So, my work excitement is that I am moving offices. The unfortunate part is I am moving to a smaller, windowless office (my current office is large and has windows). My current desk is to become a hallway.

Anyway, the exciting part is that I have gotten to select all new furniture and rearrange it anyway I want. So, I managed to significantly increase my desk area (with an L-shaped desk) and gained a whiteboard that will be in an actual useable location. And of course, as expected, I arranged for bookshelves galore (a hutch over my desk and a bookshelf on the wall). And I'll have the office all to myself until Sarah arrives at the end of July (she is to be my office-mate, watch out NASA!). And most exciting of all is that I will be getting a 21" monitor to replace the 17" one I have right now (big monitors are a good thing when you open as many windows as I normally do in a working day).

hmmm

Other news: I submitted an application to be on my first U.N. panel (the Space Generation Summit, which is part of the Space Policy summit, which is part of the World Space Congress, which will be held in Houston in October), so cross your fingers for me.

Thursday and Friday I am going to take a training class, so I will be WAY out of the office, which will also be a nice change.

and while Karen is talking about weather...

Summer is definitely winning out in Houston. We've had several months of absolutely lovely spring like weather. But now our heat is actually breaking records (it hit 90 F yesterday and MUGGY). Sarah is trying to talk me into training to run a marathon with her (right now I would be happy if I could make the 4 miles I irregularly ran in Switzerland) and I don't know how I am going to talk myself into going out to run in this weather.

Yesterday I tried convincing my brother, Nick, to go traveling with me at the end of his next school year. I want to go to Japan. We both agree that we want to go to Australia but can't afford it. He is afraid of the language barrier in Japan and would rather go back to Europe. Anyway, I would be up for that too - we agreed that northern Spain, France and Germany might be doable in two weeks (or at least part of that, focusing on France, which is where he really wants to go for whatever reason). So I may get one more backpacking stint in yet - May 2003!!