Let’s try again

I posted this morning, the internet disagreed and ate it.  It happens.  Basically, I discussed how my energy is beyond confusing.  Last night I took 4 valerian and 2 Tylenol PM and couldn’t sleep.  It was obnoxious, I felt like I just had to move there was too much energy.  I slept in later than I hoped, which helped me stay awake at work today, thankfully.  However, the energy problem is still here.  I just feel like my body is frazzled, though my brain is fine.  I was super fidgety today, and my breathing is shallow and in my chest, which is quite annoying.  Tonight I’m going to really focus hard on my breathing and try to relax so I can sleep.  Right now, my only guess is that it’s related to my cycle and hormones.

This weekend was very rough.  Carrie had quite a few bad seizures due to lack of sleep.  I did what I could for her - positioned her body afterwards, put ice on her shoulders which took a beating, put heat on her back which was still real off from last week.  All of that helped, along with my attempts to equalize her energy.  She had lost a lot of sensation in her left extremities after one so I sent energy to that area, with the goal of giving her more to work with.  It seemed to work, but like any other experiment without a control, you can’t be sure.  That’s ok though.  I guess all that energy work could have got my energy moving differently as well.

Work is awesome by the way.  I mean, I love my job so much I can’t really call it work.  How could you at this point?  I go to work in the morning, I get a feel for what happened previously in our system and with the organization.  Then I work on my KR (knowledge requirements) for a while.  I’ll go to a class when necessary, and end the day with an hour of Russian.  And I get paid!  It’s amazing!!!!  What’s great is that I can see what I learn.  Each class I reinforce what I learn and deepen my understanding of it.  I still have a lot to learn, but it at least makes sense!  My goal is to become a top gun, which means I’m a fully certified instructor and qualified on console.  Basically, a master of both domains so that you’re very flexible.  Sure, it means probably getting more of the crappy shifts on console, but it also means I get to help in so many different ways.  You know, words don’t describe how much I love my job.  I know I’m lucky because my only responsibility is to study and learn, so I’m not stressed or excessively busy.  I’m very much enjoying this.

I’m going to try to post more often.  I have a lot on my mind, but it’s not something I feel like writing about I guess.  It just takes time that I’m spending with Carrie or cleaning instead.  And that is certainly important. 

Quick Update

The movers came monday and dropped everything off.  A few important boxes had to be dug out of the second bedroom, and one glass panel from the curio cabinet lost a corner, but so far things seem to be intact.  However, it’s keeping us very busy.
Today comcast came to install cable and internet.  Except they didn’t get internet to install, even though both of our computers aren’t having any other troubles, they are trying to claim it’s our computers.  Both of which are erroring out in the same way.  The chances of that?  hmm…so yeah, comcast is not making me happy, especially since the tech support people were completely useless and they can’t send a new technician until next tuesday.  So I’m going to call them tomorrow again and talk to someone else.

So, basically, we’re doing ok.  The apartment is working out better than we expected, which is good.  I’ll update more later.  Very tired and as always have to get up in the morning.  I hope everyone is doing well.  I feel like I haven’t talked to anyone for a long time.  It’s not necessarily true, just feels that way.  But it’s alright, I’m fine.  :-)  Sleep calls!

Catching up

I’m not sure where the time went, to be honest.  I worked a little late each day to make up for the time I missed to go pick up the car.  But who knows.  I did some reading and such, just didn’t get around to blogging.

So, the car is pissing me off.  Carmax clearly didn’t inspect it.  It has no windshield fluid.  Today I put a full gallon in and I still can’t see it in the tank, so this thing had to be empty.  I can’t see the coolant, which is a much bigger deal.  That means it’s very low, and they are going to get a piece of my mind tomorrow.  There is something not right with the starter.  It takes far too long to kick over, especially for a car with only 25,000 miles.  How were they storing this car? So yeah, I’m just a little pissed off at this shoddy work.

