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Les temps perdus...
Nov. 28th, 2008 09:43 amFactors coalesced yesterday to chant several choruses of "hold on, there, bubba!"
I mentioned the first in yesterday's post, wherein my morning routine got knocked off track by an "on call" kind of request as I was getting ready to leave for my appointed 6 am work time. Normally, something like that would not have been so disruptive, because I've been getting up in plenty of time before having to be out the door, but yesterday, I gave myself only 30 minutes to go from supine in the sack to sitting on the bus, heading to 92A-50.
After catching up on sleep in the afternoon, I went down to dinner at 7:10 pm, in plenty of time - ceteris paribus - to catch the 7:30 pm van back to the integration facility. However, ceteris were anything but paribus last night, as - in the middle of my appetizer - a member of the French team came into the dining room and asked me to "help out" with what turned out to be a complicated (and time-consuming) request involving delivery of beer over to the Proton Club for an impromptu ping-pong tournament.
Keenly aware how any verbal attempt to explain that I was "under the gun" in terms of time might be interpreted as an unwillingness to help, I continued to participate while eating forkfuls of food with body language that said "I'm running late for work," to no effect. I'm not exactly sure I was able to help achieve the desired end - the concept of "charge it to my room" doesn't exist in our little part of the world - but in any event, I barely finished my appetizer before having to head out the door and back to work.
Once at work, things slowed to a "hurry up and wait" pace once the spacecraft, which had been mated to the adapter system and tested during the earlier part of the day, was placed atop the upper stage on a special tilt stand that is designed to tip the "stack" into the horizontal position once all connections are made and tests are completed.
For a gig where there's no heavy lifting involved, it was a pretty active and tiring session. Based on the status of activities when I arrived last night and on previous experience, I expected that we'd be done and back at the hotel at 10 pm instead of the scheduled end time of 11 pm. As it turned out, between this and that, and hushed consultations, and waiting for someone to show up and inspect something, and my climbing up and down the tilt stand a half dozen times, and making sure the correct video cameras were pointed in the right direction, we all got back home at about midnight. I was plumb tuckered out.
Today, however, I'm the afternoon interpreter, so things ought to be less hectic. Too, I've a couple of hours yet before having to saddle up.
Cheers...
I mentioned the first in yesterday's post, wherein my morning routine got knocked off track by an "on call" kind of request as I was getting ready to leave for my appointed 6 am work time. Normally, something like that would not have been so disruptive, because I've been getting up in plenty of time before having to be out the door, but yesterday, I gave myself only 30 minutes to go from supine in the sack to sitting on the bus, heading to 92A-50.
After catching up on sleep in the afternoon, I went down to dinner at 7:10 pm, in plenty of time - ceteris paribus - to catch the 7:30 pm van back to the integration facility. However, ceteris were anything but paribus last night, as - in the middle of my appetizer - a member of the French team came into the dining room and asked me to "help out" with what turned out to be a complicated (and time-consuming) request involving delivery of beer over to the Proton Club for an impromptu ping-pong tournament.
Keenly aware how any verbal attempt to explain that I was "under the gun" in terms of time might be interpreted as an unwillingness to help, I continued to participate while eating forkfuls of food with body language that said "I'm running late for work," to no effect. I'm not exactly sure I was able to help achieve the desired end - the concept of "charge it to my room" doesn't exist in our little part of the world - but in any event, I barely finished my appetizer before having to head out the door and back to work.
Once at work, things slowed to a "hurry up and wait" pace once the spacecraft, which had been mated to the adapter system and tested during the earlier part of the day, was placed atop the upper stage on a special tilt stand that is designed to tip the "stack" into the horizontal position once all connections are made and tests are completed.
For a gig where there's no heavy lifting involved, it was a pretty active and tiring session. Based on the status of activities when I arrived last night and on previous experience, I expected that we'd be done and back at the hotel at 10 pm instead of the scheduled end time of 11 pm. As it turned out, between this and that, and hushed consultations, and waiting for someone to show up and inspect something, and my climbing up and down the tilt stand a half dozen times, and making sure the correct video cameras were pointed in the right direction, we all got back home at about midnight. I was plumb tuckered out.
Today, however, I'm the afternoon interpreter, so things ought to be less hectic. Too, I've a couple of hours yet before having to saddle up.
Cheers...
