Daily: December 2007 Archives

I've got to be up again in 5 hours, but here I still sit, messing around on the computer. Although I still have two days of vacation left in Corpus Christi, I'm not ready for the holidays to be over -- or really, I'm just not ready to go back to work!

I don't know what I was thinking when I bought my plane ticket. I leave at the absurd hour of 6:10 a.m. which means I've got to be up at 4:30. (Thank goodness the Charlotte airport is closer to my house than IAH is to Clear Lake!) With a short half hour layover in Houston, by the time I get to Corpus Christi it still won't even be 10:00 in the morning. It'll be nice to have the whole day there -- if I can stay awake.

Charlotte has been lovely. Katie and Joel apparently brought the weather with them from Seattle because it has been overcast and drizzly for much of my 10 days here, but that's my only real complaint. We have done tons of eating, shopping, talking, and Wii bowling. SO MUCH Wii bowling. I am now a Wii bowling pro, and so when I bowl my character gets to use a ball with shiny sparkly stars on it. Woo!

I haven't mentioned running lately because there hasn't been much to speak of. I tried to add a running log of my latest workouts via RunningAhead.com after seeing Jen put it on her site, but I wasn't able to get it working properly this afternoon -- it kept on messing up the rest of my sidebar.

I've done 4 runs plus a couple walks with my mom while here, but the hills have taken their toll more than usual. This afternoon I did 8 miles and by the last couple, I was walking every uphill section. I went back out on a 3+ mile walk with my mom just to put my total over 10 for the day, but I was discouraged. I'm going through the worst bout of motivational issues I've had in quite a while, and while I know I'll finish the Aramco Half Marathon without a problem in two weeks, it certainly won't be my best performance.

Next year... :)

My vacation in Charlotte continues. I have been here for more than a week, and yet the time has flown past. Two more days and I'm headed back to Texas, even if it will be another few days in Corpus Christi before I finally return to Houston.

Yesterday was the annual trek to Chapel Hill to spend the afternoon eating whatever interesting food my Aunt Nancy has cooked for us. That sounds like I mean interesting in a bad way, but I don't -- it's always yummy. Yesterday included potato soup, turkey, green bean casserole, and a tasty shrimp dip. Dessert was pear gingerbread cake and it was delicious! The only downer to the day is that I made the mistake of taking Benedryl on the drive up. My mom had brought it along because my aunt was cat-sitting, and since I'd been sneezing a lot already, I decided it couldn't hurt. Wrong. Quickly, I remembered the reason I never take Benedryl: it makes me tired and woozy. My head felt like it was in a fog for much of the afternoon, and I didn't really recover until I slept the whole way home to Charlotte.

This morning I was up early to have breakfast with my high school friends, followed by the "mother-daughter" lunch with my mom, sister, and their friends. I only ate an english muffin at breakfast, so I had plenty of room for a very yummy tuna steak salad for lunch.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the mall exchanging things that didn't fit or just didn't work, and I came away with a new pair of work pants, a sweater, a new brown purse -- and the not-related-to-Christmas item that I was fortunate enough to find in the Ann Taylor store: my bridesmaid dress for Karen's wedding in April. Sadly it was no longer on sale (or maybe I'm just remembering incorrectly that it was), but oh well. I have a dress, and it fits. Well, sort of. It fits in the hips, but the top is a size too big. Seriously, I am far too pear-shaped for this dress. The top needs to be taken in by at least an inch or more. Coincidentally, one of the salespeople in the store who we'd begun talking to about alterations heard me mention Houston. Turns out her grandmother lives in Houston, and she offered to call her grandmother to see if she could recommend a good place for alterations. Score! The two places are both over by the Galleria, but better than nothing.

Speaking of which, if anybody out there can recommend any additional places for alterations in the Houston area, let me know. I don't want to take the dress just anywhere, and I want to make sure it's done right.

After two years of spending Christmas with Katie on the west coast, the fact that she moved out to Seattle has a silver lining: it meant that she and Joel were both here for Christmas this year! As each year passes, I can't help but think that it is less and less likely that my family will continue to be together, all six of us, each Christmas and so I savor the times when we are.

