I can feel it...

Normalcy will be returning soon.

Already I'm ahead of my lecture notes for tomorrow night's class so I'm not sure what to do with the little free time I might have tonight. What did I used to do before traveling and the respiratory and cardio system took over my schedule? I can't remember. I think I even exercised. Oh yeah, I rode the bike a bit.

Tomorrow night, my last lecture night. Woo-hoo!!! I will take the rest of the week off then start running in the evenings like I used to do around 7:30-8pm before Anna was born. I may even start swimming in the mornings if I'm that motivated. I'd like to but I'd also like to sleep I think. I guess we'll see.

Friday is media training at work. It's the same media training crash course the astronauts take. I'm really not looking forward to performing mock interviews. I think I'm probably much better under pressure, but then again I have NEVER watched any of my NEEMO6 interviews bc I thought I pretty much sucked on camera compared to the astronauts I was with. Digressing...

The Program Scientist crew conference that was scheduled for me to participate in while I was in Albany was canceled due to TVIS (the ISS on-orbit treadmill) maintenance over-runs. Congrats to TJ's husband (CM) and the TVIS team for pulling it off. It was a pretty major ordeal and had its bumps and so I imagined that the tension in the TJ housebold this past weekend could potentially have been a little higher than usual. But frankly I DON'T KNOW! TJ lives just around the block but I don't get out much to talk to anyone :)

Soon, that will change too!

My trip to Albany was great. The SUNY Albany campus has an amazing facility for superconductor work at the nano-scale. I learned a whole bunch of stuff about materials and the students/staff were really nice. They did pack my itinerary full of stuff to do, even though I'd been planning for some extra sleep and getting some work done in my hotel room. Alas, you don't go on travel just to hole up in the hotel room. So it was a nice outing. Also, Albany is in love with tulips. They even have a tulip fest for it. Tulips are my favorite. Nice.

I was only gone 3 days and I came back to Anna's latest cognitive leaps: "What IS that mommy/Daddy?" It occurs every minute or so and it's super cute. Did I blog about this already? I can't remember. Anyway, she catches EVERYTHING and asks about it. Today I had to ask Paul the name for a conduit because she asked me and I didn't know. Isn't it a little early for mommy not to be able to answer a 2 year-old's questions?

The cognitive leaps are apparent in her sleeping patterns lately. We watch her "run" in her sleep and talk and whine and stuff. Last night she even woke once and I had to go up to see her. She went right back to sleep after a round of "Wheels on the Bus" but it's still unusual.

More later I guess. Gotta go pick up the booger-bear from school.