Houston weather this month has been like a roller coaster. This week is definitely the bottom, and this weekend isn't looking up.

As for my plans: Mardi Gras Beach Run on Saturday morning, work all Saturday afternoon (yes, apparently last weekend was my only weekend off), do yardwork/housework on Sunday. And, well, that's it. I'm going to try to take it easy. I'm going to finally watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which we have on DVD now). I'm going to take Apache for a walk.

Not much to say today. Long meetings. Lots of stuff going on in all different directions. Oh, and I have a new roommate who's probably going to move in April! And she has a piano (which I've always wanted to learn to play) and very well-behaved puppy for Apache to play with.

I had a good birthday, one more year, one more good birthday... We went to a steak and seafood house for dinner - and I love the fact that I had not one BUT two people who wanted to share a dozen oysters on the half shell with me (the other 4 looked on in mutual disgust at us eating raw bottom feeders from the Galveston Bay). I am still full from the dinner.

Then I crashed in bed. Its so cold and rainy outside, it feels really good to curl up under my covers.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Its been a good day so far. Lots of cards, lots of well wishing, lots of amusement. The only downside is that coffee wasn't ready for my 9 a.m. teleconference, making it seem to last longer than usual! Today I plan to work. Play volleyball. Then after volleyball, some of the team is going to go out to dinner and I've invited a couple of other friends along. Haven't decided where. I'm tempted to request sushi just for kicks :). But will probably do something else. Maybe fish. Or tex-mex (my new passion - scary!).

Of course, I have to relive other birthdays now:

18 (Senior Year of High School): Debate tournament, go figure

19 (Freshman Year): My mom tries to send a stripper to the dorm, much to the embarrassment of a few key people, turns out I didn't have enough girlfriends to make this worthwhile. Too bad for me. Will have to wait until another day

20 (Sophomore Year): Completely forget its my birthday while frantically studying all day for a structures mid-term. My friends turn up at 11 p.m. with a cake, which completely confuses me ("A cake? Who's that for?" was my reaction).

21 (Junior Year): Women's Leadership Conference Chaos. Need I say more?

22 (Senior Year): Technique Deadline. Actually, not a bad way to spend a night, if you ask me. I really miss deadline nights. Ah, the smell of the press and old Pappa John's pizza.

23 (Life begins): No one loves you when you're 23. It was a quiet birthday, I was still getting to know people here. But it was nice and lazy, which was good. I write in my journal: So far its been a great day and last weekend was a great weekend. I got a puppy the next weekend - Mom decided that I deserved one after asking for one for every birthday and Christmas since I was a toddler.

The team I'm working on even had a feature article in the Washington Post today, here. You know, I mentioned I was taking radar training from these folks last week, and this was the most awesome quote from one of our trainers:

Luckily for the shuttle investigation, several types of computer software have been developed to follow radar tracks, including one devised recently by an FAA technician and a crash investigator in the FAA's New England region.



One FAA technician said he was amazed at how rapidly NASA scientists learned to use the software. "I guess they are rocket scientists," he said.

What an incredible weekend. The weather is perfect. Absolutely perfect. And plenty of relaxation time.

Since Rodeo season is upon us (apparently I am the only one who thinks this is a really cool thing, in a weird, redneck, Texas sort of way), Sarah, Jason and I did the Rodeo Run. My legs hurt. I need to start running more often than a couple times a week again. It was a perfect day, and we ran the beginning of the Rodeo parade route. There were so many people in cowboy hats riding horses. I still have a little girl's fascination with horses, obviously. I need to start taking riding lessons.

After the run, I came home and pulled the weeds from my yard that were the size of small bushes before I get a letter form the homeowners association. And then, at Sarah's suggestion, we got pedicures. I love pedicures. They are such a wonderful thing.

I had a nice dinner (thanks to SuperTarget) and then went to see How to Lose a Guy in 10 days. Funny. Really Funny at times. All I have to say is "Queen Sophia".