Work, however, is going well.  I’m a bit ahead of schedule, though I’m not sure I’m retaining enough yet, so I’m going to spend more time studying when I’m not in class this week.  I know I need to get the different communication bands better so I don’t screw that up when talking to people.  I also want to spend more time going over my systems so I’m able to follow things in meetings and emails.  It’s nice to have the video lessons to learn from though, as it’s easier to stay awake and pay attention to that than the manuals.

What’s been interesting this week is I have dreamed about work related stuff every night.  I’ve never had a single space dream before that I know of, and now it’s present all the time.  They aren’t stressful or anxiety filled dream.  Instead I have this sense of training or preparing in my dreams, which is interesting.  I’m so fully dedicated to this job, even though it’ll be a while before I’m doing much more than studying.

Thursday I took part in an interesting team building/communication exercise.  I’m thinking it would be good to try for the Jedi community online because it actually requires that the participants are in different locations.  So we’ll see if it’s useful or not.

On the home front, we discovered that the piano is a really great way for Carrie to process and communicate what her subconscious is dealing with.  I’m quite glad I bought it, it’s already been a great help.

I guess that’s it for now.  We’re waiting on housekeeping since we have to be here with the cats around.  Then we’ll drop off the rent and head to Galveston for some water de-stress time.  It’ll be fun. 

The end of the week

So many things.  First, my car decided gas was not important, causing me to come up with multiple ways to get to work thursday.  I got rides, so it all worked out, and I managed to rent a car thursday night after I deposited my check.  They gave us a free upgrade to a Toyota Highlander, which is badass!  lol  Too expensive for us anytime soon, but it’s a nice vehicle.  So, that night we went to Olive Garden and picked up a few things.  Carrie got her own Nintendo DS since we have so many games that we both want to play.

Thursday we got to visit the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which is neat.  The water is so blue, I couldn’t get over it.  We got to watch two astronauts train a bit, though it’s hard to see much without being in the water.  It’s pretty neat to see the scale of the trusses for the station though.  You can only fit half within the length of the pool.  It’d be pretty neat to get in there some day.  This is motivation to get scuba certified. 

Friday we got to tour the crew support areas - suits, food, that sort of stuff.  It was interesting, but being quite tired it wasn’t quite as exciting as I wished.  But it was still worthwhile.  We also got to tour the other simulator areas, including the working toilet.  That was certainly interesting.

Friday we also got to meet our boss, the head of MOD.  That was pretty cool.  The most useful perhaps was realizing that other people view MOD as being arrogant because of how passionate we are about our jobs, and then how confident we can be.  I also learned that the various centers don’t really work together, due to the way the government set up NASA.  All important things to learn.  Plus, it’s good to know who your boss is!

Today I got the car towed to the mechanic.  They later told me the gas tank has to be replaced, and a new one is $600.   Total for everything I needed was around a grand.  I realized that  I would rather spend that money on a down payment for a new car, so I decided to look around.  I found a 2007 Corolla S for under 15 grand and decided to try for it.  And they gave me the loan!  So monday I’m getting my car towed to Carmax and giving it to them because I don’t have the ability to get rid of it any other way with short notice.  Then I get to take home a nice shiny car!  Yay!  I’m so happy.  I figure in a few months I’ll try to refinance the loan once I’m showing good payment history and cleaning up my credit at the same time.  I’m sure I’m getting screwed on the interest, but it’s just temporary.

I’ve also been on a quest for pants, which has failed.  It’s so hard to find decent fitting pants that are also somewhat cheap.  It doesn’t help that I’ve gained just enough weight that I’m in between sizes.  I need to get my ass in gear and start dropping it!

Oh, our other fun thing is a new keyboard!  It wasn’t very much money and it’s an easy thing to just play around with.  It’s cool because it’s helping Carrie open up to her hidden musical abilities.  We’ve both been feeling a draw to the piano for months now, so I felt it was time.
And now, it’s time for bed.  I’m sleeping like crap still, so I’m exhausted.  Plus, I don’t need to screw up my sleep schedule any more.

