Unlike most nights, all of yesterday's shift went by in slow motion, which was pretty annoying. I stuck around the Clear Lake area after the end of the shift, stopping at the Einstein Bros. bagelry for a sandwich and a coffee, after which I stopped at Barnes & Noble, mainly to read skim the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, which supposedly had an article on a European initiative to build their own navsat system, to compete with GPS and Glonass, but apparently that article was in last month's issue. (Mayhaps the Pagosa library has a back copy.) Constellations of satellites are no cheap affair, all the more so if you're talking about navigation satellites.
Upon return to the house, Natalie and I went for a bite to eat at IHOP, where I had a grilled chicken caesar salad. I can't really answer for the rest of my wake time, except for about the last hour or so, where I actively packed my carry-ons while the washer and drier rumbled to their inevitable conclusions. Natalie packed my roll-on bag while I slept between 3 pm and 9:30 pm, and I spent about an hour of my "post-sleep" period (NASA-speak) putting the finishing touches on the contents of my luggage.
The bags are in the trunk of the car, out in the parking lot next to the MCC (one of the few perks of the night shift... during the day, all of the unmarked spots in the lot'd be full). I plan to drive back to Pearland immediately after my shift and eat breakfast with Natalie, who took off somewhere last night with Jessica (a former roommate). Natalie and I are to have breakfast before I hightail it to IAH and those wonderful folks at Hertz.
* * *I've been in "cajole" mode with Wordfast and Word for the past few days. Basically, that means normal tactics (e.g., launch the application) don't work. I still find I have to delete the Normal.dot file before starting Word, which is started with a Startup directory that does not contain the Wordfast macro template, said template being added after Word is open. (Even that doesn't always work. Sometimes WINWORD.EXE is the problem; sometimes it's MSO9.DLL.)
Although I didn't mention it here previously, I did finish that other assignment I had on my plate, and did the first few steps in the review (spell check, TOC check); I plan to spend time on the plane checking the document's readability.
It has been a quiet day on the ISS. Today is a scheduled rest day, with nothing of note of the official plan (exercise, family conferences) and nothing significant on the so-called "task list" (which, approximately speaking, is known as a "honeydew" list in many homes of our land). So far, there's been only one exchange between the control center in Moscow and the crew, to ask the standard questions (How did you sleep? How do you feel? What's the station pressure? What's the oxygen partial pressure? Do you have any questions or comments for us?).
Yes, sir-ree. It's been a slow day so far and I'm not complaining, thank you.
Cheers...
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