Things don’t slow down when

Things don’t slow down when you go on vacation. If anything, they speed up.

The “chicks” survived another LSO Golf Tournament on Monday. Becca, Jen, Buzz and I together, using the best ball method, shot a 94. That was 14 strokes worse than anyone else and won us $2 each and the title of Worst Gross Score. We wear it proudly. Through a series of bizarre and just plain absurd twists, we actually birdied two of the handicap holes and parred one or two more of them, so our net score only dropped to 88. We won Worst Net Score as well, though we didn’t get any money for it — they said we could only win worst score once!

Monday was also J’s birthday. I took him out to dinner, and he liked all of his presents, which made me very happy because buying good presents is important to me. I’m a weirdo that way. He is two years younger than me, which had me alternating between trying to harass him about getting older while following it up with “oh, I remember being 26…good times…”

Actually I don’t remember anything specific about 26. Let’s see, it would have been March 2004-March 2005. I went to Peru when I was 26. (I always think of travel first!) I bought my SLR and started doing more photography when I was 26. I bought my first car, the first that I paid for myself, when I was 26.

Yesterday it was back to work, but I spent the majority of the day in the control center which means it was a very fun day. Last night’s sim was slow, but two of the cases were really interesting. We had one prop case, and prop cases are notoriously difficult, especially since we’re now working new procedures. When it popped up last night, I thought I did a really good job of handling it as quickly as possible (which, unfortunately, is still not as quick as we’d really like, but such is life).

Afterwards, though, it turned out that we had had some communication issues about dump duration versus dump cutoff time, and I felt like TRAJ, Targeting and I were getting minor slaps-on-the-wrist for not modelling the problem quicker. For the first time in my training so far, I found myself getting a little defensive. For once, I had worked the procedures correctly. TRAJ doubted me at one point, but then realized I was right. I even heard a “oh wait, she’s right” comment over the loop. So during debrief I jumped in and made the case that Targeting and I had worked the procedures correctly and efficiently based on the information we had been given from the FCR; it took us a long time to get modeled because the information we’d received was not correct! The front room misinterpreted the data, and I argued that the problem in that run was not with the procedures, but with our communication, and that Targeting and I could only model what we had been told.

This is going to sound strange, but the whole run made me feel really good about my training. It felt good to have the confidence that I was right, and had worked the procedures correctly. It felt good to be able to add my input and opinion, even though it differed from the FCR. In the end, I think they heard what I was saying and agreed with me. That was awesome.