alexpgp | Hey, it's the weekend...

I have done a workmanlike job of sleeping in this morning, though I should not get too used to the idea of getting up late, since I start working the "morning" shift at Execute Package on Monday (something in the back of my mind says I'll be on the telecon list, too).

As of this morning, I have just over 6000 words done and about 3 pages (plus a short bibliography) left in the translation of the standard. One sentence in the Russian that brought a warped smile to my lips said something to the effect of: This document is a complete translation of ISO standard so-and-so. I suppose the weasel words at the end of that sentence (something like, "taking account of specific features of the national economy") probably make the sentence as a whole true, but if so, the weasel words are being asked to do a heck of a lot of work!

* * *The gang was, predictably, still around when I got home last night. Lee and I had words last night about that, and she explained that folks were getting ready to break up, with one visitor (from California?) going home early Monday morning.

While I got ready for bed, she tried to get various individuals to pitch in and help clean the place a bit, which was appreciated. (What was not appreciated was the notable lack of anything remotely approaching cooperation from the one fellow who is most likely to stay here, but I digress...)

Everyone left for, I am told, a movie. I played around on my laptop for an hour or so and went to sleep.

* * *I don't know what to think or say about Lee. On the one hand, having just turned 21, she is certainly grown up and beyond the pale of parental "orders," though that has never been my style, anyway (and I've been served rations of bat guano for it over the years). On the other, there is such a tangible delta between what she says she wants to do and what she ends up doing that... I don't know. I wish I could help her, and I'm not at all sure the cooing sounds I make when I commisserate with her about the slings and arrows she's lately experienced are any help at all.

The famous (at least in Russia) general Alexander Suvorov is known for a pithy aphorism: Тяжело в учении, легко в бою. This sometimes is rendered in English as "Train hard, fight easy," (although the "fight" part is never easy). Though expressed by a military man talking about the military life, the idea is applicable to life in general.

I recall, back in college, finding a direct relationship between simply doing my engineering "homework" and doing well on the tests. What the homework did was allow me to wrap my mind a little more tightly around what was being said in class, and that was enough to turn the trick, in most cases.

My translation career itself is a reflection of Suvorov's wisdom. If I hadn't slogged through those first translations, if I hadn't spent a couple of years after that churning out one translation after another in similar fashion, then I think I never would have arrived at the point where I could do the quantities of translation that I do today.

Hmmm. Somehow, I seem to have stepped up onto a soapbox. Sorry.

* * *It should be a fairly quiet day at the Execute Package. Alex K. went down yesterday to talk to the Ops Planning lead, who told Alex that the tsunami of work has well and truly passed. (Heck, undock is about 6-7 hours away!)

With the departure of the Soyuz "taxi mission" and Alex's imminent departure for Italy, the little practical joke Alex and I played on the rest of the gang in the Ops Plan back room (or on anyone else who expresses surprise that both he and I have the same surname) will have lived out its short life.

Whenever anyone commented on our names, we'd explain - completely seriously - that it was simply a consequence of a new ISS Program Requirement for all translator/interpreters to be named "Alex" and all Russian cosmonauts to be named "Yuri" (as in Onufrienko, the ISS commander, and Gidzenko, the Soyuz commander). We'd further explain that it was a phased requirement, so that Ops Planners (or EVA specialists, or whoever) would be expected to all be named "Maggie" by the end of this year, and Mission Specialists would all be named "Fred" by the end of 2003. (Sure, it's hokey, but it had a couple of people going for a while, there... :^)

Anyway, the start of my shift is just over 2 hours away, and I must go off and get ready for it.

Cheers...