Up and on the bounce...

When I stuck my head out the front door of the hotel last night, it became immediately clear that walking around area 95 is not something to be done after the sun goes down, as it was bitter cold even without any wind. I didn't catch the temperature (indeed, I didn't even notice if the outdoor thermometer was in its accustomed place near the front door of the Fili), but I am sure it was at least a dozen degrees less than the -4°C it was upon our arrival.

I had a moderate dinner last night: a piece of fish that looked and tasted like salmon, and some salad. After dinner (and my look outside the hotel), I wandered into the exercise room and was pleased to see a couple of treadmills there. From there, I moved over to the recreation room. A pair of guys from the Alcatel team were playing Foosball and I ended up playing a bit of table tennis with the Alcatel safety engineer, Stefano.

Afterward, I joined the folks in the mini-bar - which is apparently where smokers will be congregating to indulge in their filthy habit during the campaign - and exposed myself wantonly to second-hand smoke and listened to see if there were any good rumors going around. There was some scuttlebutt regarding the availability of the Antonov transport aircraft that is supposed to be bringing the spacecraft to us tomorrow; something about it being diverted to aid in the humanitarian effort associated with the aftermath of the Sumatran earthquake, but at this point, that's still only a rumor. The smart money, apparently, is riding on the fact that the Antonov is not ideally suited for the kinds of airports involved in the aid effort.

I slept pretty well, all things considered, and rose around 5:30. My room during this campaign is, um, in somewhat poorer repair than my other rooms have been at this place, but serviceable nonetheless. One major plus is that now, the interpreter account on the LAN allows the connection of things like JumpDrives (which is good, because I do not recall bringing a single floppy disk with me - though I did take the floppy drive).

There's about 10 minutes before the kitchen opens for breakfast. My body is crying out for coffee.

Cheers...

A couple of photos from Moscow...

I went for a little walk on Monday night after getting to the hotel, and took the following shot on my way to the Internet cafe:



The next morning, while walking around the hotel lobby waiting for the buses to arrive, I spied the following unusual -- to American eyes -- St. Nicholas:



It's been a long day. The translation staff is inundated with facility readiness certificates. The good news is that these echo similar documents from previous campaigns. The bad news is that there is an almost infinite number of them to process.

Scuttlebutt says I'm assigned to accompany the spacecraft on the train tomorrow from Yubileinyi (the airport) to the processing facility (the полтинник, which means "half ruble" in Russian, an indirect reference to the "50" in the name of the building, which is "92A-50"). I have to make sure to remember to borrow a set of warm underwear from someone, as all of mine is in my luggage, which has been retrieved and will arrive on the second.

Another report says our work day on the 31st will start at 5:30 am and end around 9 pm. Bummer. I'm sure it won't be as bad as that (ya gotta have something left with which to ring in the New Year, y'know!).

Cheers...