It is Friday the 13th and we are testing the EOS Aura flight structure. (An eerie similarity to two years ago when we tested the EOS Aqua flight structure on a Friday the 13th!) The testing goes well and it is a productive day. Except that after one of the pre-resonant sine bursts, Gary (an I&T guy) and Ray see something fall off the HIRDLS instrument mass simulator onto the +X face of the bus. We turn and look at each other and notify QA and others what we have seen. Nobody else has seen the falling object. When Gary climbs up on the shaker to investigate, with QA in tow, he starts laughing. And delicately picks a moth carcass off the +X face of the bus. We start laughing. And then I get despondent, "I killed it! I killed a moth during testing!"
I report the dead moth in the runlog and to the EOS program manager. Who, in turn, reports it during the daily status meeting when somebody cutely asks "Did anything fall off the structure?" Except now, seeing that Goddard and DCMA are tied in to our teleconferences, there is a ruckus raised over the cleanliness of our structure and our facilities.
On Saturday the 14th there is one of those skate party fundraisers that I periodically go to. Everything is going smoothly for the first few minutes. Until somebody comes up to me and asks, "Ray?"
And I don't quite recognize who this is. And the conversation becomes a matter of me trying to figure out where I know this person from without me asking "What did we do?" I eventually become convinced that we went out once (or maybe twice) and that nothing of consequence happened.
I ignore the EOS moth ruckus and continue testing. Monday the 16th is an absolutely dreadful day as we make no (apparent) progress chasing down little signal processing and signal communication issues. During the day, the Goddard customer and the Swales consultant and I find NA meetings to go to via na.org and we find oneway trips to Rangoon, Burma to take via ual.com.
I get home Monday night, take a one hour nap, and take Nopesterini for a walk - blowing off the ice hockey game that I have and am too tired to participate in.
We fix our problems and get into a great rhythm on Tuesday through Friday and complete two axes of testing. Isn't the combination of electronic data and automated notching spreadsheets wonderful? I leave work on Friday near noon, after a six hour day, and go for a good bicycle ride. And then mow the front and back yards. And now, mentally and physically tired, I collapse into bed for a nap. Which turns into a three hour nap!
I wake up and it takes me quite a while to regain coherence and figure out where I am, who I am, and what the heck has transpired over the last few days. There are many messages on the answering machine and I return one. I let Joe know that I will join Joe and Brandon at the Frat House later in the night.
I get to the Frat House after 10pm. Brandon is there and keeps asking me "Where's Joe?" He persists in the questioning even after I tell him "Joe's probably lying unconscious in a ditch by the side of the road". Brandon leaves at 11:45pm - completely missing Joe when he arrives shortly thereafter.
Bob and Jimmie are back from a three week visit to Vietnam and they are carrying a plastic bag with them. They set it on the table and say, "That's for you".
Before opening the bag I keep telling them that they shouldn't have spent money on me and that they should have spent it on themselves during their annual vacation. I finally open the bag and have two beautiful T-shirts from Vietnam of a Vietnamese rickshaw (I've forgotten the Vietnamese word for it.) and of the Vung tau beach resort two hours south of Saigon.
They had a great time again.
There are many friends and acquaintances present tonight at the Frat House. ChiChi is there, Alex is there, Ted (the biochemist) is there, Danny is there, as well as the aforementioned individuals.
In the midst of the fun, a 6'2", 250 pound guy built like a middle linebacker comes in in drag. This is not one of those wimpy little West Coast offense team middle linebackers. This is a middle linebacker from the Chicago Bears with a wig, dress, high heels, makeup, and a purse. When the linebacker walks in, there is a small asian guy who happens to be passing by me. When the asian guy sees the middle linebacker, he grabs my arm, hides behind me, and occasionally peers over my shoulder (as I'm sitting) to see where the middle linebacker is headed. Weighing in at less than half of the middle linebacker, I can see why the asian guy is afraid. I tell him, "It's okay. He's harmless. Any guy in this place wearing a dress is going to behave like a real lady". The asian guy eventually becomes more comfortable with the situation. It is, obviously, his first visit to the Frat House as I confirm during a brief discussion.
It is a fun evening.
Saturday morning I get out for another decent bicycle ride. I pretend to be ascending a giant Col in the Tour de France. I pretend to be Peter Luttenberger or Marco Pantani - pure climbers. Though neither are in this year's Tour. So I settle for Joseba Beloki who finished third last year and is looking to repeat that placing. It is a good ride.
Somehow, and I don't quite know how this happened, I am roped into helping Joe's sister move. When I get to Joe's apartment on Saturday morning, the conversation goes something like:
"Where does your sister live?"
"Westminster."
"And where's she moving?"
"To San Francisco."
"We're driving your sister's things to San Francisco today?"
"Yes."
After threatening to hand the keys of the truck to Joe and making him drive by himself, he relents and admits that we're just moving a few of her things to his apartment. The move goes smoothly as we take surface streets from Westminster to Long Beach. Joe is on the phone the entire way with someone that he met the previous night at the Frat House. I hear Joe repeat a few times, "You're not just pretending to be nice and you're going to be mean to me and throw me around?"
Saturday afternoon I do things that I shouldn't have done. The clue is that Joe lives within a block of Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach.
Saturday evening I go out to Club Asia. And run into the same guy that I ran into at the skate party. We have a brief discussion about the music and the crowd and let it go at that.
We win the Sunday afternoon ice hockey game, 3-1. During the game, the goalie rushes out to play the puck. Just as he gets to the puck he slips and falls and misses the puck. The other teams easily gets the puck and scores in the open net. We tease the goalie about his skating and puck handling abilities.