A good scare...

In between other things, I fired up my VAIO to look for some of the data files I'd copied from my desktop and could not find them! This was bad enough, but I distinctly remembered doing so, which only made my suffering worse. As I began to figure out a way to coordinate with Drew to get the files to me from my laptop, I did one last search on the VAIO.

And found the files, in a new directory I'd created while transferring data. Good news, but also an indication that my travel checklist will need a few tweaks to help me manage details.

* * *It's good to be back at JSC after such a long interval, and even more refreshing to have found an organization where changes in security procedures appear, to my mind, to make sense. (With all due respect to those charged with public safety, prohibiting airline passengers from having nail clippers or cigarette lighters on their person when flying seems a rather poor way to spend limited resources. What allowed individuals to commandeer aircraft while brandishing box cutters was a policy of public complacency that had been carefully cultivated by government types for decades, but I digress...)

Everthing went smoothly until I visited the simultaneous interpretation facility around the corner from the Moscow Support Group, over toward where the Mission Management Team holds its meetings: the room is mostly bare, which means that either the function is no longer performed at JSC (doubtful, yet possible), or it is being done from some other place. Seeing the mostly empty room kind of hit me between the eyes like a swung 2x4, as I am one of the original space-to-grounders, and helped design the facility.

Duty calls.

Cheers...

Ready to rumble...

In a quiet testimony to the fact that wonders will never cease, my relief arrived this morning spot on time at 7:30 (normally, an assigned telecon keeps this person from showing up until 8:30 or 9). Then again, it's only Monday, which traditionally is the second least popular day - Friday is the champ - for holding telephone conferences.

Though it's about 2 miles from my front door to the parking lot in front of the MCC, by the time I got out of there this morning, the air temperature had climbed into what for me is the "marginal" range for doing much of anything outdoors, placing the prospect of bicycling between here and work in jeopardy. Then, too, I'd have to go get another bicycle lock before leaving the thing out in public, as I do not have the key to the mechanism that's on there right now (and I wonder just how it would look to be riding around like that, too). Not to mention actually going to the storage place in Pearland again and fetching the hardware. That is an idea whose time has come to return to the back burner.

I went to sleep soon after returning from work and have slept for about 4 hours, which is a nice stretch, albeit not enough to carry me through to tomorrow "morning," unless it's in a pinch. Galina is out somewhere. I am tempted to go across the street to the fitness place in the strip mall they have over there and find out if they have a special rate for people from out of town staying at this Marriott. The fact that Spec's has one of their superstores right next door (oodles of adult beverages) is yet another inducement to get out and about.

Otherwise, I have nothing to do but translate (and that's really what I ought to do, seeing how my deadline looms). That and correct the time/date on my clock (you had to be there).

Cheers...