilly. I wore a sweater and that was a good idea. I had to leave my coat on during lunch.

This morning I also wore a hat and scarf. I figure if not today, then when? My aunt made me a scarf for Christmas. Not Christmas 2006 -- Christmas 2005. Today I finally wore it for the first time. That made me laugh.

I bailed on my final 4-miler last night. I felt pretty guilty about it, but I had yet another rough afternoon at work and just wanted to go home. As a trade-off, I thought about doing a very easy 3 miles tonight, but I'm not going to have time before heading to the HRB pasta get-together.

The source of my non-running thoughts was the load checkout we did for STS-117 yesterday; I'll spare you the details but the main point is to check out the very very very large database of numbers and parameters as well as calibrate the simulator. The database check went swimmingly. But the calibration... Why does the simulator have to be calibrated? I don't know. Probably because it's old and crappy.

Anyway, nominally we need 3 runs to get the calibration correct. One to see how much it's off, one to correct it by adding "weight" to the simulator, and one to evaluate the underspeed and use that to divide the weight into dry weight, liquid oxygen weight, and liquid hydrogen weight. It becomes a big headache, however, to try to do such a calibration when something changes between run 2 and run 3. Something that no one can explain. And when you find an error in one of your tools. A tool that's supposed to be certified.

ARGH.

And yet, I love this job. I left work frustrated enough to skip running, and yet somehow satisfied. Can't really explain that.

I did a last-minute online search for a hotel room downtown for tomorrow night to make half marathon morning much easier. It's always nice to get an extra half hour of sleep, and nice to be able to go back and shower before climbing in the car to drive back to Clear Lake. I haven't done it for my 2 Houston Halfs, but I did it before the full. I didn't expect to find anything available, but I did! At the Marriott Courtyard. It's not quite as low as the marathon rate, but it's reasonable enough. Woo! Hopefully they will be ok with a late checkout, and I can stick around to cheer for all my marathon-finishing friends. :)

I built up a lot of stress built up between 12:00 and 5:00 yesterday. It started with our first flight-specific STS-117 ascent sim, which had a couple rough spots for me. Then I realized that the 117 TCDT (a joint activity with KSC) is scheduled for the Friday that I'm currently supposed to be in Colorado skiing, so I may have to change my plane ticket to come back early. Then I found out that one of my managers was mad that we didn't change a procedure and set up an activity in advance of the 117 ILC (database check and simulator calibration) that we're doing on Thursday.

All the little things were bothering me, but they suddenly seemed minor when my coworker dropped the shocking and horrible news that she has cancer. Hodgkin's lymphoma. This is the girl who's sat beside me in sims for more than a year, the girl that's supposed to be sitting beside me in March when we launch STS-117. She starts chemo on Friday and next week if she can make it to our 2nd flight-specific ascent, she may not have any hair. She's still hoping to work the flight in March, and I hope hope hope that she can. Her chances are very good -- the doctors have said 80-90% survival -- and the cancer has not made it into her bone marrow yet.

They discovered it during a routine physical at the end of November; she had no symptoms other than a very high white blood cell count. If that's not incentive to get yearly physicals -- even if you feel fine -- then I don't know what is.

You should get a physical. Yes, you.

So, when I went running yesterday, I felt like I was possessed. I was running to blow off so much steam.

The schedule said 2x400 @ 2:08, 3x800 @ 4:20, and another 2x400 @ 2:08. I did an abbreviated warmup (half a mile) and skipped the cooldown entirely due to, ahem, issues relating to the two facts that I have fat thighs and I forgot my bodyglide. The problems started around the end of my 1st 800.

Overall - 4.75 miles (Garmin said 4.6?), 52:17
800 warmup - 5:40
400 run / 400 recovery - 2:08 / 3:11
400 / 400 - 2:06 / 3:13
800 / 400 - 4:13 / 4:23
800 / 400 - 4:03 / 4:14
800 / 400 - 4:04 / 4:26
400 / 400 - 1:56 / 3:25
400 / 400 - 2:04 / 3:05

I couldn't slow down. I tried, and couldn't. Oh well.

