Ho hum, just another day at JSC
I really need to start doing something more exciting on the weekends so that I have a better answer on Monday morning in Russian class when the teacher inevitably asks: что вы делали на выходные? My answer for several weeks now has been about the same: I slept. I had dinner with friends. I worked in the yard. I ran and/or rode my bike. Truly a string of rather boring weekends, but I don’t mind.
It sounds like the shuttle launch may finally be back on track for next Monday. I thought I’d be working the entire mission, two full weeks or so. But it has now slipped enough that the flight lines up almost perfectly with our vacation to London and Paris! We finally booked a hotel in Paris today after much head-scratching and hand-wringing. It was a bad idea to wait so long to book hotels — I must have visited a zillion websites before I found something that met the criteria of 1) decent location, 2) not-completely-outrageous nightly rate, and 3) rooms still available.
We may very well end up spending more on 12 days in London and Paris than I did on 28 days in Europe in 2001. This is probably to be expected given that a $20/night bunk bed in a youth hostel doesn’t quite live up to my accommodation expectations these days. (Not to mention that WOW — the exchange rate between the Euro and the Dollar is so much worse than it was 10 years ago. Interestingly, the exchange rate between the pound and the dollar is in the same ballpark that it was 10 years ago. But the Euro? Ugh.) Still, I used to think of Europe as a relatively cheap destination!
But despite my complaining: vacation! Soon! Hooray!
