Crawfish Time, take 9

I'm at the airport right now. When I was in line for security I watched this little boy cry, scream, and reach for his daddy as his daddy got in line. He apparently did NOT want his daddy to leave. His scene broke my heart a little at a time when I always miss Paul and Anna the most: at the airport. Tonight I left Paul and Anna home and Anna was a little resistant to let me go, (that's healthy) but certainly no carrying on. Just lots of promises of phone calls and return hugs and goodies. I usually drop her off at school and then catch a midday flight, and tonight I realized the routine of that makes it a little easier on both of us instead of me actually pulling out of the driveway. But when I saw that scene at the airport, I was grateful for Anna's independence. Because that kind of thing...would kill me or piss me off.

Anyway, crawfish! It was our ninth year of the Easter weekend crawfish boil. Lots of people, food, and jokes. I am detoxing from the cupcakes and cake. This time we had a slip n slide for the kids and water balloons for the adults. What, no one would have been drunk enough to stand for witnessing the reverse! Note to self: next time find biodegradable water balloons for easier clean up :)


































We were missing a good bit of family members this year but we still had a good time. They even made it out to Kemah with Anna.

My God that kid partied hard ALL Weekend, starting with Friday morning (off from school). She even admitted a few times she was tired. My child, tired?! She was also off Monday so we used that as a recovery day of TV and healthy food in our PJ's.

What another great Easter weekend! Life is good!

STS-134

This is it, this must be it!

Paul and I went to a shuttle launch when I was pregnant with Anna. The launch was for a fellow NEEMO 6 aquanaut, Nick Patrick. Then, when Anna was 15 months old Paul, Anna, and I went to a launch for Ken Ham, the husband of a friend of mine. In May last year (2010) we went back to another launch for Ken Ham. These were the trips with best memories for me. Seriously fun to share this with them.

But.

This week I’m going out to the STS-134 launch without the family, and on official travel for work. My job? To speak at the NASA Tweetup on Thursday (a group of Twitter folks who won NASA’s lotto to come out and view a shuttle launch, and hear from awesome speakers like me), and to cover press interviews on Friday morning (launch day). On Friday, I show up at the NASA press site at KSC and there’s a 2 hour window open for people who want to interview me regarding the use of the space station for scientific research. Um, so. Cool. As long as I don’t say anything dumb ;) Remember, I’m semi-new at this press thing. Cameras. People with lots of experience asking questions.

Am I geeked? On so many levels.

For ONE: the fact that I get to go out TO WORK LAUNCH EVENTS just blows my mind. When I was a hardware engineer I worked regularly on payloads that launched to the space station, but it was actually unheard of for work to pay for you to attend launch hardware events and the launch itself. I’d have loved to have traveled on official business to see how KSC handled my hardware as it prepped for launch.

AND getting to WORK THE LAUNCH EVENTS is WAY COOLER to me than just going out on vacation to experience the launch for the sake of a launch, because, DUDE, I actually get to CONTRIBUTE to launch events!

Also, I will get to tag along with one super cool PAO (NASA press expert) who has agreed to take me along to any cool thing she gets to cover. Hello? Exciting much?

This has all fallen into place. I hate asking for special tours or KSC requests when I go out there, even at the expense of my own geek out. I hate exploiting the folks who work there (doesn’t EVERYONE want tours?). I hate asking for favors. And those of my friends who do seem to pull off the favors for some reason seem to forget to invite me… But this time it seems like I finally get to come out to my very own week of launch fun J I AM SO EXCITED!

Paul will be a single dad from tonight on through Saturday (or Sunday in the event of a launch slip). And I TOTALLY APPRECIATE HIS SUPPORT. This is the coolest thing ever.

Honestly, with all of the cool stuff I get to see and do this week, I think the launch going off on time would just be the icing on the cake. And this time I get to watch it from the press site, which I understand is the coolest location of all.