Coming back from vacation usually means coming back to a messy apartment, because I never really have time to clean up before I go. I can usually put up with a low-to-medium level of mess for quite a long time (the exception being dishes; I can't stand to leave dishes lying anywhere but the sink). But at some point, the mess goes from low-to-medium to I-can't-take-it and I get very antsy and I can't pay attention to anything else except trying to straighten up. Last night after watching another episode of Band of Brothers, Jose looked at me and said "one more?" I said "ok, but you must give me an hour to do some cleaning or my head is going to explode."

So he did. And I did. In that hour, I updated my budget (which, I must admit, is less of a budget and more of a money tracker, but at least it keeps me from going completely broke) to account for all my Christmas spending, took a load of laundry out of the dryer, put a new load in the washer, unloaded the dishwasher, loaded it again, filed some papers, threw a bunch of stuff away, and straightened up the coffee table. And after that, I felt SO much better.

I only saw about 10 minutes of the BCS game, but my dad called me at halftime to ask if I was watching the marching bands. "The halftime show is marching bands? Really? It's not some pop star?" That was pretty cool.

I tried out Motion Based last night, a website that takes the data from my Garmin Forerunner and plots it, maps it, etc. It listed my 8.3 mile run as 8.48 miles. Huh?? The FAQs say that the site doesn't take the Garmin distance; it takes the tracks and calculates mileage itself. But 8.3 is right, and it's self-calculated 8.48 is wrong! Then I tried SportTracks after remembering that Vic mentioned it. SportTracks also downloads the track as far as I can tell (because it gives you the ability to change it and/or correct it), and it calculated 8.3 miles. So what's the deal with MotionBased? Anyone else notice this problem?

My next thought, of course, was that the Garmin might provide too much data, if that's possible. It's addicting. I could look at the maps and graphs all day long...

I can't believe it -- when I was listing all my resolutions yesterday, I forgot to mention the "big one" that I've been pondering for a while now but haven't made public:

This year, I hope to buy a house. !!!

The thought of buying a house is scary, but with the changes in my life that happened in 2006 -- notably the new job -- the thought of buying a house is starting to sound a lot more appealing. This summer will mark 5 years of full-time employment in Houston for me. That's 5 years of full-time residency. (I always feel the need to distinguish between the time I was co-oping and the point at which I moved here "for real.")

When I moved to Houston "for real" in July 2002, I didn't know how long I would be here. I had illusions of going back to grad school to get a Ph.D., but I realized quickly that more education in engineering is not what I want. After a couple years, I began to realize that my current job wasn't quite what I wanted long-term, and I started looking around and even did one job interview, and thought I might leave Houston again. For four years, I never seriously considered buying a house because, in the back of my mind, I thought living in Houston might be temporary.

But now I have a new job, one that I am excited about, and one that I plan on sticking with at least until the space shuttle stops flying in order to accomplish the goals of training for and working flights at my new positions. That shouldn't be any earlier than 2010. And so I am finally faced with the reality of staying in Houston for at least four more years.

I say "faced with the reality" as if it is a bad thing, but it's not. I have grown to like Houston in my own weird way. I still think it's a rather ugly city, and of course the climate could be better, and it could be closer to mountains and hiking....and on and on. But I've lived here long enough now that it feels like home, and it feels like my city. I'm finally comfortable with the idea of owning property and making my presence here more permanent.

So: this year I hope to buy a house. My lease is up at the end of August, so I plan to start looking late in the spring.

At this rate, 2007 might be even bigger than 2006.

I walked through my front door last night sad that vacation was over but happy to be back in the pink apartment next to my little bayou. It was chilly inside, but I expected that because I turned off the heat when I left. What I didn't expect was to find the door to my balcony about 3 inches ajar. My heart immediately started pounding, and Jose checked every closet while I took a cursory glance around and checked that everything was indeed still in its proper place. All major electronics accounted for, jewelry (though I had my most expensive items with me) as expected in the box, nothing obviously amiss.

