bathroom, bike, & tile: a weekend at home

After spending so much time on the road or otherwise occupied on the weekends, we finally have a weekend at home! To celebrate, we worked on 3 big projects: fixing the bathroom wall (in progress for over a year), get the Buell in good working order & ready to ride, and getting tile for the laundry room.

When I got back from my 3-week adventure, Jen surprised me with a bare concrete floor in the laundry room. She had recruited her mom & Shannon to help her pull out the old carpet while they were in town. Although it was not the top of *my* list, Jen really hated the nasty old carpet and wanted it gone! This weekend we shopped for tile & have an appointment to get a final estimate this week! I hope the cats like beige tile...

The wall in our guest bathroom has been 'in progress' for over a year. We pulled out the old medicine cabinets and filled in the holes with new drywall. After unsuccessfully trying to spackle the job (wrong stuff!) I hung a mirror that covered most of it and just ignored the problem. Armed with drywall mud and tape (the right stuff!) we scraped, sanded, mudded, and taped several times until it looked fairly smooth. Now we just need to prime and paint to be done!

The bike was a bit more of a challenge. Robert and Art both came over to help with the project. We stripped down and cleaned out the carburetor, gas tank, spark plug, and air system. In the end, it took a $2 can of carb cleaner and a $3 spark plug to get it running. That and 3 days of manual labor stripping it down, putting it back together, losing parts, finding parts, and testing it out. We had at least five "this must be the last thing" moments! In the end we did finally get it up and running and out for a test drive. This week Art is taking the bike out to use for his motorcycle license test. Good luck, Art!

It was a great, productive weekend! Good thing, too, as we'll be busy for the next month or so... as always!

January Update

Ahh, the new year! Already a month has gone by. Hard to beleive. I think it has already lost that 'new year' smell. Perhaps that's a good thing...

We started the new year with a *BANG* out in Las Vegas with friends. We drove out to where we could see the strip and the coordinated fireworks display. It was cool, but I've seen Disney shows that were about as good. The coolest part was watching the fireworks coming off of the Stratosphere (think Seattle Sky Needle). THAT was a neat thing to see!!

Unfortunately it was disturbingly cold and dry in Las Vegas. Being there for several days led to me getting a viral infection that kept me company for most of the month.

I spent several days up in New York for Zero G flights--including a taping of Good Morning America! We did a studio tour early in the morning and I was pulled off the street to do an interview for FOX Business News. It was surreal. And COLD. Very cold. After all the Zero G fun, I got to attend a party for Virgin Galactic where they had the new models of SpaceShipTwo. It was very swanky and a great time to meet some new space friends.

While I was gone, Jack had some eye surgery and had to wear a funny collar for two weeks. Poor thing! He bathed for a whole day when he finally got the stitches out of his eye. Things seem better and he isn't sneezing nearly as much. We are watching him to see if his eye stops being so cloudy and whether it helps him see better.

After New York, I got to spend a day with Jen and the cats before heading off to a whirlwind session of annual Flight Attendant training for Zero G. We squeezed 20 hrs of training into 2 days! Early mornings and late nights helped everyone to make it to training without missing work.

More fun is ahead in February with the SEA Blitz in Washington, DC, and NGEC-2 at NASA Ames in California followed by a week long cruise in the Eastern Caribbean!

Weekend at Home!

After over a month of travel, I finally stayed at home for a few days! Jen and I enjoyed hanging out and each getting our hair cut in Viera on Friday night. Our friends Robert and Susie even joined us for dinner at Mimi's Cafe--YUM!

On Saturday we tried to go to the local driving range, but it was closed for a tournament. Instead, we hit practice balls in the back yard! It was fun to get lessons from Jen--she really knows her stuff! (Note: the club face should point to 11 o'clock. It works.)

We spent Sunday afternoon planting flowers around the back porch and doing general yard work. I got to plant a cool sea grape and dig up a bunch of ferns. The back yard has a lot more color now!!

The 'weekend' even extended to Monday night as my mom drove down to have dinner with us. It is nice to have her living so close now! I am enjoying having her nearby and look forward to having dad down soon too.

Pics and videos are online [here]. Now, back to work! The World Space Expo is coming up fast and I have 3,000 kids to teach!

Quick check-in

It's been almost a month and TONS of stuff has happened! We'll get a recap up soon. In the mean time, check out some new pictures on our Picasa site and this video of my mom, now available on YouTube.

Blue Springs and ZERO-G

Our good friends Robert and Chale invited us up to Deland on Saturday to go out to Blue Springs State Park. It was a beautiful park and we had a wonderful time! It was, however, freezing cold.

I know I've been swimming at the spring-fed lake at Camp Thunder in GA, but this was totally different. It was also totally opposite from the Tabacon *hot* springs in Costa Rica.