And one last thing.  In case it isn’t clear, I love my job!

Training Day 3

It’s interesting to start the day trying to learn what went wrong with our shuttle disasters so we don’t make the same mistakes.  Thankfully the culture of NASA has shifted a lot to safety first.  But it’s always tricky to balance risk.  Hopefully I’ll make the right call in the future.

The fun part of the day was touring the rocket park and building 9.  The rocket park is basically the Saturn V inside.   It’s interesting to look at things with the new eyes of being part of the space program.  Building 9 was the best part.  We got to climb around in the shuttle mockup.  I took a bunch of pictures.  We got to look at lots of other mockups from the outside, but we did get to walk in the payload bay of the shuttle, which was neat.  We got to go into a few station modules.  The main JEM module is kinda neat.  Low fi but with amusing models of animal experiments.  I wonder if they’re really putting fish on orbit.  The idea just blows me away, though apparently small animals don’t do so well on orbit.  I guess we’ll find out.

We got to see the MPLM from the inside, which also got us a closer look at some of the other modules, though we couldn’t see the US LAB because the prime crew was training in the airlock and they obviously get priority.  I’m also glad we got to see the Soyuz.  I didn’t realize how crowded it was in the commanding area, but the living area isn’t that bad above it.  And the Russians certainly had some good solutions to engineering problems.  If we could just use the best ideas from everyone. But it’s not easy to get people on board for that sometimes.

So today was a good day at work.  Unfortunately, my car decided it was done.  The gas leak greatly increased tonight for an unknown reason and is undriveable.  Thankfully I am paid tomorrow and can put it in the shop over the weekend.  Yay rental car!  I worked out 3 contingency plans for tomorrow.  First I had emailed my group hoping someone would check their email at home.  While I waited I realized I could walk the 3 miles, but that would leave me very hot and sweaty.  I looked into the bus, which only goes to the center at 8:52, which is an hour late.  And then I realized there is a shuttle van that runs between the various USA centers at some interval.  The nearest center is only a block and a half away or so, which was my best option.  At 10 or so, my mentor called offering me a ride, so I didn’t need any of them.  Hooray!  Tomorrow I’m going to find a way home, and hopefully get someone to drive me to the bank right away so I can then rent a car and be good to go.

And now, it’s quite late and time for bed.  I’ve had a very full day.

Full day

Where to begin…well, to start the day off, Carrie had a seizure while I was at breakfast and hit her head, twice I’m guessing.  First she hit her eyebrow on the counter, giving herself a bone bruise and goose egg.  Then she hit her head on the floor.  She has a nice concussion now.  The hotel was quite nice and paid for her cab to the ER though, since it happened on their property.  It wasn’t their fault, but it was still nice.  We have no idea why she’s having seizures, as her medicine level is where it belongs.  Hopefully the epilepsy center will see her and figure it out.

Today was another day of training academy.  We learned a bit about space physiology and then station stuff.  Even though I’ve made it through much of my fam (familiarization) manual I found it more interesting than the other stuff because it’s helping me learn the multitude of things expected of me.  We got to ask a lot of questions, and learned how few answers there are. lol

In the afternoon we watched the discovery channel’s special on the Columbia disaster.  There’s something a bit eerie seeing and hearing the last communications we had with them before they broke up.  Tomorrow morning we’ll go over it more in depth with someone who trained the crew.  I don’t expect that to be the easiest class.

The last part of the day was a tour of mission control.  We got to go into the Apollo mission control and sit down.  It was funny because a tour was in the tourist area in the back.  I bet they were jealous. ;-)  I took a few pictures of the console.  It’s a trip to be in there.  We also got to visit the bat cave, which is the projection room.  After that we visited FCR 1, which is the ISS mission control.  There I saw Shannon Lucid signing off her role as CAPCOM as the ISS crew had started their sleep cycle.  So that was cool, even if I wasn’t close enough to say hello.  We also stopped by the other flight control rooms being used for shuttle/hubble sims for the upcoming mission.  All in all, an interesting tour.

