Humanity’s Greatest Crimes Against the Earth

A photo gallery of past and ungoing environmental devastation.

Today (er, tonight) is my 6th day of working a GEO satellite launch, and it would have been my 11th straight day of work if I hadn’t taken last Friday off. It’s nice to be getting more comfortable with the procedures, and it’s been fun to get to chat with people in my group and get to know them better while we’re on console. But there are long (LOOOOOONG) stretches where it’s very boring. I have what Becca’s dubbed the rock star shift, 2:30 - 10:30 pm, and it’s usually busy in the afternoon with some sort of procedure, usually an Earth update. The afternoon then relaxes into evening, the emails slow down, we order greasy food for dinner, I try to resist the allure of peanut M&M’s in the back room, and the hours c r a w l . I mark time by the recording our spacecraft’s momentum error in a spreadsheet, once per hour, and examining how Excel has updated the best-fit line. Oh, the excitement!

Overall though, it’s been a neat experience. And I’m lucky to have gotten a relatively easy shift, time-wise. I’m naturally a night owl, but the 4th shift (9:30pm - 5:30am) would have been a serious stretch, and I would have felt like death warmed over if I had to come in for the first shift every day (2:30am - 10:30am). I still get nervous talking over the voice net, but that’s really pretty dumb because there are only a handful of us in the room at a time.


Josh and I finally bought tickets to go to Zion National Park over Labor Day weekend. Yay! True to form, I’m much more excited about the trip now that I’ve scrolled through pictures online. We still have a list of stuff to buy for the trip (namely, a tent and a sleeping bag for me), and I’m brainstorming ways to dehydrate myself during the days so that I don’t have to venture to the bathroom in the middle of the night with spiders, snakes, or anything that flies (hmm, maybe I’ll add a headlamp to my shopping list). But daytime activities? Definitely looking forward to those!

Solar Decathlon

This past Sunday as I stepped out of the Smithsonian metro station, I was greeted by dust, noise, and solar panels. This coming weekend and next, houses from the 2009 Solar Decathlon will be on display on the mall. It’s a DOE-sponsored college competition “to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house.” And from what I saw of construction yesterday, the houses look really cool!

I love that the contest goes beyond just producing more energy than the house consumes. There are objective contests, naturally, like delivering 15 gallons of hot water (110°F) at in 10 minutes or less, maintaining an indoor temperature between 72°F and 76°F, and washing and drying 10 loads of laundry throughout the week. But there are also subjective categories, like curb appeal, effectively communicating the design to the public, holding dinner parties for neighbors, and providing inspiration by incorporating unusual materials or design solutions. Contestants have to give equal consideration in their design to engineering, architecture, and marketability.

I know it helps that I love modern, functional design, but I would love to own my own solar house! Well, when I’m ready to be tied to a mortgage, of course...

We did it—Josh and I are married! We tied the knot last Saturday (April 25) and got back tonight from our mini-moon in Ireland. More details and photos to come...

And yeah, it's going to take a long time to get used to calling Josh my husband. And I just changed my “relationship status” on Facebook to Married.
Crazy! :)

The Registry

First of all, ugh. Josh and I have been avoiding creating any type of registry for our wedding, but now that people have received our invitations, they’re starting to call to RSVP and “oh by the way, are you guys registered anywhere?”

Josh claims he can keep telling people that we’re not registered and we’re not planning to register. My two engaged girlfriends at work gasped when I mentioned we hadn’t registered, and one warned me that because we’re not, we’re going to end up receiving crystal swans with no receipt.

The problem is that stuff, especially kitchen/home stuff, isn’t all that important to us. We aren’t stellar cooks, I have no interest in fancy china, and we already have some nice knives and good quality pots & pans. Plus, we recently consolidated two apartments into one, so we don’t really a lot of room for new stuff. I’ve heard people say that weddings are a nice time to upgrade the stuff you already have, but I don’t feel comfortable asking people to spend money on things that I’m not convinced I would buy myself.

