Look out

It's gonna be a wild week. Overlapping all day long meetings. And Wednesday, ah Wednesday...you really did me dirty this week. How can I be in three simultaneous meetings? Still haven't figured out how to handle that one yet. On the other hand, it is becoming more common for such things to happen as we speed toward the Preliminary Design Review for Ares. I think it's going to be this way until we get to the Final Design Review, at least. I know the shuttle people are working hard, particularly with this latest issue with the ECO sensors on the external tank. Ah, I remember working shuttle and how hard that could be. However, Ares is catching up with it. But it is good work and I have been in worse work environments and political situations, so it is hard to complain much.

I had a good weekend. The trip was cancelled because of "stuff". So I had the unexpected pleasure of my spouse's lovely company. That made it fun. We did many ordinary things together, but after 25 years (this April) just being together is what counts. Thank you for caring, sweetheart.

I actually...shhh...(wrote) over the weekend. Ten entire pages! I was certain the house was going to fall down around my shoulders...and yet it did not. I think I finally have come out the other side. I wrote an eight page story in December and I didn't enjoy writing at all. It was fun for about the first 30 minutes of each session and then it was such a chore. Because it had becoma a chore is why I stopped, not because of lack of inspiration. Gee, I've had tons of ideas in the (has it really been three years??) three years that I didn't write. However, what I did over the weekend was pure pleasure. I enjoyed it so very much. It was great fun and I'm anxious to continue this story. I have so many ideas for it and I'm re-gaining that urgency to write. That is utterly fantastic news to me. I'd begun to wonder if I'd write again. Beginning a blog has helped as well. Writing in the blog each day stoked some desire to write. Now let us hope the blog doesn't fall by the wayside in favor of other writing.

Also I worked on a collage over the weekend. I've had the idea for a couple of months now and finally I began. It's (yes) a NASA 50th anniversary collage. I wanted to do some sort of art project centered around the anniversary. I couldn't come up with one idea, so a collage seems to fit trying to cover 50 years of events. However when I was on leave in December, which is when I originally planned to begin, I endured two (two) computer crashes and was without computer for nearly two weeks. And so since I needed interet access to get the images I needed, that idea went down the tubes. However, I started last night and it was pure pleasure. Great fun and a nice loose medium to work in. No painful details. Just cutting and pasting so far. I'm quite pleased with how it is turning out and I have high hopes for the result.

So I had a weekend of fun and of accomplishment. Very satisfying. And a good foundation to start this difficult week on. Meetings...yuck. Well, not all of them, but the big presentation type can be quite dry at best and positively boring at worst. At least most of it is telecon. I can sit at my desk and listen on the headset...and do other things. Ah well, it is part of getting there from here. It is part of the follow-on program to shuttle, and making sure it is safe. (Good to keep in mind as we come up to the anniversary dates of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia.) Working in Safety and Mission Assurance, I want to do all I can to stop that kind of thing from happening again.