Anyway, today is not going to be as relaxing, as I spending the day doing a massive homework assignment that I don't understand. I tried to cajole Jose (the only other MechE who attends the class regularly enough for me to know his name and converse with regularly) into getting together with me so we could work on the homework (if nothing else, so I could make sure I ended up with correct answers). He wasn't interested at all. The other CAAM students had their homework completed on Friday. So I'm on my own. Making me feel even more stupid. Ok, anyway, back to homework.

Our efforts here have officially switched from "Sprint mode to marathon mode." This translates to the statement: Don't work this weekend, read a trashy novel, go see a stupid movie. And on top of that, I'll have a mostly clean house, so I can REALLY relax. Last night I pre-cleaned for the cleaning lady. Or did I clean for the re-cleaning lady? Whoo hoo!

In case you wonder what I am doing here, the team I'm on made the press today:

LAS VEGAS -- NASA said late Thursday that what is believed to be debris from space shuttle Columbia was tracked falling into eastern Nevada by air traffic control radar.

The sheriff in Lincoln County, Nev., said NASA officials requested his department begin searching the rural county near the Utah border.

"They just said they had tracked it by radar and gave us a projected point of impact," Sheriff Dahl Bradfield said.

Imagery, trajectory and ballistics experts have been analyzing video of the shuttle as it streaked across the West on Feb. 1. National Transportation Safety Board officials are using those findings to hunt for any unusual radar trackings in an attempt to pinpoint wreckage.

Class troubles

Class is starting to make me feel stupid. I mean really stupid. And I have a whole new motivation for having to get a B or higher - if I don't I have to pay NASA back the $3500 in tuition they spent on me. That would be bad.

As it turns out though, when you don't actually understand the problem, you get really good at contemplating the algebraic consequences of each step (independent of everything that happened previously), which made me seem really smart in class the 10% of the time I wasn't confused as all getout.

Luckily, I have a really good professor. So after class, he spent about an hour with Jose and I, translating the homework into problems we could tackle, rather than the unintelligible babble it appeared on first glance.

Radar gives me a headache

I had a very frustrating day yesterday. Reading radar is not hard. Keeping track of all the information flying in every which way is extremely difficult. I got overwhelmed. Today promises to be better.

Visitors!

Mom and Aunt Diance bought tickets to come visit me in a couple of weeks! Yeh visitors! Now, I just need to, you know, finish unpacking my boxes. Now, Aunt Diane moved into her house in October, and I don't think she's done with hanging pictures, etc., so the way I see it, we're about on par..

But there is only one federal program that, at its best, reaches for the grandeur and the wonder that in ages past built great cathedrals and launched wooden ships into unknown waters where dragons lurked.

I love that... from here

I had a good day yesterday. It was sunny. I didn't go into work. I played with Apache. I napped on my hammock.

DJ GoodNews

I read this silly British book my Aunt mailed me called "How to Be Good" - basically: doctor/wife cheats on her husband; husband is cynical bastard; husband sees faith healer in the park; husband becomes nice man; actually husband becomes too nice and starts giving away most of their earthly posessions; faith healer (DJ GoodNews) moves into house; wife is baffled but can't argue because how do you tell someone not to do good; being good reaches completely ridiculous levels. Some of the scenarios are very amusing.

Even Class was Good

Then I went to class. It was actually intelligible, yeh! Then, evil bastard eccentric professor gave us a homework assignment, due next Monday, that he described as "easy". Unfortunately, it looks like a foreign language to me. Now I have to frantically do it tonight because tomorrow is our only day of class before its due. Bummer.

Whole Foods Rocks

I went to veggie heaven after class. The downtown Whole Foods store. Mmm. I liked it not just cause of allt he organic nonesense, but it actually has a great selection of some of my favorite stuff that you can't get at my local hobunk store - it has an olive bar, about a million types of hummus, great fresh bread, ooooh and the cheeses. I love cheese. Anyway, it was heaven. And suprisingly cheap. I mean, avacados were about 50% less than they are at my grocery store. I walked away with a week+ worth of groceries for about $20 less than I normally spend. Plus all sorts of scrumptious goodies.

Good Morning and Happy Presidents Day! What makes this happy? Well, for one I don't have to be at work. Now does this mean I probably won't end up at work for a couple hours this afternoon? Sigh. I probably will. But I got to sleep in. And its sunny out! Life's little pleasures.