Did the apartment people come in while I was gone? They mentioned something about an annual inspection, but I was pretty sure that was in early December and I was also pretty sure I'd gotten a letter saying they were going to do it on a certain day when I was definitely still in town. Suddenly Jose remembered that the last thing we did before he took me to the airport on December 22 was watch the space shuttle fly over. I was very excited about that, and do remember opening the door to the balcony before we changed our minds and went downstairs and farther outside. As soon as we saw the shuttle fly over, we had to run back inside and grab my stuff to immediately head to the airport.

So yes, the logical explanation is that I opened the door, never fully closed it, didn't realize it was still open because it was only cracked by a few inches, and left town. So yes, my apartment was open and accessible to anyone who figured out how to get on the balcony for a WEEK AND A HALF.

I'm an idiot. I'm also very very VERY relieved that my idiocy either went unnoticed or un-taken-advantage-of.

So, I think I owe my future self (the only one who might ever go back and re-read this entry) and current readers a 2006 recap. It was a very good year for me, perhaps the best ever. I was successful with about half of my 2006 resolutions, including continuing classes towards a graphic design degree at UHCL, shooting a professional sporting event (Major League Soccer), doing a triathlon (did 3 of them), publishing my STS-107 footprint paper (did that at the AIAA conference in August), and certifying as an ARD flight controller!

The two biggest things of the year, however, were unexpected. I guess that's how life is; you don't often predict the things that will cause the biggest changes...

In August, I got a new job! I was content in my old job, but not happy. I knew that although I got to work on some cool and worthwhile projects, doing analysis all the time would not make me happy in the long run. Doing ARD part-time confirmed what I always suspected was true: I want a job that is more interactive, that is more real-time, that is more tangible. I want to work with people, and talk to people. Being a full-time flight controller will suit me better, and I am very excited to get started in Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures. The training will take a while, and I have a lot of reading to do, but this is where I want to be right now, and this is the path that I want to follow in the future.

In January, I started dating Jose. He joined a group of friends to cheer for me at the half marathon last year, and our first official date was the following weekend. It's been almost one year, which is pretty cool. I'm lucky to have found him, and I am very happy. 'Nuff said.

My 2006 recap of running and more looks something like this:

+ 412 miles run (perhaps my most-ever in a year, I'm not sure)
+ 374 miles biked (definitely my most-ever in a year)
+ 9.5 miles swum
+ 23 events done (including 3 triathlons, 1 duathlon, and 1 adventure race)

And finally, my resolutions for 2007:

+ Lose 10 pounds. Again.*
+ Train for and complete the Lone Star Half Ironman on April 1.
+ Play my flute, for the first time since leaving Stanford.
+ Work a launch as ARD Support Officer. (I'm scheduled for 3, so this shouldn't be a problem!)
+ Certify as RPS (Rendezvous Procedures Specialist).
+ Visit a new continent. (Asia, Africa, Australia, or Antarctica?)

* I hate this resolution. However, I am 20 pounds heavier than I was in September 2004 when we came back from Peru and that is NOT. COOL.

Happy New Year, three days late! :)

Hello 2007. Sorry I've been a blog slacker for your first 36 hours.

I've got a post coming about year-end wrap-up and 2007 goals (I don't like to call them resolutions). I'm really just posting at the moment to say that:

+ I've been a bad runner and haven't run since the 14-miler on Saturday and won't run today. But I will run tomorrow, I promise.

+ Jose and I have been having a lovely time in Charlotte. We went down to the park last night to find the Andromeda galaxy with Dad and his image stabilized binoculars. Dad and Jose get along great, as I knew they would.

+ We head back to Houston this evening, and tomorrow I'll be back at work. Ah, I hate the end of vacation.

Hope everyone had a Happy New Year!