We’ve got a squawk box in our office, a little speaker box that plays a couple of the Mission Control voice loops including the flight director’s loop and air-to-ground. This morning at 9:50 a.m., Abba’s “Waterloo” came blaring over air-to-ground. I was extremely confused, until I realized that it was the crew wake-up. (It’s a tradition to play some music every day to wake them up, even though they’re already awake.) Immediately, I knew that it must be for Christer Fuglesang, who is one of the two guys doing the spacewalk today, and who is also the first Swede in space.
Yeah. The poor guy sounded a bit resigned to his fate when he answered the wake up call. I’m sure he’s never gotten that before. Because all Swedes love Abba, right? Right?
It is an absolutely beautiful day today, which I’ve celebrated by holing up in a windowless conference room and then in a windowless cockpit mockup. I did get to enjoy lunch outside, and I ran into the coke break crowd on the way back to my building. I’m looking forward to running in the nice weather, although I am not particularly looking forward to my run. Steeeve calls for speedwork, 2×1600 at 8:50 and 8:40. Now, I don’t believe I’ve ever run a sub-9:00 mile in 5 years of running. He knows this, since I told him. I think I might die if I ran 2 miles in 17:30. Seriously. But I’ll give it my best shot.
Last night I made Jose watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Can you believe he hadn’t seen it?? I know. Seriously. Thank goodness the situation has now been remedied.
Beckster, as long as you give it a strong effort you will stave off the cheeky chorus. Looking forward to hearing how it went!
Tip – check your watch after the first 100M (target is 33 seconds) and adjust your pace accordingly.
And, on behalf of all of us, thanks for plugging that gigantic hole in Jose’s life.
NEVER seen Charlie Brown Christmas?!?!??! egads!!!
now on to that speedwork…remind me to never have steeve do my schedule ;o)
Thank goodness you remedied that! Charlie Brown Christmas also has one of the best soundtracks out there with the very cool Vincent Guaraldi Trio.
Yes all Swedes love ABBA, they may not all admit to it as loudly and whole heartedly as I do, but I swear it’s true if they search deep down.
This is not the first time a crew has been lucky enough to wake up to ABBA either. I know for a fact that “I have a dream” has been used before. 🙂
Good job on the speed work. 800 repeats are my fav, 1600 are tough!
I agree. But Sweden is an extremly small country (Only 8 million ethnic inhabitants), so we have to be proud of anything that goes worldwide. Like Saab, Volvo, Abba, Europe (The music group), Fuglesang, Roxette amongst other things.
Oh yes, the computer mouse and computer graphic systems as well (Patents by swedish citizen Jörgen Landz)
Like the Swedish wrench key (Swedish patent) or the zipper (Swedish patent), or why not Alfred Nobel? Without Alfred Nobel, there wouldn’t have been any gunpowder in the wild west in USA. And thus no golden era.
Sorry, wrong name. Not Jörgen Landz. I ment Håkan Lantz.