I also, most unfortunately, have to go to class this afternoon because the barbarians at Rice don't know this is a national holiday. Don't you all feel sad for me?

So, I made the front page of our local rag, the Boca News. Pretty good article, minus a few inaccuracies..

http://www.bocanews.com/index.php?src=news&prid=4491&category=LOCAL%20NEWS&PHPSESSID=a3565ce64f93d32480288a42371459f7

I was at work today. Don't I have a life? On a three-day weekend at that. When I got home, I looked up job opportunities in New Zealand. Apparently my age and degree gives me the highest score possible to get a migrant visa (of which there are apparently many available), imagine that. How tempting! No, I'm not seriously thinking about it, I love my job. But it was momentarily tempting.

One of the funniest things I heard in the last 24 hours was when we were questioning the video team (they are the ones looking at videos of the shuttle entry) about their assumptions:

"How'd you get the time so accurate on that one?"

"Well, coincidently, the video starts with a film of its owner's atomic clock"

I found it funny.

Today is my Grandmother and Grandad Cutri's 50th Wedding Anniversary! I am hoping they are having a wonderful time in Vegas!

Another busy day long day. It looked like I would have to come in this weekend for a scary while, but I think I'm free. Though people have my cell phone number, so that could change.

I was planning on going camping this weekend. I don't think that will happen. Instead, maybe it will be replaced by a day hike on Sunday.

I can't wait to go home. I am a little fed up with work. I don't have Valentine's day plans, because, well, I don't have a Valentine. And I'm not in the mood to even participate in an anti-V-day event, even if I had one planned.

The line that made me laugh the most this morning was this:

Actually Tad and Emily are in India communing with likeminded Ghandians trying to raise their love child in an accepting vegan environment.

He he he. I love my aunts. They are so funny.

Ok. I'm starting to be less energized by work and more sick of it. Is it the weekend yet?

I was told last night that all the best food has mothers.

Long day and not nearly over yet. Normally, I would be more than interested in going out to dinner with my groupmates, visitors and management. However, right now all I want to go home and sleep. Is it only Wednesday? Yes it is. I can't say I am having nearly as bad a day as Sarah though. I just feel like i've been fed with a firehose. I almost typed fireHOUSE. As you can tell, its been a day.

Ok, I also have to say I have a Rock Awesome cousin, Emily, who managed to navigate, by herself, at the age 17, freaky customs officials and passport control people in both the US and Mexico to convince them to permit her to travel alone throughout the world. Go Emily!

This is a pre-emptive update. I am already assuming I won't have time tomorrow to update. This is because we're starting with the NTSB/FAA at 7 a.m.

Ok, there's more to this entry than you see, but since some of it, is say, not so positive, you'll have to email me to get details.

When we talked about schedule today, they were saying we should expect to work really long days. Go figure. Then they asked us what a good schedule would be. Marissa and I piped up that we'd like to start as early as they felt comfortable with. I was speaking from the experience of last week on the need for an early start. The NTSB people implied that we might have a few REALLY long nights. One person made a comment about flexible time and 8 hour days.

All I wanted to ask this guy is "What planet have you been living on for the last week?"

At lots of aviation stores, souvenir shops, etc. you find t-shirts and posters that read:

"Aviation's biggest lie: 'Hi, I'm from the FAA and I'm here to help you.'"

So, this afternoon, a couple of guys from the FAA and a few more from the NTSB are arriving here to help us. Actually, specifically to teach us how to read radar. It just makes me giggle, because I received an email saying that the "FAA guys have arrived here to help us." So, after I've restrained my immediate impulse to hide my pilot certificate as far away as possible (even though these guys have nothing to do with that) - I'm actually looking forward to doing something different. Though this task may become rapidly tedious.

I love wireless Internet. I am updating from my bed. Did I mention I NEED a laptop?

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Ah, Friday. Sweet beautiful Friday.

Tonight we are going to see Shanghai Knights. Don't laugh. Really, an unnamed co-worker has been talking about it for a month, so as a concession, some of us have made sure to keep our schedule clear just for that purpose. Anyway, that's that. And hopefully dinner if we get out of here on time. As for the rest of the weekend, well, I haven't really thought about it yet.

