Sequential Sims

Life continues. This morning I woke up to find frost on my car, and fog hanging over the bayous, although you can’t really see it in this photo.

I’ve had three sims in three days, but I’m not complaining. I’d rather be in the control center any day over being in the office.
Last Thursday was an ascent in preparation for the upcoming STS-119 mission. I don’t really get to work ascent sims any more unless I’m actually assigned to a flight (as I am for 119), so it was good to get some time on console. It’s funny how quickly you start to lose skills when you don’t get a chance to practice them. Turns out that being a flight controller is not like riding a bike. But after 8 runs in 4 hours, I was feeling good again.
On Friday I worked another rendezvous sim in the front room. It was my fifth time out there, and my next sim on the 26th will be my midpoint! It’s hard to believe — and a little scary — that I am already to the midpoint of my training. I feel like there is a lot more I still need to learn before I’m ready to be certified.
This morning was another ascent sim, but only a single run because we handed off to the orbit team. Technically, it wasn’t an ascent sim but rather a post-insertion sim. But those are just details. It’s actually a little annoying to have to come in for post-insertion sims since they involve a single ascent run, but at least I get to leave early. I’ll get to start and finish my run before it gets dark today.
It was a fun but short weekend. On Friday night I almost killed myself by showing up for a swim practice with some of the fastest swimmers in my tri club. Among other things, we all did a 500-yard set for time. They all did it in about 7:00. I took 9:47. Yikes! And I consider myself a decent swimmer too… Now, it’s true that I haven’t been in the pool in a while, but I also don’t think I’ll be getting down to the 7:00 range anytime soon. And after all that time off, my arms and back were so sore on Saturday. It was funny…in a pathetic sort of way.
On Saturday night I introduced Gavin, Jen, Becca and Cari to Bananagrams, the game that was such at hit at my house over Christmas break. I don’t think they liked it as much. And strangely, I have to admit that having my brother question every single little word did add a certain something to the game while I was home… Yesterday Jen and Becca joined me for girl movie day — Bride Wars. It was about what I expected, which is to say it was fun and mindless entertainment.
Since we were over at Jen and Gavin’s a couple times, we also got to hang out with Carina for a while. It amazes me to see how quickly she learns new things. I’ve never spent any significant amount of time around any small child until now, so I just didn’t realize how smart they are, even when they can’t really say much. Yesterday she walked over and handed me her copy of “Goodnight Moon” and then plopped down on the floor next to me so I could read it to her. It was very cute. Kids are cool.