It seems I can’t write a paragraph without using the word “cool”.

This flight is special for a few reasons:

-It’s carrying the coolest space station experimental payload so far (in my opinion). This is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). Once it’s attached to the outside of the space station, it’s going to scan cosmic rays for evidence of antimatter, dark matter, and the molecules that could add up to a new form of matter completely (strangelets). It will also provide oodles of info regarding radiation in the space environment. Evidence of antimatter could help prove the Big Bang theory (according to the theory, there should be in existence equal parts matter and antimatter). Dark matter is the elusive stuff that makes up 95% of the mass of our universe (well, when combined with dark energy), but we can’t even actually SEE it or FIND it out there. What we see is stars, which is VISIBLE matter, and that makes up only 5% of the mass of the universe. A stangelet is a theoretical new matter that we could prove exists, if the AMS finds the right types of quarks that have only been caught experimentally. Essentially, the data from this investigation could potentially answer so many questions about the origin and structure of our universe.

-Rep Gabrielle Giffords, recovering from her gunshot wound to the head, is expected to be there to support her husband Mark Kelly’s launch on the shuttle as commander (won’t likely meet her or anything but it’s still cool).

- President Obama and his family are expected to be there (not like I’ll meet them or anything, but still cool even if the traffic and security weren’t bad enough on launch day! ;) )

I don’t know, high profile, but the coolest to me is that AMS payload, led by Dr. Ting, who I introduced in my last blog entry about FRR.

Anyway, I’m geeked out. With only one shuttle launch left after this one, I finally get to just indulge without asking too much, and even contribute. And I even get a little extra added stress to make me feel worthy: cramming my brain full of the info I need to put together for my speech and for my press interviews.

Off to gather my stuff. My plane takes off at 7:20pm tonight. When I’m on the plane, I’ll write up a blog entry about the Easter crawfish boil weekend, complete with photos J

Day 2 of the MS150 was just as great as the first. The morning was full of long dreadful hills that actually didn't even seem to phase us this year. We just powered up and I can tell you that it didn't seem to take much effort from me this year. Praise spin class. And also this year on an after thought, I brought my iPod with half marathon music and hooked it into a speaker on my camel back. Having music was so awesome and I believe that also made a difference.

It's 3 days later and I never did get sore muscles. My butt hurt but by the end of Monday it was fine. I have, however, since developed a sinus infection. I'm out at KSC for work and while here some of the scientists really insisted I go to the KSC clinic for some meds, which was a good idea, because once I get back to Houston there will be no time for doc visits. So I'm now on a ZPac.

Monday night I got into KSC pretty late. The mission: present some ISS research accomplishments at the STS-134 Flight Readiness Review (FRR), meet with KSC scientists, and present at a research planning meeting with our international partners.

An FRR is a huge, highly visible meeting where all NASA big wigs converge to discuss the upcoming launch (April 29), issues that may be constraints, and plans, etc. At the end of the day the big wigs vote on "go" or "no go" for launch, then it makes all the press and the news and usually we can all get excited about moving forward with the launch. This time, NASA headquarters and space station (ISS) program managers asked our office to give a brief highlight of ISS accomplishments. Unusual. My boss, Julie put together some charts last week, which I gave for review on her behalf last week, and was told to whittle down. Then it turned out Julie couldn't travel so I got the distinction of reworking the charts and presenting them at FRR. Because of the ms150 I reworked the charts but hadn't really studied the details of the experiments sufficiently. One part was about capillary flow experiments. The other part was showcasing the huge experiment that was being launched on STS-134 next week: the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). This thing was developed by a Nobel Laureate and is going to search the skies for dark matter, antimatter, and evidence of strangelets once it gets to ISS. Don't know what these are? Why do you think I was stressed out for not having studied?! Finding these particles will basically answer so many questions regarding the nature of our universe. Perhaps the most important research on ISS.

