The weather outside is perfect yet again. Perfect! Why can't it be like this all year?

I played hooky from volleyball last night to stay at my desk for an extra hour and half in an attempt to make progress on my homework, which is just killing me. But I think an e-mail from my T.A. this morning cleared up a lot of my problems, so I'll probably try again tonight. Well, I have to try again tonight, cause its due tomorrow morning.

This is the part that sucks about being a part-time student, because half my class all works in a lab together (and in the same lab as all our TA's work) giving them a definite advantage on finding homework assistance.

And then I get into work this morning, still frustrated with the homework assignment from hell. At the most inopportune time in the frustrated state I was in, I kind of had a disturbing conversation in which one of my co-workers (who already has a masters degree) told me that my masters degree in engineering was absolutely irrelevent to my job in engineering. And another co-worker told me I was behaving inappropriately by asking for homework help from the only other NASA person I know who took the class I'm in, because I would be interfering with his work by doing this.

This once again gave me a "why am I doing this to myself?" moment (and the question made me question why am I in this job? and why am I stressing myself out in order to get a masters? and which of the two is more important to me? and why do my job and masters have to be mutually exclusive, as they are pretty much in the same field and I made sure to only take a job that preported to be supportive of graduate studies? and wouldn't I rather be in a job that requires lots of travel and far more human interaction (hm, when did I decide not to be an airline pilot?)? and do I really want to be an engineer (I could sign up to take the foreign service exam, still..)? And do I really want to work for a big organization with stupid bureaucratic rules when I could be working for (or owning) a little flexible innovative company where I would have lots of responsibility and lots of freedom?).

So I popped in my Matrix CD, which is full of rage (Marylin Manson, Nine Inch Nails, etc.), so I could listen to it and hope that some of my rage disappates.

I need to get over these moments, because I full well intend to be doing this until at least May 2005. I am beginning to feel about as stressed out as Sarah.

But its an honor and a privledge to work for the federal government. Even though at the moment NASA seems more like a jobs program for aerospace engineers than a source of innovation and exploration. I know this is the place I need to be to be part of the manned space program. And that's why I'm here. I just need to remind myself of that occasionally.

The good news is my work has suddenly become less frustrating because I finally have a lot more direction in the project I am working on. Hopefully I will have results in the next week now. And then I will have a meeting with the people who wanted the study done, and then get even more direction on the scope of the study. And then maybe people will actually start caring about the work.

I can't wait to go to Greece. Actually, I can't wait to go to lunch where I can sit outside in this beautiful weather and tell jokes and laugh.