And part of me hates the fact that registries are so friggin’ domestic. You’re “supposed” to register for the big KitchenAid mixer, fine china, tablecloths, placemats, and fancy sheets. Although I know it’s more common now to register for stuff like electronics or camping gear, so maybe my anger is misplaced. :) And hey, if nice china gets you fired up, awesome. Whatever works for you.

We considered a honeymoon registry since we both love to travel and our hopefully month-long trip to New Zealand for next fall/winter won’t be cheap. But that kind of went out the window when we realized that we don’t have any of that planned, and our plans for the mini-moon following the wedding aren’t very well defined yet either. Plus, while many people think honeymoon registries are great, the other camp thinks they’re tacky. And if that’s tacky, asking for cash is definitely out.

Also, the wedding registry is basically the ultimate birthday list, and my own family can attest to how terrible I am at coming up with birthday lists.


What I really would like to say to our guests is this:

“We’re thrilled that you’re able to share this important day with us, and we’re flattered that you’re willing to travel all the way to Florida to spend the weekend with us. That is gift enough. Your attendance is perfect. So come, have a great time, and enjoy the vacation.”

Really, we don’t need any gifts. r e a l l y. If people insist, we might suggest that they make a donation to their favorite charity and tell us a little about why that cause is important to them.


So. Any bets on whether we’ll avoid the crystal swans?

More eyeballs

I realized I haven’t talked about my eyeballs here lately. It’s a far cry from when they were the only thing I could think about, so as you might gather, they’re doing better. It helps that it’s winter, of course, but the allergy shots really seem to be helping, along with a handful of other things. I’ve been doing the allergy shots for almost a year, so starting in April, I’ll only have to go once every two weeks, instead of once a week. YAY! Going every week really hasn’t been that bad though. It gets me out of work early on Tuesdays and I get a guaranteed half hour to catch up on reading.

I’m still taking Claritin frequently—not quite daily, but it will probably become daily during the spring and summer. The Claritin doesn’t make my eyes any less red, but I’ve noticed that it makes them less itchy, so that keeps my wandering fingers from rubbing them. I’m still technically on a prescription allergy eye drop, but I ran out of my latest bottle a few days ago and have been trying to go without since then. My eyes are a teeny bit pinker, but it hasn’t been too bad so far.

A few other big steps are that I haven’t had to use dry eye drops in a long time, and I’m no longer eating flaxseed every day. In my experience, flaxseed really does help with dry eyes, and if it weren’t for the side effects, I would still be taking it. I’m still doing the eyelid scrub with baby shampoo to treat my blepharitis, but I’ll probably keep doing that for years.

My biggest concern right now is being able to wear contacts for the wedding, which will be several hours long. In the spring. In Florida. I have reasonable confidence that I’ll be back to wearing contacts eventually because I’ve been seeing such good progress on the allergy shots, but April 25^th is less than two months away, so it’s not a lot of time for my eyes to make more progress. I imagine I’ll be pulling out all the stops to make it through the weekend, especially since I probably won’t be getting a lot of sleep with all the stuff we need to do. And no matter what, my eyes will probably look a little red by the end of the night. Maybe our photographer can photoshop the whites of my eyes so that they actually look white. :)

In any case, the progress so far is real. I no longer look like a zombie after sleeping less than 8 hours, or after having a couple beers, or after a full day of work. My eyelashes no longer fall out in clumps, I no longer wake up with crusty eyelashes or eyelids swollen shut, and (best of all) people at work no longer ask me if I’ve been crying.

Happy belated birthday to me! I am officially 27.

I suppose I can echo Becca’s feelings in that I never thought I’d spend my 27^th birthday addressing wedding invitations. It took us a long time to get the timing of the ceremony and reception nailed down, so we’re a little delinquent in sending out the actual invitations. I spent a long time fiddling with the mail merge function in Word so that I could have my blank envelopes printed with everyone’s addresses at Kinko’s... turns out our envelopes (regular 5x7) “won’t fit in their printers.”