It was a marvelous Christmas day here in Charlotte. The weather was a bit overcast, but it was sunny inside my house. Mom fixed a great breakfast and by 10:30 it was off to the living room for present opening! I got a lot of great gifts from my parents and siblings, including new shoes, multiple books, a photo, two calendars (one for work, one for home), and some clothes. I think I did a pretty good job on the gifting as well, since everyone seemed genuinely happy when they opened their gift from me.

We spent the afternoon playing Katie and Joel's Wii (which yes, they brought with them from Seattle just for the holidays) and taking a nice 4-mile walk with Mom. There were lots of people out and about, people walking in the park, admiring the Christmas lights, and watching kids ride on shiny new bikes. Tonight we went to the movies and saw National Treasure 2. I never saw the first one, but this one was entertaining.

I hope all my friends in blogger-land had a wonderful Christmas!

A Boston Red Sox hat that he forgot. That's all of Jose that I get to see for the next week after dropping him off at the airport this morning for a flight back to Houston that began a full day of travel for him. From Houston, he drove to Corpus Christi and now we're both with our own families. That's all well and good, except I miss him already.

Our three days in Charlotte were excellent. We flew in on Wednesday night and by Thursday morning, I'd pretty much forgotten that work exists. We went shopping with my Dad, saw a free screening of Juno with some of my high school friends, talked to my mom's kindergarten class about the space shuttle, took the family out to dinner, and then even cooked dinner from scratch last night for the family. Jose even got a mini-Christmas, since when we got here we noticed that my mom had added a "Jose" stocking to the mantle and filled it last night while we were cooking, and afterwards we went up the street to Caribou Coffee.

It was pretty much the best three days in a long, long time.

I am counting the hours until I'm done with work and get to head to Charlotte and start two glorious weeks of vacation. This month turned out to be really crazy, and I can't wait to relax.

I was a royal slacker over the weekend and didn't run. Last week was so busy that I really felt like I needed two days to recover! I couldn't drag myself outside! But I knew I needed a long run, so yesterday I left work a little early and got in 3 laps of the Gilruth trail before it got completely dark. One lap is 2.9 miles, so my total was 8.7 miles. I covered the distance in 1:35 and change for an average of a sliver under 11:00 per mile.

All in all, this was a really good run. I felt a little anxious about it, since I haven't run long in a while. I fell off the bandwagon after the Houston Half in October, and had only done one 10-miler in the weeks since that. I'm ok with it, and with the fact that I won't be setting a new PR in the half in January. What I can do is run a solid race and finish in the 2:20-2:25 time frame.

The first loop didn't go that well. My lower legs were tight and I was warm. I'd been cold all day, which led to my overdressing in a long sleeve shirt, capris, and gloves despite the fact that it was in the mid-50s. I was sweating pretty good by the end of the first mile. The gloves came off, but I was still warm. That got better once I got to the second half of the loop, where a brisk breeze was blowing right in my face. For the rest of the run, I was comfortable. The temperature was pretty much perfect.

After the first loop, I wasn't really looking forward to two more, but about a mile into the second loop, my legs had finally loosened up and I really got into a groove, just crusing along and listening to my music. I took a short (less than 1 minute) walk break at each mile and a couple times I was actually surprised to find myself another mile down the road. The cruise control continued on the third loop, and while I started to feel tired in the last couple miles, I was able to keep up my pace and even speed up a little.

Each loop was faster than the previous loop -- 32:02, 31:59, 31:11 -- and my fastest miles were from 5-8.

I know that a good run is no reason for me to continue slacking off, but it did make me feel ok about my current condition.

Every year I plan to send out Christmas cards, but I never actually get around to it. But this year is different! This year I designed a card, ordered some, and they arrived yesterday. Now my problem is not having some addresses! I have an address for most of my high school and college friends, but if you live in Houston I probably don't have it. So if you want a Christmas card from me, send your address to sarah-at-saroy-dot-net.

With the writer's strike still going on, I've been watching more cable TV and less of the networks. To be honest, I didn't really watch much on the networks to begin with (The Office, 30 Rock, and Scrubs are pretty much it), so it actually hasn't been too big of a change. The only people I really miss are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and they're not even on a major network.