I don’t remember what we’re doing tomorrow honestly.  Too tired.  I’ve been refreshing my memory regarding my graduate thesis so I could rerun some points for my advisor.  He’s writing the paper for publication.  I hope I am giving him the right numbers.  I’ll have to ask him if he wants a graph or not.  But I have to get to bed asap so it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

You know, I’m super busy, and I’m in tons of classes, but I love my job!  And I figured out I will be training astronauts always or the majority of the time because the class I’m assigned to is for crew only, at least on the upcoming schedule.  Everyone else takes it online.  How awesome/intimidating!  lol

Training Day 1

Today I started training academy.  We started with NASA history, but I only caught half of it as I was scheduled in the motion based shuttle simulator in the middle of it.  The sim was quite awesome.  The motion based part was pretty cool.  Then we each got to land the shuttle without motion (otherwise we’d need someone experienced as a copilot and then the other people wouldn’t get to see).  It’s harder than you think it is.  The shuttle is slow to respond to roll, but quick for pitch adjustments.  But in the end I was able to land the thing without crashing.  Talk about stressful!  lol  But it’s pretty fun anyway.

Back at training academy we learned about the shuttle, which was more valuable for the stories Tom shared with us.  We learned just how important it is to speak up when you are unsure about anything.  If any number of people had spoken up, Columbia wouldn’t have been lost.  We were reminded over and over again the importance of communication.  It’s a big job, and we all have a lot to learn.  I really look forward to it though.  Learning to communicate effectively, to make decisions quickly, to learn to think through things in a way I haven’t ever had to before, all of these are valuable skills in life.

What’s amazing is that it is quite possible that some kids, 18 years old have no idea they could be the first people to set foot on Mars.  And we can be the flight controllers and team leads that get them there.  At the very least, we should be flight controllers when we land on the Moon again.  Simply amazing.  And you know…if the next president does try to cut the space program, I think I will have truly lost faith in the political process.  Any politician that honestly can’t see just how important the space program is to give hope to countless children around the world is just blind.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere - nearest neighbors a half mile down the road, surrounded by corn fields nowhere.  But as a kid I had this record with the transmissions from the first shuttle launch.  I had a shuttle toy, and wished more than anything to go to space camp.  I would have never thought to go into science without the space program.  I didn’t know any scientists personally, so how else would I have come to that idea in small town Wisconsin?  Nothing else can provide that much hope in a person who doesn’t know how else to get somewhere in life.  There are many other reasons to go, but considering that Obama talks about hope on one hand, yet talks about canceling the space program on the other, he clearly isn’t thinking straight.  Or he’s thinking too small.  Either way…he’s wrong.  And I’ll have truly lost faith in him if he really tries to do this.

Galveston day 2

Today we made it back down to Galveston for a few hours.  Today there was more  seaweed, which added to the smell that I typically expect from large bodies of water, but it wasn’t that bad.  I saw my first jellyfish, multiple varieties actually all dead on the beach.  How many dead jellyfish does it take for a dangerous animal warning?  I know I’m a wuss, it’s ok.  Today I saw small ones that were purple/blue.  Pretty, but also sad because they were dead and/or dying.  And one had this crazy long tentacle yet, so I was trying to watch my step.  There was also a bigger white-ish one.  That certainly didn’t make me more comfortable in the water.  This is why I have a fear of water I can’t see into - crazy things that can hurt me! lol

I did have a great time in the water.  I tried to relax, release some of my fears.  I really think I was eaten by something water based in a past life, because it’s a pretty irrational fear.  hehe  It is quite relaxing to be in the water, even if it meant I got half of my shorts soaked.  Thankfully I left the electronics in the car.  Next time we’ll be sure to bring extra clothes because each time I go in a little farther.  I think this is going to be a standard trip for us each weekend.  Perhaps even during the week if things are particularly stressful because it’s the best stress reliever ever.