When I got to my hotel Monday night I crammed together a script full of the technical info to go along with my charts, even though I never read from scripts. Now was the time to do so since I also had the challenge of a 5 minute time limit. Organized, succinct wow factors were in order. The script turned out great.

Tuesday morning FRR came and I watched the big wigs stream in. I dont mind public speaking at all. But this time i felt a little under prepared for the material. The usual astronauts, ISS program managers, center directors sat down. 250 people. But two threw me completely: in the audience was Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting (AMS lead), and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Um. I am supposed to present AMS charts to the Nobel Laureate lead on his own experiment? And by the way, don't look like an idiot in front of your chief of chiefs, Bolden.

I immediately started to panic. I fought off the urge to puke on the suits next to me. I AM JUST A HARDWARE ENGINEER! went through my Mind, though that hasn't been true for 2 years. I texted my friends and mom who all sent tips on how to calm down. I texted Julie: what the heck am I doing here?! Her response was that I could totally do this but it might be cool to ask Ting if he wanted to present my charts. I thought she was nuts but I asked him and Ting agreed and so not only was half the pressure removed from me, but now I got to surprise the audience with Ting himself.

By the way, my friend C happened to have traveled to present at FRR as well. This was such good fortune: someone I've grown up with at NASA for 10 years now; our kids play together; his wife my best friend; fellow hurricane refugees. I can't believe he was there too. Serendipitous for sure. It really helped to have a familiar face among the weirdness.

I stepped out onto the balcony of the building and took a good look at the shuttle on the launch pad in the distance. Within that shuttle was the AMS payload. I wondered what that must feel like to Dr Ting. And I went back inside.

When my turn came, my capillary flow script went well (not my best but it passed). There were tons of head nods, including from Bolden and his deputy Lori Garver. The transition to Ting was great, (who gets to introduce a Nobel Laureate in physics to all of the important NASA people?) and Ting was really great. Incidentally when he met C, he said, "you look very young!" I think Ting was as surprised by the big wigs in that room as I was.

In the end I introduced myself to Bolden. When he saw me heading his way after my talk, his face lit up, welcoming. When I stuck out my hand, he instead gave me a hug. He said that people needed to hear more about the research on ISS like that. He thanked me. I told him i thought he was doing a good job leading us.

Wow.

At lunch C and I reflected on how far we've come in the past 10 years. Started out as fellow engineers and there we both were, all grown up, in suits. I was glad to have a personal friend there to share the event. We bought NASA souvenirs for our kids while we were there, which I know is strange since we work at JSC :)

The remainder of my trip was easy in comparison! In between all of this, here were some interesting occurrences:

-I met a lady on my parking shuttle in Houston, who showed up right next to me again in check in at the hotel in cocoa beach. Completely strange timing, if you knew the logistics of travel between Houston and cocoa beach.
-My first night there I was hit on my a drunk disgusting fool in the hotel bar (I was just there for food!!) and then the Starbucks girl at the airport on the way home thought the picture of Anna on my badge was my "cute granddaughter!" WTH?
-I got to use my NASA badge to go through the Employee Priority security line in Orlando. Heard that rumor, turned out to be true. Turns out Starbucks also gives you a 10% discount. Who knew?
-My congestion turned into a sinus infection, and the KSC clinic is wayyyyyy more laid back than JSC! I got meds :)
-I got to eat the rock shrimp at dixie crossings finally.
-A couple who held the door for me at McDonalds ran into me at walgreens 15 minutes later. Freaky.
-Got some cool KSC tours.
-NASA tweeted about mine and C's FRR presentations.

Thankful for no ms150 soreness in this whole 48 hour trip. I'm on the plane headed home with a space shuttle kite and freeze dried ice cream for Anna.

MS150 all done!

