Surprises never cease...

Lee did drop by around 5:30 or so, about a half hour after I was awakened from a reasonably good nap by a phone call informing me that Discovery had launched successfully, which meant that my first shift would start at 9:00 pm, almost 6 hours ago.

Three more hours to go, and I feel reasonably okay, but that's probably the coffee talking.

Lee and I had a nice conversation and then while I went off to get ready for tonight's shift, she went and got us some Chinese take-out. I left the house with time to spare, so as to be able to have a leisurely drive to JSC. As it turned out, a few minutes down the road I realized I had forgotten my MCC headset at the house, but even having to return for it still gave me plenty of time to drive to work.

I got slightly sidetracked when I arrived at the MCC and found nobody in the "back" room where the interpreters used to sit. Once I found the new room, I spent some time catching up with old friends, and then grabbed my coffee and headset and spent the first half of the shift "on console" in the Flight Control Room.

As the Shuttle crew is asleep and docking is still over a day away, things were pretty quiet on the communications loop to the Russian side. Most of the rest of the time, I continued to review the so-called "Assembly Operations Handbook," which provides a wealth of information about what is expected to happen during this flight (crew relief, transfer of logistics from the Shuttle to the Station, and a couple of EVAs).

I finished my "lunch" a few minutes ago and then logged in to the network, gratified that the system hadn't forgotten about my existence in the nearly two months I haven't been here (though I did have to take care of a couple of expired passwords).

Time to go off to do some housekeeping...

Cheers...

My "glitch" for the mission...

In the second half of yesterday's shift, Word put me in a proper mood by faulting out and exiting, causing me to lose about a page worth of work. It could have been worse, of course, but it was annoying.

I was then called upon to revise a translation done earlier in the shift by my partner, Olga D. I was not as careful in reviewing the revised text as I should have been, and thus missed a couple of sentences in the early part of the document. Fortunately, the console interpreters check each others' work, and Olga caught the error. Although it's always difficult to translate revisions (especially when they are not marked), I later figured out a couple of ways I can prevent this happening in the future. It's bad enough my English-to-Russian requires review; worse yet that I goof up like this.

OTOH, there's nothing to be done about it. I will consider it to be - as they say at NASA - my "glitch" for the mission, and go on with life.

On a positive note, I am pleased that I felt no desire to extract junk food from the vending machines outside the FCR. Too, at no time during the night did I have to fight sleep, though I began to yawn often and hard on the way home. Once home, I fell asleep quickly, woke up 4 hours later, but managed to go back to sleep until noon.

In a morose turn of mind, I keep returning to one of Sara's last lines in Sweet November, when she tells Nelson, "You are my immortality!" I find it curious how and via what avenues we pursue ersatz versions of eternal life, knowing full well that the real McCoy will forever elude us.

Shakespeare, for example, is physically dead; his dust was put to rest almost 400 years ago. Yet he is - through his works - immortal. Or so some say. Is he? The acclaim and admiration of people walking around today can't possibly matter to him now, even if he had planned it this way... which I doubt.

I remember my grandmother and all the cool things we used to do when I was a kid. Given the opportunity, someday I'll tell Huntur all about my grandmother and those escapades. And maybe someday, once I am long gone, Huntur will tell her grandchildren about this nutcase granddad of hers and all the grand times she had with him.

But it won't matter to me. And I won't do or not do things now so as to somehow influence whatever possible narrative she may choose to relate; what happens will happen because it will be the appropriate thing to do at the time. And yet...

Hmm. This line of thought is well and truly pointless, kind of like a finger-painting in progress, where one's digits tend to retrace the same lines over and over.

There are small battles to be won today, and I need to go fight them. The next shift is just over 7 hours away.

Cheers...