There's much more interesting stuff on cable, and my top 3 channels are Discovery, HGTV, and Comedy Central. How's that for a spread? For the past few weeks I have been positively glued to the TV on Tuesday nights at 9:00 for Everest on the Discovery Channel. It follows a team of climbers trying to summit the world's tallest mountain; this is the second year of the show. The reality drama/documentary is positively heart-stopping. I know, I know, I could Tivo it and watch it later -- but I can't wait! I must watch it as soon as I can! Even with commercials!

I used to want to climb Everest, but while I would still love to be able to see the view from the top, the sane part of my mind has realized that I do not want to climb the mountain. It must be like running about 20 marathons back-to-back while breathing through a straw. No thank you. Yet I'm still fascinated by the people who do take on the challenge and the high risk of death simply to say they've stood on top of the world.

Back down here at sea level, I did another speedwork session tonight in the humid soup that is this weather. A 1-mile warmup followed by 6x400 with 2 minutes recovery, and a 1-mile cooldown. I had to do the recovery by time since the trail I ran on only has markings every quarter mile. To make do, I walked out for a minute and back for a minute before continuing to the next quarter mile mark. Prior to the workout, I thought about upping the number to 8x400, but by number 5 I was ready to collapse. I pushed through to finish my original goal of six and called that good enough. Each repeat was between 2:05 and 2:08 so I managed to stay pretty darn consistent. The 3rd one was the fastest, and the 5th one was the slowest.

After running in the soup, I cannot wait for cooler temperatures.

Last night I went babysitting for the first time since I was about 16 years old.

Gavin and Jen both wanted to join Cari for a movie based on some book that I've never read (Golden Compass), so Jose and I looked after Carina for a few hours while they all went out. Carina went down for a short nap right as I got there, and woke up a half hour later. After I'd gotten her out of her crib and brought her back downstairs, I sat on the couch staring at her, not quite sure what to do with this little 6-month-old baby. Fortunately, that was when Jose showed up. There are enough little kids in his family that he's totally comfortable hanging out with babies, and Carina loved him.

After a bit it was time for dinner, which is where I finally got the hang of things. If there's a job to be done, I can handle that. She got her bottle and I fed her some applesauce that she was very excited about. After that, she finally started showing the telltale "I'm tired" sign -- rubbing her eyes -- that Jen had warned me about. Bedtime had arrived, so we took her upstairs to change her diaper and put her in her pajamas. As soon as Jose saw the poopy diaper, he disappeared. It was pretty funny. So I got her all ready for bed. Jen had told me I could sit in the rocking chair and read her a book to calm her down, but it wasn't necessary -- she was so tired that she was out within minutes of us putting her in her crib.

It turns out that Jose and I make a pretty good team when it comes to babies. This bodes well for the future.

It was fun. Carina is cute.

I have been reading this ESA blog over the past few days. ESA is the European Space Agency, and this shuttle mission is carrying their laboratory module Columbus to the space station. It's the first major science addition to the station since 2001, and it's really cool to see how excited the bloggers are about their module finally going up. Until now, the space station has really just been a joint US-Russian outpost with the occasional visiting European astronaut. But STS-122 will add the European lab, and the next two missions in February and April will add the Japanese components. The space station is finally becoming international in practice as well as in name. Pretty exciting.

I've been listening to the Mission Management Team meeting today as they try to reach a decision on whether to try to launch tomorrow and what additional troubleshooting needs to be done on the engine cutoff (ECO)sensors. Two of them failed yesterday, while two of them worked properly, which is halfway to a failed ECO system. I just listened to safety group present a chart that says that if we launch with a failed ECO system, the ARD is the ONLY control protecting against catastrophic engine failure due to fuel depletion. What is the ARD? It's the Abort Region Determinator. It's also the piece of software that is my sole responsibility during ascent. I am the ARD Support Officer. If we launched with a failed ECO system, I would be in charge of the only thing protecting us from potential disaster.

Holy. Freaking. Crap.

Fortunately they have decided that we will NOT launch with a failed ECO system.

I do hope they figure out the problem. For once, I'd like to work on a Saturday, because that means we'll be launching.