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A long-ish kind of day...
Nov. 20th, 2004 11:17 amThe splintering of the group continued yesterday morning, and as I was first "up" for the afternoon session, it made for a pretty long day. The good news is that the group made a lot of progress in its discussions, and I have a warm feeling based on having helped the sides understand each other.
The session broke up in the late afternoon, just in time for everyone to get to the Teague Auditorium for the official "welcome back" for the Expedition 9 crew members, who deorbited into Kazakhstan last month. The crew consisted of Gennadiy Padalka, the commander, and Mike "Spanky" Fincke, the flight engineer.
I've written about Padalka -- the fellow on the left in the photo above -- before in my LJ. He is a very intense, focused fellow who always finds the time, however, to step out of his path to shake your hand (as he did when I ran into him in the elevator two days ago on the way home). I've also had the opportunity to work with Mike Fincke, who is one of these people who seem to be just overflowing with enthusiasm all the time (probably because he is), and whose smile is orders of magnitude more infectious than anything I can think of.
Apparently, these guys did a tremendous job on the station (I hadn't been keeping up), between dealing with malfunctioning equipment (I recall some details about having to do an EVA to repair a gyroscope, where the prospects for said operation were described in very deprecating terms by the media before the event, and "they made it look like a 10-minute oil change" afterward) and catching up on science (Mike used a lot of personal time to do research). I love working with people like this, because despite the occasional flake here and there, the vast majority of people I come into contact to when I work at JSC share this kind of "can do" approach.
After all the words were spoken and various mementos exhanged, our group waded through the lobby of the Teague auditorium (where there was a very high concentration of other astronauts) back to Building 4S, where we gathered our things and went to find my rental car. I dropped the members of the group off at their hotel, so they could prepare for the evening's festivities.
An hour later, after girding myself for the night ahead with an espresso and a Taco Supreme™, I returned to the hotel to pick them up and take them to a party being thrown on the occasion of the TIM (Technical Interchange Meeting), although the thought "any excuse in a storm" crossed my mind when I heard a party was in the offing. The food and the fellowship was good, and things were made more interesting with the arrival of a karaoke artist, who kept things humming and even got one of the Russians to do a number! (I managed to successfully remain part of the wallpaper in this regard. :^)
The Russians found another ride home and I got back to Pearland around 10:15 pm and went to sleep soon after. I suppose the sound of rain -- which fell through the night and morning (there's about 2 inches standing in the side yard) -- made it easy to sleep in to 10 am. (Natalie is still asleep as I write this.)
Plans for the day? I don't know. Natalie's Epson printer needs ink, that's for sure. As for the rest, I need to prepare for a week of night shifts in the MCC... which reminds me, I ought to go check email for my assignment documents.
Cheers...
The session broke up in the late afternoon, just in time for everyone to get to the Teague Auditorium for the official "welcome back" for the Expedition 9 crew members, who deorbited into Kazakhstan last month. The crew consisted of Gennadiy Padalka, the commander, and Mike "Spanky" Fincke, the flight engineer.
I've written about Padalka -- the fellow on the left in the photo above -- before in my LJ. He is a very intense, focused fellow who always finds the time, however, to step out of his path to shake your hand (as he did when I ran into him in the elevator two days ago on the way home). I've also had the opportunity to work with Mike Fincke, who is one of these people who seem to be just overflowing with enthusiasm all the time (probably because he is), and whose smile is orders of magnitude more infectious than anything I can think of.
Apparently, these guys did a tremendous job on the station (I hadn't been keeping up), between dealing with malfunctioning equipment (I recall some details about having to do an EVA to repair a gyroscope, where the prospects for said operation were described in very deprecating terms by the media before the event, and "they made it look like a 10-minute oil change" afterward) and catching up on science (Mike used a lot of personal time to do research). I love working with people like this, because despite the occasional flake here and there, the vast majority of people I come into contact to when I work at JSC share this kind of "can do" approach.
After all the words were spoken and various mementos exhanged, our group waded through the lobby of the Teague auditorium (where there was a very high concentration of other astronauts) back to Building 4S, where we gathered our things and went to find my rental car. I dropped the members of the group off at their hotel, so they could prepare for the evening's festivities.
An hour later, after girding myself for the night ahead with an espresso and a Taco Supreme™, I returned to the hotel to pick them up and take them to a party being thrown on the occasion of the TIM (Technical Interchange Meeting), although the thought "any excuse in a storm" crossed my mind when I heard a party was in the offing. The food and the fellowship was good, and things were made more interesting with the arrival of a karaoke artist, who kept things humming and even got one of the Russians to do a number! (I managed to successfully remain part of the wallpaper in this regard. :^)
The Russians found another ride home and I got back to Pearland around 10:15 pm and went to sleep soon after. I suppose the sound of rain -- which fell through the night and morning (there's about 2 inches standing in the side yard) -- made it easy to sleep in to 10 am. (Natalie is still asleep as I write this.)
Plans for the day? I don't know. Natalie's Epson printer needs ink, that's for sure. As for the rest, I need to prepare for a week of night shifts in the MCC... which reminds me, I ought to go check email for my assignment documents.
Cheers...
