With a click of the mouse just now, I made the very last payment ever on my student loans. It’s been 8 years since I graduated from Georgia Tech (which is where I racked up the loans, since it was much easier to find funding for grad school). Not bad, though I also recognize that my loans, which topped out below the cost of most new cars, were less than what many people end up with.
In any case: I am officially debt-free! Woo! Er, wait, I would have been debt-free, except for that big ol’ house we just bought. But that’s just details. And our house, in case you haven’t been paying attenion, is awesome.
In other news, I had to come to work at 5 a.m. this morning for the shift handover of the STS-129 long sim. Yesterday we did the rendezvous and it went pretty well. It was our last rendezvous sim as an integrated crew/flight control team, so the next time we do it will be for real on November 14! My work as the rendezvous lead for this mission has been particularly challenging due to a few things that are far beyond my control, so on one hand I know I will feel some relief once the mission has flown and landed safely. But I hope I will also feel satisfaction and pride in having led the rendezvous team from start to finish. I think I will.
Anyway, the 5 a.m. arrival time meant leaving the house just after 4:30, which just so happened to coincide with the MASSIVE COLD FRONT that pushed through this morning. By now, 3 hours later, the sun is rising and it is lovely and cool outside and looks to be a gorgeously sunny day. But from 4:30 until 5:00, aka the time I was attempting to drive to work, it was totally nasty. I’m talking 30 mph on the freeway because my windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the sheets of water falling from the sky. Yeah. THAT kind of nasty.
I signed up for the Lonestar Half Ironman at the end of April, which is being turned into an official Ironman 70.3 event. (See how I threw that in like an afterthought? Sneaky.) I hope I can successfully train for it. We shall see.
Hooray for the weekend.
Hooray for being debt free!!! (I try not to think about our mortgage, lol) I remember my last student loan payment…it felt awesome to be done with it. Very cool about Lonestar too. I heard they were changing the 1/2 IM to an Olympic distance, but I didn’t realize it was going to be an official IM 70.3! If I ever get to the point where I think I can do a 1/2, that would be a great one to do!