The Insanity

As you might have picked up by the title of my last post, I've been a little busy recently. Let's see, where to start? My last significant post was last Wednesday, so we'll pick up from there, I guess.

Thursday was spent finishing up the Soyuz presentation for 512 and frantically searching for more information for my 604 paper and ultimately deciding to change the scope of it. I did not make it to haganah that night, sadly.

Friday was spent on paper research, applying at another temp agency (recommended by Eduardo), studying for the 512 midterm, then taking said midterm that night and freaking out slightly because it was harder than I had expected it to be. (It turns out that everyone else thought so, too.)

Saturday was spent discovering that the midterm wasn't as bad as I'd thought (90%), listening to the start of the presentations (I gotta say...rockets in general are pretty darn cool toys! We did Minuteman III missiles and Atlas, Delta II, and Pegasus rockets that day), learning about the orbital mechanics for interplanetary travel (doesn't that sound like that should be a line from, like a Star Trek episode?), reviewing for the final, coming home, and continuing to research paper stuff.

Sunday was spent dreading having to give my presentation, fumbling through it (EVERYONE else got asked tons of questions during their presentations, which made it feel like a back and forth discussion, rather than a presentation, but NO ONE asked anything during mine, so either I was extremely clear or extremely boring, which made me MORE nervous), listening to the rest of the class' stuff (LCROSS, THEMIS, TacSat III, and Launch Safety), taking the final (which, after knowing what the midterm was like, was pretty easy), coming home, and continuing to work on paper research.

Monday was spent down in LA. John actually followed through on getting the crew together to watch the show video for once, and "made it worth it" for me by having me come down earlier in the day and letting me reorganize our touring supply case, which had been driving me insane. It was a fun day - he had burned me a copy of a CD he'd bought last time we were at Starbucks (we call it Parisian wine music), we had lunch with his family (well, 4 of his 5 siblings, anyway), started taking Watertight apart to clean it, and then he went back to his office and gave me carte blanche to organize the case. (It's MUCH better now!) I'd finished with the case and was sitting at the table working on my paper when he came back with a brilliant (*cough*) idea. "Hey! Wouldn't it be awesome if you worked HERE?! You could always just BE here and help with stuff, I wonder if my dad has any openings in the office..." I'm not holding my breath for that, as they've been hit by the economy just as hard as everyone else, but it was sweet of him to think that. (I got several not-particularly-subtle hints throughout the day that "it would just be easier if you were down here," which I found amusing.) The girls and Eduardo showed up in the evening, and we descended on Ruby Tuesday's with enough laughter and noise between the five of us to scare other patrons away while we ate. Then we went back to the warehouse and actually got to watch the video of the show, which was very useful. The others took off around 10:00p, but John started tinkering with Watertight again, and my car was parked by his office, so we didn't get out of there until about 11:30p. Now, despite what happened last time I drove back late at night, this time I was actually okay to drive - it hadn't been any crazy long day, I'd gotten a good night's sleep the night before, and I hadn't been up for any 24 hours straight by the time I hit the road. I knew that Tuesday was going to be my last real chance to work on my paper, having finished the research at the warehouse while waiting for him, and wanted to be sure I'd have enough time to get it typed up. John, however, seems to have taken my "don't ever let me do that again!" impulse whine to heart and he kidnapped me! He usually fills my tank up for me when I leave, so when he drops me off at my car and says "Follow me," I figure we're going to the gas station. No, we went back to his place instead. His response to my "*I* thought I was going home tonight?!" was "Well, you can if you really want to...*I* don't think it's worth it, though, and you have a room to crash in here, so...why?" Mrph!

Tuesday started out pretty nicely, actually. Luckily, I still had my travel toothbrush in my bag from last weekend, but his brother sure gave me a weird look when he came into the kitchen the next morning and saw me, no makeup and in the same - now dirty from the warehouse - clothes as yesterday. John had asked me to not leave until he was up, so I ended up typing the first page or two of my paper (I'd finished the research at the warehouse) with the SoCal sunshine streaming onto me through their kitchen windows. I actually could have kept working on the thing (to a certain point) right there, but John finally decided he was ready around noon (with more "you don't really want to go back, you should be down here" comments), so I got back to Santa Maria around 3:00p (it's actually a more direct route from his house, one less freeway to navigate). I got about half the paper done, then said "Screw it, I need this!" and went to haganah for the first time in a week and a half. Getting beat up on helps clear the head, I swear! Came home, got about 3/4 of the paper done, figured out the correct formatting, and crashed.

Today, I finished the paper, threw some slides together for the accompanying presentation and went to class. This time, I was more nervous BEFORE the presentation, but during it, I was fine. Clearly, being nervous before presentations results in better presentations. It also helps that there were questions and comments during this one. All in all, I feel like I did much better with this presentation than I did with the 512 one, and I kind of slapped this one together at the last minute. Weird. I also just got the news that John met with another promoter today and they're interested in doing a series of at least five shows! So today's been a pretty good day - good news on the show AND all of my papers and presentations are now OVER! I have one more final for 604 next week, and then classwork is done for a couple weeks. I'm trying to decide if I want to do two on-site classes or one on-site and one online class next term. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I'm going to go register tomorrow, so we'll see.

Tomorrow is going to be spent SCRUBBING down the apartment. It's time for a good, thorough, spring cleaning, and then Friday is Baby S's second birthday party! (We'll see how much blue icing gets smeared this time!) I have to go down to Channel Islands at dark o'clock Saturday morning for my space flight physical, and then regular drill day on Sunday. Between the trips to LA and VAFB, I've put over a thousand miles on my car just in the past two weeks. Yikes! Time for an oil change!