WHEW. It has been crazy ’round here. To recap the last two weeks:
On the job front, I worked 3 STS-128 sims. I’m scheduled to work that flight (launching in August) as a Rendezvous Officer. It will be my first time in the “front room.” Maybe you’ll see me on NASA TV. 🙂 I’ve also supported all sorts of meetings for STS-129. I’ll be the lead Rendezvous Officer for that flight (launching in November).
I’ve done a ton of tasks as part of the final push towards getting certified as a Rendezvous Officer, which needs to happen asap in order to work the missions I just mentioned. You can think of “tasks” as a series of mini-quizzes. There’s a long, long list (think hundreds) of topics that you have to go talk through with an already-certified person before you can be certified yourself. Of course I procrastinated, and am now having to cram them all in.
Plus, yesterday I had my cert sim. A cert sim is like a flight controller’s final exam. If you pass, you get certified! If you don’t pass, well, that’s bad. I PASSED! Hooray. Now the only thing holding up my certification is the afore-mentioned tasks. Guess what I’ll be doing at work for the next week….
So what else?
A couple weeks ago we joined Becca, Byron, and a bunch of other friends for an evening of sailing. We went out into the bay and then watched Kemah’s Friday night fireworks from the water while grilling burgers. (Yes, there is such a thing as a boat grill. Neat, huh?) Though the weather’s been nasty hot for weeks, it was actually rather pleasant out on the water. We packed Byron’s boat to max capacity with 9 of us onboard, that’s for sure.
Last weekend we headed down to Corpus Christi for Jose’s cousin Jennifer’s wedding. For those keeping score at home, that’s three weddings in four months for his family! There are no more scheduled for this year — but his cousin is having a baby, due in October, so there’s still another major life event to come in 2009.
Cousins & significant others
The wedding was lovely and we all had a great time on the dance floor. It was fun, since I really didn’t get a chance to dance at my own wedding! Both the ceremony and reception were held on the top floor of a hotel downtown, and there was a great view of both the bay and the Harbor Bridge. And, since the wedding was on the 4th of July, we got to watch the fireworks! There was a building blocking some of them, but we could see anything that was shot up high. It was cute to watch all the kids with their faces pressed against the window, going “oooooooh” with every explosion.
View from the wedding
As for today…well, our house is done! We had our introductory walkthrough this afternoon and it went really well. We brought our realtor along, which was cool because he hadn’t actually seen the house yet (other than pictures Jose showed him, since they share an office at work). The one issue we’re still working on at this point is the roof, which looked pretty shoddy during the pre-drywall inspection back in April. The builder has made a couple fixes, but there are still some off-looking (to our eyes) spots. We’re taking our inspector over on Saturday morning to check things out, so we’ll have him take a very close look up there.
Oh, our appliances have finally arrived.
Everything else we saw today was minor. There were spots that needed to be repainted, a couple spots that needed caulk, some fixtures (mainly the ceiling fans) that were filthy from all the work in the house, etc. But everything was really no big deal. Even if they didn’t fix it, we’d still buy the house. Hopefully our inspector won’t turn up anything new — we don’t think he will, since we’ve been watching the construction process all along and have already had the place inspected once.
Of course wrapped up in buying a home is all the other stuff, and I’ve spent a lot of time over the past week and a half dealing with homeowners insurance quotes and mortgage rates. Buying a house is hard work!! But things are moving along, and we should be handing over a massive amount of cash and getting the keys to our new house in about two weeks.
And I can’t wait. 🙂
jamoosh says
Appliances look sweet! I hope the two weeks goes by fast. I remember when we got close. It always seemed that each day wasn’t close enough.
txrunnergirl says
Sarah, your kitchen looks awesome! I love the color combinations and with the stainless steel appliances, it looks great!
Nancy says
Yeah, that’s our stove. We LOVE it!