Work

Apparently I am leading a team that is getting trained by the NTSB all next week to learn how to read FAA radar so we can begin the tedious process of, well, finding stuff on the FAA radar. I don't know what's going to happen to all the other stuff I'm supposed to do (or update) and how I'm going to squeeze class in. Yesterday the education office said they would facilitate withdrawing us from our classes if we wanted to - I was momentarily tempted, but decided I need to stick it out, even though I didn't understand a single word of the last lecture and don't actually know when I'm going to find time to go to class, I imagine things will get more normal shortly. Or maybe I'm suffering some weird delusion.

Stop asking.

Irwin got in last night. Yes, I know this is the second time in a month he's visited - its out of convenience, he is on his way back from the career fair in Atlanta. To quell the questions that (scarily) multiple people keep asking me: We are friends. We used to be more than friends. There may have been some possibility to continue with this "more than friends" thing if he didn't FREAKIN' live in Seattle. So stop asking. Sorry, didn't mean to sound brash, but even my co-workers are asking now!

Sarah posted some entries of the memorial service here.

Today is a little slower. They are going to kick us out to wax the floors tonight, so we're having a descent/ascent analysis happy hour. And Irwin comes in town tonight. All very exciting.

In our division chief's office was a sign I hadn't noticed before:

It is an honor and a privledge to work for the government of the United States of America.

I am exhausted. I haven't made it to 36 hours like Sarah has - I've worked 33 in the last three days. But tomorrow, hopefully I'll have a mostly normal schedule.

Things our progressing. We're getting work done. Data is starting to be passed around more systematically. Things aren't as depressing either, when you're focused on data. And of course, people's natural humor is returning.

My favorite item from today was when we got a visit from the Spaceflight Meteorology Group on what doppler radar data they had. Anyway, they show us a map of their radar coverage (National Weather Service radars) and the groundtrack of the shuttle. There's a big missing gap over Nevada. Gavin cluelessly says "Don't you have any radar out here?" The guy looks at Gavin and says "Do you know what's there?" Gavin squinches his eyes, thinking really hard, despite the fact that he shares his office with a conspiracy theorist. Finally the meteorologist chimes in - "Well, here is Nellis Air Force base, and to the east of that is the proving test range, and well, in between those two things..." he trails off, because its Area 51. Obviously, they don't want public weather data over a place used for classified flight testing. Giggle.

In other humor, I've added this new tracker to my web site and I can see all the random people that visit and how they got here. My favorite was this one "search.evreka.passagen.se/query?q=%22my sexy toes%22&pg=q&tpl=se_evreka&kl=&what=web"

Someone was searching for the phrase "my sexy toes" and found my web site because I fill out one of those surveys "about me" and posted it on my site, and I said one of my more attractive features were my sexy toes as a joke. Scary.

The memorial service today was touching. I couldn't really see more than the top of President Bush's head (actually, I had a perfect view of the sign language lady). I am happy to know that so many people came here for the memorial - Congressional delegates, astronauts, former astronauts, ambassadors.

Really, the whole ceremony was exactly the way it should be. At the end, they flew the missing man formation. The missing man formation gets me everytime. Its so beautiful and simple. That alone would be the perfect memorial, the rest is all fluff for me personally, though I know others appreciated it. If they had flown it first, I would have probably cried the entire ceremony.

As you can imagine, things here are busy. To all those curious and caring friends and family who have e-mailed me in the past few days, I wish I had more time to write you all back and tell you everything that's going on and how it impacts me and how I'm feeling. Call me sometime and we can talk. Well, I guess you have been calling, I promise I will call back when I emerge from the dungeons of work.

I'm going home now.

Driving in this morning was a shock. I had seen on CNN that flowers had been piled up at the JSC sign at the enterance to the center. I didn't expect so many people would be there first thing in the morning. And lines of news vans. Tomorrow there will be a memorial, with the President and First Lady. I bet they'll fly the missing man formation overhead. Its hard to describe the mood here. There's a combination of wanting to talk about things, and not feeling right talking about them, of waiting to see if there's anything we should do, and wanting to do something on our own initiative, and wanting to just get back into the routine of whatever we were doing last week. Our boss has become the entry timeline expert, and I keep hearing snippets of things out of our office of which entry events they had gone through before breakup.

