A nice day...
Dec. 25th, 2000 10:33 pmLeonid and I worked the air-to-ground again today at MCC. There were more comm opportunities today than yesterday, and considering that everyone was getting ready for the repeated docking with the Progress (which will occur a scant few hours from now as I write this), it appeared as if the ISS crew and the ground controllers were going to need them all.
One unexpected wrinkle was that the flight director announced a general assembly in the flight control room - including the interpreters - for the purpose of sharing a Christmas moment with the ISS crew. As so it came to pass that, somewhere around 2:15 pm this past afternoon, a skeletal crew of about 25 souls massed before the TV camera mounted at the back of the FCR and wished the crew well on this holiday. The FD read our names up to the crew as we waved our greetings, and I was sitting on the right side of the image, simultaneously interpreting what he was saying for the benefit of folks tuned in from the analogous flight control facility in Moscow. The show, after all, must go on.
Natalie's car was in the driveway when I came home, and I could not have wished for a nicer Christmas present. We sat around briefly for a few minutes, and then set off for the Pearland house, intent on finding a place to eat along the way.
Well, it turns out that the house looks pretty good (the major work now consists of cleaning up after all the work has been done), and all of the eateries on the way were closed. So we came back to the Webster area and went cruising along Bay Area Boulevard, which has a very high density of restaurants along this particular stretch of concrete. No joy. Almost.
We had Christmas dinner at the Miyako restaurant, and a very nice dinner it was. It was the perfect end to a very nice day.
Hope everyone else had a great day, too.
Cheers...
One unexpected wrinkle was that the flight director announced a general assembly in the flight control room - including the interpreters - for the purpose of sharing a Christmas moment with the ISS crew. As so it came to pass that, somewhere around 2:15 pm this past afternoon, a skeletal crew of about 25 souls massed before the TV camera mounted at the back of the FCR and wished the crew well on this holiday. The FD read our names up to the crew as we waved our greetings, and I was sitting on the right side of the image, simultaneously interpreting what he was saying for the benefit of folks tuned in from the analogous flight control facility in Moscow. The show, after all, must go on.
Natalie's car was in the driveway when I came home, and I could not have wished for a nicer Christmas present. We sat around briefly for a few minutes, and then set off for the Pearland house, intent on finding a place to eat along the way.
Well, it turns out that the house looks pretty good (the major work now consists of cleaning up after all the work has been done), and all of the eateries on the way were closed. So we came back to the Webster area and went cruising along Bay Area Boulevard, which has a very high density of restaurants along this particular stretch of concrete. No joy. Almost.
We had Christmas dinner at the Miyako restaurant, and a very nice dinner it was. It was the perfect end to a very nice day.
Hope everyone else had a great day, too.
Cheers...