Things went so well, dare I say it was almost like a little vacation? Ha! Ok we did have to sleep on mats on the ground with big ass Austin spiders (no lie one was on my sleeping bag the second I got in it, then one was in Paul's!) Oh well, this year we rode with Team Wells Fargo, the nicest bunch of people! For $65 each, we got jerseys ($70 value alone), all food, luggage transport, sweet team start, and sleep in a big tent and free massage! So great! Not a single muscle cramp this year, and I even powered up those hills as if they were nothing. I remember a few previous years when those we too tough! This being our 6th year there was only one previous year we'd made such good time without pain. We must have done good training then too :) The MS150 is much more fun when you've trained AND the weather cooperates. We had a tail wind today! And yes, lots of hills.

So this mama fought off some little invader right before the ride and kept it down. My respiratory system is a little tight but fine otherwise. Now back to Houston in time for a plane to Kennedy Space Center tomorrow, where I will give a little briefing to about 250 Space agency big wigs, returning on wednesday night after a couple more meetings. On Thursday I have some interview about technology on the space station. Friday Anna's off school and the family starts rolling in for the big Easter weekend crawfish boil (our 9th annual). Anna's also off Monday and on the following Tuesday or Wed I go back out to Kennedy for press interviews, a speech at the NASA Tweetup, and the STS-134 launch.

I am going to need a vacation when April is over.

By the way, thanks to those of you who donated to ms and Paul for the MS150 ride! 83 cents of every dollar you gave goes straight towards MS research and the cause. So the MS society does an awful lot to accommodate 13,000 riders yearly for 17 cents and sponsorship. Nice!!!

To me for next MS150

Dear me,
The next time you do this don't forget the power of spin class training. Not only did it build your aerobic base but apparently as the scale kept sneaking up on you, it seems to have been because of muscle gain. What a great ride today! Totally full of energy despite whatever bug you're fighting! Made it to lunch by 9:45am and to LaGrange by 3:30. Hills? What hills?
Oh and because you have muscles you have to feed them, and what's been working has been Advocare Rehydrate. A constant stream in the Camelback, with another bottle plus a bottle of water on the bike. And one Cliff Blok per hour. For once you wizened up and didn't eat all the free
Cookies pretzels, and goodies at every rest stop, which worked because it kept the blood routed to your muscles instead of going to your stomach for digestion. Your rule: only eat when your stomach is hungry. Way to rock it out today!!!

I'm writing this down because you'll forget it all next time. Be sure no matter how lazy you get, don't skip spin class. It seems to have paid off afterall.

Total calories burned today after 9 hours in the ride: 4850. That's work!

This Just In

Anna's spending time with mom and my sister in Austin while Paul and I ride the MS150 this weekend. Paul dropped her off last night while I stayed home to seriously battle a sudden fever.

This streamed across my text messages today:






Child Labor










Forbidden!










Disgusting










Electrified











Diva-fied











At least it's a 1 piece


Good night, tomorrow we ride!
Thank you to the friends and family who are supporting us!

This potential government shut down is like waiting for a hurricane with a wide cone of projection. Category 5.

A good night's sleep

I'm in Washington DC today and tomorrow for work. Last night was the first full night's sleep I had in weeks because it was in a hotel room.

I'm starting to lose sleep in a way I haven't felt in around 4 years. Ok it's not really that bad but darn it's getting tiring going up those stairs 1-2 times per night.

I really don't know what other newly-4-year-olds are doing in the realm of night time potty training but if I believe the "should-be-milestones" staying dry at night is the only one Anna's behind on and of her peers i know of, thats not been an issue for a long time. Although my pediatrician says to ignore that and let Anna do her own pace. Which is of course what we're doing and here's how her own pace is unfolding:

Nightly middle-of-night potty runs (1-2 times per night) when she wakes up realizing she has to go. Fine except half the time it's "mommy I need helllpppp!" and the other time she's completely still sleeping and sitting on the toilet, crying in her sleep on the toilet, upon which I am prompted to come up and help her finish and lead her back to bed.

