Run run run. I’ve run three days in a row now. Perhaps a Keith-like streak is in order? Highly doubtful, but hey, three days in a row is a lot for me. Since I ran pretty fast (for me) on Tuesday, I took it easier last night. I’m still having some problems with a reoccurance of the shin splints, thought last night it was only my left leg. Odd. I did 3 miles in 33:40 — something like 11:25, 11:35, and 10:40. I didn’t mean to speed up in the last mile but I did. I almost always do, unconsciously.
I added a few more pieces to the puzzle last night. Now that the border is done, filling in the middle is going to be much more difficult. I decided to start with the light pieces and made about 15 connections in an hour. For fun, I started a Flickr set where I’ll post “puzzle status updates” as they happen. You can then either make fun of me for how slow I’m going, or congratulate me for being such a puzzle whiz!
In other news, it’s going to get cold here tonight. For some reason, this is all anyone has been able to talk about for the past 24 hours. There’s a front coming! It’s 70 now but it’s going to be 33 tonight! Wind, rain, cold, the END OF THE WORLD! The local news was on in the background while I was puzzle-working last night, and they kept on returning to the impending DOOM weather. From what I can tell, it’s not like we’re going to have hail and fire and brimstone. It’s just going to rain, and get really cold. Coldest of the year, sure, but just cold. Houstonians are weird about weather.
I was busy all day yesterday and have a full schedule tomorrow, but today I have nothing. I’m in the office all day. That means reading, reading, reading. On Tuesday I finished the intro section on ground-targeted rendezvous burns. Today I start on the on-board targeted burns. Read read read. Learn learn learn.
I found out yesterday that I probably won’t be able to start sims for my new position until May. I was a bit disappointed to hear that, even though I wasn’t totally surprised since there is one person ahead of me in the training flow who just started in September, and he will be taking most/all of the sims. Rationally, I know that I have plenty of stuff to keep my busy until then — finishing my off-console tasks for ARD Support, preparing for and working STS-117, mentoring the next ARD Support trainee, taking care of much or all of my rendezvous reading, and maybe even training for a rendezvous or proximity operations analyst position. And I can also go watch sims to prepare myself for working them. So yes, I have plenty to do. But…
But May just seems like a long time from now. I finally moved to my new office, my job is finally gathering steam in a direction that I’m excited to go, but I have to wait. Which is unfortunate, because I’m impatient. Things are looking up, and I want everything now! 🙂
Update: Apparently the cold front has already come through. When I walked in 1.5 hours ago, I was wearing short sleeves and was perfectly comfortable. Now, the weather station on top of my building says it’s 48 degrees. I didn’t bring running clothes for 48. Guess I’ll be on the treadmill tonight.
Enjoy this cool Flickr set that I came across, where famous landmarks are replaced by souvenirs. Sounds weird, but is really neat.
33? AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
My junior year in college, we had a cold snap that lasted about 3 days. The air temperature didn’t get above minus 10, and the wind chill hovered between minus 50 and minus 75 the entire time.
I have yet to experience a day in Houston that I couldn’t run in shorts. That Monday in January 1994, when I arrived at my 8 am molecular genetics class, my eyelashes were frozen together and I had to thaw them out before I could open my eyes all the way. I’m not kidding.
I still don’t know why I went to that class that day.
I like the cold weather. Makes it actually feel like the holidays. It sucks cutting down a Christmas tree in shorts and a t-shirt on a sunny, 75 degree day. But maybe that’s just me…
I like cold weather too…but I have to put “cold” in perspective. The farthest north I’ve lived is North Carolina, so 20-30 degrees is about the coldest I’ve ever really experienced. Coldest I’ve ever run in is probably about 38.
That’s silly that you are not going to start until May. Its absurd that we are unable to train people in parallel around here – there are more than enough sims and opportunities to make it work. It would increase both people’s training flow by a little, but not nearly as much the doubling it takes take to train to people in series.