Doing some thinking about where to live, and how...

The last time we left this house was at the end of 2000 (a description of the trip starts here). What is not apparent from my posts from that time is that we left quite a number of items behind, which eventually ended up in a storage place not more than a mile from here, which flooded sometime in 2001, if memory serves, resulting in the loss of quite a lot of items.

As I've mentioned, we've put this place back on the rental market (with a brand new fridge and "environmental control system," including cleaned ductwork). Galina has been culling our stuff for a garage sale tomorrow (I thought she was going to do the usual Houston thing and run the sale today and tomorrow, but I was evidently mistaken). The real estate agent, a friend of Galina's, was by earlier in the day to put a sign in the yard, take photos of the house, and hang a key-vending contraption on the front door.

Our "original" plan called for us to leave for New York yesterday, but to do that would have entailed packing the Ford with only some of the stuff in the house, thus requiring Galina to repeat the exercise of putting the rest of the house in local storage. As noted above, we've been there and done that, and it was most unsatisfying.

Then consider that the items I currently have in my office were culled from the larger pool of items that were in Pagosa about a year ago, and consists largely of materials that I use all the time and would like to have available to me, and the "original" plan really starts to have an aroma about it.

On the way down from Pagosa, it occurred to me that what we should do is identify the stuff we absolutely want to take from Houston, and then rent a truck to take it to New York with us. The rest ought to be sold locally or go to local storage for eventual sale.

With that in mind, I need to apply myself to the new assignment that came in yesterday, displacing the item due the 19th, and then spend my copious "spare" time packing stuff for New York.

Cheers...

Glad we got that straightened out...

Russian tends to require more description in the written form, by which I mean one doesn't simply refer to "Mir" in a sentence, but to the "Mir orbital station." Similarly, if company X signs a contract with company Y, a sentence describing the fact would not be phrased as "X and Y signed a contract" (at least not and be considered literate). Instead, a proper sentence would go so far as to say "Representatives of company X and company Y signed a contract."

I bring this up because a funny thing happened yesterday while translating an appendix of acronyms and abbreviations. In one entry, I ran across the abbreviation МТКС (многоразовая транспортная космическая система), which translates literally as "reusable space transportation system" and in another, a reference to "твердотопливные ускорители МТКС «Спейс Шаттл»" (or "solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle reusable space transportation system").

Clearly, the МТКС abbreviation is an attempt to render, in Russian, the U.S. term "Space Transportation System" (which is NASA's name for the Shuttle program). However, as a number of NASA web sites will tell you, the STS is the Space Shuttle system (the two terms being pretty much synonymous), and consists of three components (the Orbiter, the solid rocket boosters, and the external tank), only the first two of which are designed to be reusable. A "Space Shuttle," therefore, is what you see poised on the pad, ready for launch.

Terminologically, there were two issues to resolve. First, since it is clear that МТКС is intended to represent the STS, that's how I cast it (the "reusable" part will get dropped). Second, references to "the STS Space Shuttle" have been slimmed down to, simply, "the STS" as they read better in English.

The one epiphany that came out of this for me was learning that vehicles such as Discovery and Atlantis are not, themselves, instances of the "Space Shuttle." They are Orbiters (or, if one insists, "Shuttle Orbiters" or "Space Shuttle Orbiters"). Thus, it is technically incorrect to report something along the lines of "The space shuttle Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center today, ending a 10-day mission to the International Space Station." (Be it technical as it may, the incorrect usage is pretty common - I mean, I only just realized there's a difference, myself - so there's nothing to be done there.)

Back to the face of the salt mine.

Cheers...