No, she never needs my help on the potty during the day. Yes there is plenty of light left on for her to do it herself at night.

Oh then maybe once per night she calls me upstairs to cover her up. I'm a sucker for this. This I can take because frankly no one covers her up so cozy like her mother. And this phase won't last long and one day I'll be wishing she asks me to cover her up and make her cozy.

In the meantime I know the night time potty thing is just temporary too. I also know I need to take steps to get her to leave me out of her night time potty visits. Will do in time but at this point it's a fine line to walk while still wanting to support her night time potty progress.

I have tried to cut down on travel this year at work, but frankly I could use the sleep.

Yawn.

Come on, peeps!

I'm still $80 short on the MS150 fundraising! Click the link on the right of my blog to donate. Just a few...more...dollars...to...go!!!

Paul's still pretty short too, though I've lost track of by how much :)

My first blog entry at NASA.gov

The ISS Program Science Office (my office) started a blog awhile back with the idea of using it as a way to get our messages out on hot topics related to space station research. I just wrote my first one in a series of physical science topics. I really wanted to do these write-ups in a way that the average person could understand and relate to because physics is all around us, and these processes can be really neat if you understand what's happening. And even neater if you can understand why we study these processes in space.

Although I think the topic of boiling in space has been beaten to death, a new boiling experiment just started on the space station last week. So this was timely and a good one to cut my teeth on. Here it is, in all its glory. I do know that boiling is a much more complex process than I lay out here, and as I was writing it I was wondering which physicist might subsequently send me a nasty-gram about it, but...

Click here to read my boiling blog entry on NASA.gov

Later!

Over dinner last night was the right time to sit and talk about it. I was ready for the questions and thought I could take the chance to put Anna's mind down the right path of understanding death.

"Anna, do you remember grandma? She's nanna's mommy"


"Yes, we saw her in the hospital and I gave her a picture of me that looked like this": hands up to her face, tongue sticking out, silly look.

She remembered.

"Well, grandma's heart wasn't doing so good and so she died the other day."

"Oh."

"Yes, a person's heart has to work to keep them alive, and..."

"Oh, KC's in the counter! KC, you're not supposed to be on the counter!"

"Yes, it's OK there's no food up there...Anyway, you and I are going to drive to Louisiana tomorrow to visit family who might be sad that grandma has died."


"Oh, is it a long drive?"

"Yes, and..."

"Maybe KC wants a bug in that window!"

I turned to Paul: well, maybe this is easier than we thought at the age of 4. I really didn't see the need to push a further discussion about death if she wasn't engaged at this point. She knows grandma died. That's about it.

We've decided not to take her to the wake or the funeral. Paul used a good word when he said "cope." As in, she would get the visuals of all of the formality and drama of wake and a funeral without any real coping mechanisms to tie it all together regarding death. I can't see any real point in putting those visuals into her head at this age when death is something in her mind that happens to June bugs when you squash them, and oh, now grandma is dead too and they put her into the ground. If she doesn't understand the gravity of death at this age, who am I to push it on her? She has a life ahead of her full of drama and loss, and at 4, I opened the discussion up and she took it about as far as she wanted.

Death is a delicate topic and moreso than with anything else you teach a kid, how you approach it from the beginning will mold how the kid looks at it for the rest of her life at some level. Ultimately I'd like her to feel at some level that death is part of life and it sometimes feels awful to lose someone you love (who am I kidding, I can't imagine the loss of a child or husband or parent), but they're going on to a different place. It's not just the end. In the case of my grandma, I don't have regrets or anguish. Her body was not functioning right for awhile, and she's probably having much more fun now.

And that's that with Anna. At least for now. Anna usually retains aspects of conversations that pop up again later. And so that's what I'd suspect will happen over the next few days. But then again, maybe not. It's new ground for both of us. Although Pau's much more experienced at this, it's only my second funeral in my entire life, with the first being my grandpa.