....

On a lighter note, I had to post this from Jen's journal:

a guy at my eating club told a most humorous story tonight. apparently last night he went to bed early, at midnight, after studying. (ah, the life of a stanford student!) he wakes up and realizes there is a woman in bed with him! groggily, he remembers that his girlfriend is in africa (peace corps) so it cannot be her. he begins to freak out. is she a psychotic axe murderer??? he asks her who the hell she is, and she says she's christy. he says he has no idea who she is. he asks, do you know me? why are you here? she says, of course i know you, chris. his name is peter. he says, i'm not chris. she doesn't believe him. (incidentally, this woman is topless.) he turns on the light to proove he is not chris. actually, his roommate is chris. she freaks out and runs out of the room. the next morning chris comes in laughing about the mistake. obviously she was drunk or something.

Rather than writing this in response to the many e-mails I've received, I decided to post it here. This is transcribed from my "real" diary entry I wrote before I went to bed last night. I went to bed at 8 p.m., collapsing in exhaustion - more emotional than physical:

I don't know how to describe the roller coaster I went through today. The Columbia was lost. Even after the range of emotions I had, I can barely even begin to empathize with the people who actually knew the astronauts and the people who worked the mission.

My mom woke me up with a phone call shortly after 8 a.m., "Becca, turn on the TV, they lost the Columbia." I screamed "Oh, shit!", hung up the phone and ran into the other room.

My first thought had been "Should I go to work?" After all, I am a descent analyst. Instead, I opted for tracking down the others in my group. I woke up Sarah. All she could say was "Oh my god, oh my god." I spoke to Gavin and Jen. We decided to wait on a call from our supervisor before going in.

While I sat by the t.v. and the phone, I watched the video of the mishap loop over and over on NBC. Morbid. Frustrating. I paced. I talked on the phone to others.

Later I found out that Rich had gone into work to run a debris footprint. He's the one for the job. And debris footprints are one of the things our group does best. I wished I could help out. I knew Sarah wished she could too. But I wasn't immediately needed. On top of this horrible tragedy, I felt useless too. Its a very frustrating feeling.

As the day went on, my friends and I began to speculate on everything. Karen called. Sarah and I talked and IM-ed. Cari called and fretted. Family and friends from outside the NASA community called. How could this happen? Entry is benign compared to ascent. We tried to think of these things as the professional detached aerospace engineers we were. By unspoken agreement, most of us tried to avoid vocalizing the selfish thoughts that passed through all our minds: "Will I have a job on Monday?" "Will the space program still exist next week?" "Will work slow to a demoralizing stand still?"

Later in the afternoon, I got a call from Gavin. He ended up going into work. As it turns out, they were using some of our debris footprint tools to figure out where parts of the orbiter may have landed. As answers to that question became clear, our manager sent him and Rich home. They were the right people for the job, they had performed similar tasks for the Mir deorbit. I can't help that it still left me feeling helpless, despite the fact that I understood the need to prevent an already chaotic situation from getting overwhelmingly out of control by limiting the number of epople involved. Having the rest of our group there would be better, however, as we all know "Better is the enemy of good." (An old NASA philosophy that basically equates to the KISS principle "Keep it simple, stupid.")

I want to end this entry with what Sarah wrote, because it sums up how I'm feeling:

"thanks for the support of those of you who have emailed and called. please extend your support of me personally to include nasa as an agency. space travel has never been and will never be without risks, and the loss of the shuttle and crew is a tragedy. nasa will need much support in the coming days. thanks."

"There is no easy road from the Earth to the stars." - Seneca

I am morbidly watching the video of the shuttle over and over and over, waiting for news. No, I don't know what happened. Yes, my first reaction was "Oh, shit." Yes, I do have some theories in mind, but most of them are poorly founded. Yes, I am a descent analyst in mission ops, however, scarily, I don't really know all that much about shuttle entry. No, I don't know how my life will change come Monday (or today, if I get a phone call). Thank you for all your calls.