The park consisted mainly of a parking lot and long wooden walkways widing through the woods. One path lead down to a 'dock' where you can jump into the river and swim around or float in a tube. Our trail ended in a walkway int the water closer to the spring itself.

Once in the 72° water (YIKES! That is COLD!), we walked/swam upstream against the strong current to the start of the river. The spring is a 5 x 15 ft crevice at the bottom of a bowl-shaped pool of water. Although it was a bit cloudy due to lots of visitors that day, I could still swim down and see the spring and feel the rush of cold, cold water.

Next time we go (and we will go again!), we'll be sure to bring our snorkel gear and pick a really HOT day to swim. Thanks to Robert & Chale for taking us to this great Florida landmark!

Quick report from the road

Wow! Sincere apologies for the long lapse in posts. We've been keeping very busy as always. Here's a recap:

• Our good friend Shannon moved from Phoenix to Atlanta to take a new job at Delta Airlines and moved in with my Mom & Dad until she got an apartment
• Mom and Dad brought Maw-Maw down for a visit to the house in Port Orange
• I went to the STS-118 Pre-Launch Education Conference in Orlando and met with NASA's Associate Administrator for Education
• the new Marshalls, Quiznos, and Petco are all open in Titusville in the same plaza as the new Target and Home Depot
• We formally decided NOT to go to India for SGC & IAC this year and take some other trips instead
• we've bought paint and found a new door knob for the front door. It should be done and reinstalled this week!

Next post: weekend adventures!

Jen is in New Mexico, Tim gets an Optimash Prime

Jen is off to New Mexico for two weeks of additional safety training in Albuquerque. Seems as though her 3 months of training in Alabama just wasn't enough!! This time she is in an interesting place, so Jen already has plans to visit museums and cool local attractions.

I would be going out to visit, but our good friends Paul and Susie are moving into their new house this weekend!! Their new place is only about 2 miles from us--how exciting!! Jen and I spent most of last weekend painting the inside of the house before the furniture arrived. We are good using painters tape :-)

Being left all to myself, I ended up at a Toys-R-Us in Daytona Beach with Robert Fischer. There I found an Optimash Prime (Transformers-themed Mr. Potato Head). This is a **previously approved** purchase from a Wal-Mart trip with Jen. [Apparently there was some kind of recall on them that forced Wal-Mart to stop sales, even though some were still on the shelves. It was a disappointing trip to the cashier that day...]. I am excited that I have a new transformers toy :-D Yipee!

In other news, Shannon has been enjoying her time in GA with my parents. She has gotten a nice place in midtown Atlanta, but I'm not sure she wants to move away from the neighbors she's met in Locust Grove!

Also, there was a fatal accident this week at the Mojave Spaceport involving SpaceShipTwo. This is to be the first passenger-carrying spacecraft for Virgin Galactic. Sympathy goes out to the families of the 3 men that lost their lives in the explosion. I talked about it a good bit in this week's SpaceTaskForce podcast. These are the real risks of being rocket scientists and space visionaries. This is what we face as we make space travel a real industry.

"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
~Gus Grissom, Apollo 1

Roo Wants a Facebook Account

I joined Facebook last week. I'm really excited about it, but I haven't been very attentive to it. Jack says he wants his own page, but he's not old enough yet. Poor Roony.

We just spent the last week being wined and dined by Disney. We're trying to get a hotel contract signed for our ISDC 2009 Orlando bid. We spent Wednesday and Thursday nights at the Coronado Springs resort. Then Friday and Saturday nights we spent in a huge corner suite at the Rennaissance near SeaWorld. I definitely recommend bidding for a conference--you get all kinds of goodies from the hotels--wine, presents, free Disney hopper passes.

Thursday night we saw a cool movie--The Wonder of It All. It was an independent documentary about the moonwalkers. Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) was there in the theater. He answered some questions afterwards. I sure hope the filmmakers can get the film out to wider audiences. It is really well done.

Friday was the STS-117 launch. I worked the blast console. I'm in training for when Amber is out of town in the beginning of July. There is a Delta II launch that I'll need to do the launch day blast models for. It was scary to be on the console at first, but it's fun.

Saturday we spent at Disney--Epcot and Magic Kingdom--with Teresa, Robert, and Brett. We had tons of fun, but I let out a sigh of relief Sunday morning when I dropped Tim and Brett at the airport. I had all day Sunday to relax and unwind from such a busy week.

Tim's in DC lobbying congress. I'll let him tell you all about it when he gets home.

Back from California--on to Dallas!

I just got home from a 3-day trip out to California and I'm already running out the door again! I love it :-)

Friday night I stopped by Port St. Lucie to record another episode of the Space Task Force. This episode of the podcast features some interviews we did at Jen's welcome home party. George and I are working well together and seem to have found a good rythm to the show. Please take a listen and let me know what you think!

