Construction

Yesterday I was up early for my first flight-specific rendezvous sim. I’m the lead rendezvous officer for STS-129 in November and yesterday was the first integrated sim — which means the crew and the mission control team are all working through the day together — for that mission. It was mostly fun, but a couple things left me frustrated. Thankfully, I have an awesome house to come home to — and my husband isn’t so bad either.

We decided to check out the YMCA that’s just down the road. On Saturday we signed up for a 7-visit trial so we went over last night a bit after 6:00. Every treadmill was taken! That’s what I was hoping NOT to see. Many of them were occupied by people who weren’t running, but walking. I totally understand that people have every right to walk on the treadmill if they so choose, but it frustrated me since I wanted to RUN. Oh well. No point in getting annoyed by something that isn’t really wrong, so I decided to use the elliptical machine instead. By the time we were done, a few treadmills had opened up, so I guess 6:00 is “prime time” at the gym. That’s not really surprising, but it’s still disappointing.

After dinner, Jose decided that he wanted to make cookies! This was a first, so he carefully measured and stirred while I supervised to give him tips. Then I baked them, so it was a tag team effort. These cookies are seriously delicious. We didn’t have chocolate chips so we used M&Ms instead. YUM. (Side note: I love our new kitchen! And our new oven!)

In other news, this weekend we put together way too much furniture. We had only planned on getting a desk for Jose, but ended up with a desk, two office chairs, a dining room table, and 4 dining room chairs. We hadn’t planned on doing the dining room quite yet, but we found an affordable table that we really liked at Ikea. We’d gone there just to get a desk, but when we found a table too…well, Ikea is out on the west side of Houston, so it’s a bit of an undertaking to get over there from League City and we didn’t want to go back later! So we went ahead and got it. That of course necessitated dining room chairs, and the desk necessitated office chairs (I’ve been using a folding chair for years), so we got those too. The dining room chairs came from World Market, and the office chairs came from Staples.

Let me tell you — those office chairs were a PAIN IN THE BUTT to put together. Ugh!! It took two of us, one straining to hold the seat and arm in place and the other struggling to drive each bolt through the armrest and into the chair. By the time we’d gotten them both completed, we were both frustrated and annoyed with the whole process. I think this issue is part of the reason Ikea has been so successful — they offer decent furniture at low prices and though assembly is required, the pieces ALWAYS FIT TOGETHER with a minimum of fuss. If only Ikea made decent office chairs…

After our weekend of furniture construction — oh, and lawn mowing and edging and weeding on Sunday morning — I was actually SORE when I woke up yesterday morning. Home ownership is making me sore. Interesting.