Another day, another dollar. If

Another day, another dollar. If only I could earn my salary like this every week — in a gorgeous location, and listening to interesting presentations. Of course, conferences would get really boring if they were all I ever did, but once a year, they’re a nice change of pace.

I just practiced my presentation here in the condo. It took 22 minutes (perfect) but I felt very out-of-breath trying to speak authoritatively and constantly for 22 minutes. Hope it’s better tomorrow.

In the “it’s a small world” department, while stopping in the hall to get a coke between sessions, I met a girl who lived in my apartment complex this summer while grad co-oping at JSC. She recognized me and asked. Random.

Rich and I had both lunch and dinner with the FAA guys. They are really funny; I’ll miss working with them when I move to my new job in a month or so. Dan offered me one of his free drink coupons as a way of thanking me for putting up with all their 20-minute telecon roll calls. It’s funny to realize that in the end, everyone puts up with the same frustrations no matter where they work. It also turns out that Dan helped program the ARD. (That will make more sense if you’re a coworker, but ARD Support is the flight control position I’m currently training for.) I asked him why it’s so crappy; he just laughed. RANDOM.

Now that I know I’m heading for flight control and leaving the analysis stuff that’s been my job for the past four years behind, I’m feeling some nostalgia for it. It’s been fun to be part of the very small group of people concerned with predicting where space junk will go and therefore protecting the public from it. Being here makes me feel like I’m an expert on my one little piece of the puzzle, and that’s a pretty cool feeling.