43 years...

Coincidence or not, it turns out my first day on the job at JSC this trip coincides with the 43rd anniversary of human space flight, celebrated in Russia as "Cosmonautics Day," and in some other places as "Yuri's night" (after Yuri Gagarin, the first human to be successfully blasted atop a rocket into space and return alive). Locally, Yuri's night is going to be the theme of the evening at a local watering hole, complete with toasts and the Stolichnaya vodka rep in attendance, but that's about it, I'm afraid.

It has been a long day. My shift here runs from noon until 8 pm, which is better than midnight until 8 am, but not by a whole lot as it's still a disruptive schedule that is not particularly conducive, in my opinion, to attempts to control food intake. Plus today, I had to arrive at the Center a little early to arrange for my parking pass.

I'm working the Execute Package, which is sure to become a pretty busy position as the crew handover draws nigh. As it is, I've spent the better part of the day revising a Soyuz procedure that had been previously translated by... someone whose native language was not English, and I'm trying to work in corrections as I go through the document, translating revisions.

Talking about revisions, I did about 30% of the rework job assigned Friday and found it conforms to the massive majority of such jobs, in that the revised text and the translation to be brought into conformance with said revisions are more different than can be accounted for by only the revisions. I so informed my client this morning, and since I have no e-mail access from here, I don't know what the reply might be, if any.

Time to start checking over what I've done and finish up the paperwork. I want to be fairly prompt in getting out of here tonight.

Cheers...