Now i need to get to bed.  I hope I can get tired enough to sleep.  I’m back to waking up within an hour after I fall asleep.  I don’t understand what is causing this sleep pattern, but it sucks.  At least we fixed the mouse wheele so it’s quieter and doesn’t wake us up.  I need to be alert this week though because it’s training academy and I don’t want to be rude during classes and fall asleep or even fight it too hard.  Tomorrow will be awesome though because I get to go in the shuttle motion based simulator and try to land it.  Woohoo!  So sleep is important.  I expect this week to be interesting though.  :-)  There’s also the bonus of a paycheck on thursday.  Hehehe  things are finally settling in!

Galveston

Today, after cashing my check (which was half of what I expected) we decided to just drive and explore rather than shop.  First we stopped at Ryan’s buffet in Texas City.  The food was very good and we left quite stuffed.  Then we headed down to Galveston.  It’s absolutely amazing down there.  We drove all along the seawall, seeing almost all of the island before heading back north.  We stopped first at a random stop along the seawall and walked in the water a bit.  It was cold at first but really not bad.  It felt great.  Then we explored the north part of the island.  We drove until we hit the legal drinking beach, which I’m sure is packed during spring break.  There were a few tankers parked out in the distance, which was interesting to see.  Then we headed back south and went quite a ways past the state park before turning around.  There are some amazing houses down there.  The insurance on those houses are probably more than what our first house will be worth.  lol

We also stopped at one of gay bars, 3rd coast I believe it was called.  We lucked out with $2 shiners and some low key conversation with the bartenders.  It’s nice to have a place to just hang out for a little if we want to get out of the sun without having to worry about people being weird.

Ok, so it’s quite possible this part of Texas is winning us over.  The weather has been amazing.  The water is a perfect pit stop.  But it’s not nearly as obnoxious as florida.  How much money do we need to have a beach house? lol  I know where we’ll take everyone who visits now.  Forget Houston.  The gulf is away cooler.  We’re going back tomorrow and packing a lunch this time.  It did so much for our spirits.  I have been quite bitchy because I can’t sleep well with the noises and stuff here.  But the water is quite calming.  I can’t wait.

Day 4

Well a few days have passed now.  I now have computer access to the JSC and USA, which is a feat to pull off at times.  lol  I’ve had one group meeting where everything went over my head.  Today I went to a scripting meeting where a tiny bit here and there would make a little sense, but nothing meaningful.  I was working mostly on identifying acronyms.  It’s really like immersion into a foreign country.  I’m learning the culture and language as fast as I can.  lol

So far I’ve worked on my first manual, which familiarizes you with the space station and all it’s systems.  It’s about an inch thick, so that gives you an idea of what I’m up against.  :-)  I’m taking notes, which helps me stay awake and get the acronyms a bit faster.  I might make flash cards tomorrow to study over the weekend.

I’m in an office without my group members yet.  They are hopefully moving to the vacinity in May, then my mentor will be in the same office instead of a building away.  But it’s alright, I get more done probably.  It would be nice to have a bit more team bonding time though.  So I visit every day before I leave so I can interact a little.

The other fun is trying to get to sleep earlier.  I just can’t sleep well here.  I don’t know if it’s Carrie being up and down all the time, the mice running around in their wheel, or just my own body, but it’s not easy to adjust my body to sleep around 10.  But once I can it’ll make things much easier.  I should be on the 8-5ish schedule for quite a few months, so if I can get a consistent 8 hours every night I’ll be doing much better with my studies.

What I find most interesting about working with the space program is that so much of my group is in their 20’s and maybe early 30’s.  It’s like the military, where relatively young people are in charge of some quite large responsibilities.  That makes for an interesting culture, but one that’s also quite fun.  The people are quite amusing and it makes for a good work environment.

I guess I’m going to keep an eye on food and unwind with my video game since I can’t do much else right now.  I’d be plenty busy if my paycheck just hit the bank…tomorrow I guess.