Saturday morning I flew out of Opa Locka on G FORCE ONE going out to the NASA Ames Research Center. We arrived to find some warbirds doing flights from Moffett Field! We were parked next to some legendary aircraft. It was amazing to watch them fly over us as we loaded and unloaded the aircraft.

That evening, Bryan Rapoza (the ZG photographer for the weekend) and I went up to "The Mansion" for a party with the cool kids at Ames. (This was where Jen lived when she was out at Ames organizing the NGEC.) We met some new friends and got some old friends to take a ride on ZERO-G the next morning. Congrats to Will, Jessy, and Aaron on your first taste of weightlessness! Jessica also went, but she had already gone up in the NASA plane. For her, this was a totally relaxing trip instead of work.

We also had another birthday group: 10 Flyers + 8 crew = F U N ! I was able to play with the passengers and help them do some amazing tricks. One woman did 4 flips in a single parabola! Wow! I can't wait to see the video!

I was in the hotel lobby at 5am Monday morning for my flight back to FL. Jen picked me up and we had a nice dinner before heading home. I've had time to hit a doctor's appointment and unpack a few clothes but that's about it so far. Now I'm packing up again so we can leave tonight for ISDC! We'll be in Dallas for the conference until Monday. Plans are to do more podcast interviews, give a talk on the World Space Expo education program, and present a bid to host the 2009 ISDC in Orlando. Whew! Here we go...

Multimedia extravaganza!

Big news of the week: Tim is now on a weekly podcast! I have been invited to co-host a new weekly space show, the Space Task Force Netcast. I met George Schellenger (Emmy-award-winning producer) through my work with the World Space Expo. We've done our "test flight" of the concept by recording our first show with guest Frank Miller (the Expo's Event Manager).

Our intention is to create a fun, easy-to-understand show that anyone can understand. We recap the space events of the week and have some interesting guests. Our first run was almost an hour long and is available online at SpaceTaskForce.com. Please listen to the show and send me feedback!

This past weekend was not quite as exciting, but I did get to see the new Disney movie Meet the Robinsons with Robert and Teresa. It was really good even though we didn't see it in "Disney 3-D". Robert went back the next day and saw it again in 3-D. I think that is cheating :-P

I also held a "Global Chat" for the organizers of the 95+ Yuri's Night events happening world-wide around April 12. I love to hear all of the plans for space parties and really get people fired-up about their celebrations! Where will you be on the anniversary of manned space flight? Is there a Yuri's Night World Space Party near you? We are partying at Paddy Cassidy's Irish Pub in Cocoa Beach. Come by if you are in the area!

Still alive and kickin'

I spent three days at home with the cats and nearly went insane*. Not that the cats aren't great, but I needed to get out of the house for a bit. Going to the bank and to pay the water bill today seemed like a huge treat. And even then, Jack rode with me in the car...

Tonight I went out with Robert and Teresa to the Ruby Tuesdays in Merritt Island for dinner. (WOO-HOO! PEOPLE!!) It was Robert's birthday and we sat and talked for several hours after we'd finished the meal. In fact, the servers were all sitting together playing cards waiting for us last few tables to finally clear out at the end of the night! I enjoyed stories from scout camp and discussions of belay techniques when doing ropes courses. What a departure from our normal "space, space, space" conversation! Perhaps we are tired of the media coverage we've gotten lately... (YES, we are painfully aware of the "crazy astronaut" story in the news. "Astronaut" is a job title, not a decree of sainthood. We don't know her and are as confused by her behavior as anyone else.)

Things are going well around the house. Last week I tested out the new mop by scrubbing down all of the floors in the kitchen, foyer, hall, and bathroom (it worked great). Monday and Tuesday I cooked food and ate like a real person, so I am not starving. I have done laundry once since Jen left--and will finally fold it tonight!

Talking with my business partner Karen, I realized that I do my best work around and with other people. I've been spending a lot of time lately just looking at a computer screen working budget numbers or other paperwork. Alone. Cats not withstanding, I haven't been around other people and have definitely not been working up to my potential. I do have an office at the Center for Space Education at KSC that I moved into last week. (No windows, one other person in the maze of rooms, but it gets me out.) My new goal is to create more interactions with people on a daily basis. Anyone want to meet for lunch?

Thanks to everyone that has been checking in on me to make sure I am eating. I appreciate your help! Please keep the letters, phone calls, and dinner invitations coming.

*Just kidding! I think...

Redesign!

Hooray! Google upgraded the tools available for our blog! We have new features like our picture, feeds from my Space Culture blog, and a link to our online picture galleries.

Let me know what you do/don't like about the design!