Anna: there's a frickin' hair on my shoe!

Behind hidden giggles we remind her that's an adult word. But it's frickin' hilarious. Frick!

This is Paul's fault

Paul: Anna, where's mommy today?

Anna: she's at frickin' work!

For once I can't blame this one on her school friends' potty mouths. This is a Paul word!!

4 yr old stats

Anna had her 4yr well child check up today. I have to say everytime we enter those exam rooms it never fails me to remember the days we sat there for the first few weeks of her life as we were dealing with a screaming baby with acid reflux, trying to get the doses right, getting the pep talks from the doc, trying to determine what was "normal". Wishing for the days when she turned 3 and 4 and we were past all that.

In fact as we sat in the waiting room today I could hear the woes of another mother who was saying she couldn't take another 24 hours straight of awake time like that again. Her baby was sleeping in the carrier. I wonder if she looked at me and Anna and wondered if we went through "the same thing." If she only knew! :)

Anna's 75th percentile for both weight and height, which the exact same trend she's been on since her first month of life. I think she's about 35lbs and 40.5" tall. That 75th percentile height is a nice severance when it comes to amusement park rides :) She likes to get taller so we tell her which foods make us grow versus which foods are just yummy to eat only. She gets it and she's pretty good at the balance.

While we were waiting she wrote her name on the little slip we give to the doc and the doc was pretty impressed with that! Yay for Anna!

She passed her vision and hearing screenings and this time they even took her blood pressure with a little blood pressure cuff. After the check up, the tough questions about strangers and safety and private things came and Anna answered them all like a big girl! Then came the shots. Two of them. First I told her how the needle will go into her skin like this, and how it is full of medicine that will help her not get sick. Then with a pinch I showed her how it would feel. I told her if she was brave (and yes it will hurt a little) she could get two stickers instead of just one. She knew what to expect and that it would hurt a little but that we all get them and we don't really like them either. She held my hand and here came shot #1. "You OK?" Nods yes. Ok then here comes shot #2. "You OK?" nods yes, praises from the nurse on what a big girl she is! Nurse steps out, and the sniffles come. Sweet little girl sniffles, and I could tell she was holding back. "My legs hurt mommy! It hurts!" I know, shots hurt me too, they hurt everyone but we take them to stay healthy and you've totally earned TWO stickers! "But I cried, mommy!" Ohmagawd, it's ok to cry! You've earned the stickers!

She's excited to find a Scooby Do sticker, one she's been wanting since she went last week but decided on Dora then. She picked a fish sticker as the next one. She put Scooby on my shirt and the fish on hers and she held back the tears till we got to the car. In the car she sobbed quietly between sips of apple juice and complaints that her legs hurt and I gave her some ibuprofen for the soreness before dropping her off at school.

She doesn't remember the shots she had so long ago and I don't even remember when her last ones were (before 3?) and even then she cried but never carried on too long or out of control. Amen to that.

We have a big girl.

Fever: let's wrap this up

We waited out the fever for 5 nights and decided that was enough for any run-of-the-mill virus to have done its thing by now. On Wed morn I took her to the doctor and it turns out the source of her fever was an ear infection! WTH? Didn't see that one coming. She had just barely started getting congestion and though she told me everything else that hurt, her ear wasn't one of them. Till the doc asked if her ear hurt and she said yes. Huh? So there you go, two doses of antibiotics later and she was fever-free and sleeping through the night peacefully again. By Thursday she was back in school and we had emerged from the land of cold medicine, board games, and repetition of Chipmunks: the Squeakquel to the healthy and sane again.

Too bad I waited too long to take her but I thought I was being the calm mother who was waiting out a virus. When it's a virus you can take your child in and there's really not much the doc can do so I figured what's the point? If she'd have told me her ear hurt I'd have at least had a clue. I guess it felt funny but probably not that Vicodin-driving pain like the one I had a few years ago.

Kids.