Seriously??

I tried to think of where else I could have this done (we don’t have a working printer at home) when Glenn called, wanting to know the exact address for the wedding and whether we reserved hotel rooms anywhere yet. I realized it would be stupid to wait longer to send them out just so that I could have the addresses printed, especially since we’re only sending out about 30 invitations. So I’m hoping my somewhat scrunched handwriting says, “personal and casual” rather than “ghetto.” All along, Josh and I agreed that invitations were very low on our list of priorities, especially when we have so little time to plan the wedding, but...

On the bright side, I like how the actual invitations turned out, and I got to refine the reception playlist a little tonight while I was writing our return address for the zillionth time.

Josh is in the middle of a two-week (possibly longer) stint out of town for work. When I whined about how he was going to be gone for Valentine’s Day, his response was, “Well, I’m going now so that I can be back for your birthday.”

Right. Done complaining now.

So I’m trying to line up some fun things to do over the long weekend. I debated trying to find a cheap flight to somewhere, but nothing really looked good, and I figured that most of my friends wouldn’t want a third wheel on their dates this weekend anyway. Plus, I figured it would be a good time to finish my taxes, unpack the rest of our boxes, work on some wedding stuff, and figure out what I’m doing with my professional life. You know, easy stuff.

But back to the fun part—tonight is dinner and Guitar Hero with Glenn and Phil. Getting together with Ann and seeing a movie with Paul will land somewhere on Saturday or Sunday, I think. I might hit up the outlet mall for some new work clothes, and I’ve been itching to get out of town to do some hiking or sightseeing or something. I predict I’ll be slightly sick of flowers and veils and centerpieces by Monday morning.

Marriage

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

This video had me in tears within seconds. In the middle of planning our wedding, I sometimes forget how lucky I am to even be able to marry the person I love. While I believe that marriage should be a religious institution only, I also believe that the government has no business telling me who I can or cannot pledge to share the rest of my life with. After all, aren’t we all just looking for happily ever after? Someone to love and comfort us? Shouldn’t we be encouraging monogamy, stable families, love and happiness, in whatever form they exist?

Wedding update 2 and new apartment

Making progress on our wedding to-do list... officiant booked, wedding rings ordered, hotel rooms reserved, tickets purchased for (hopefully only) scouting trip in March, caterer & cake tasting appointments set, invitations chosen, 1 out of 2 flower girl dresses picked out, reception playlist draft completed, wedding shoes purchased.

However, still to do/figure out are... make final decision on ceremony time, order and mail invitations, reception decorations, marriage license, flowers, figure out what Josh will be wearing, figure out what ring bearer will be wearing (what will ring bearer carry? what will flower girls carry?) rehearsal/rehearsal dinner, music for ceremony?, where will everyone park?, what will I do with my hair? are we going to do a registry?, make more progress on mini-moon plans.

And of course, the above list does not include the following freak out items: What happens if my dress doesn’t arrive on time? (medium potential) What happens if the seamstress butchers it? (low potential) What if the caterer’s food and the baker’s cake suck? (low potential?) We’d have to start all over looking for replacements with less than two months until the wedding.


Okay, new topic.


The move went well last weekend, although of course it took longer than we thought. Having an office is really nice. The only downside to the new place is that it’s on the bottom floor, and there’s a family of elephants living upstairs. Seriously, the housing market would be in way worse shape if multi-story apartment buildings didn’t exist.

Quiet

It’s deathly quiet around here at work. We’ve lost several people to other programs and new buildings over the past few weeks, particularly people whose offices were along the same hallway as mine. eerie.

I guess I’ll get out my mp3 player. I wonder when iPod will become like Kleenex? At some point, will I give in and start referring to it as my iPod, even when it’s actually a Sansa?

Wedding update

As you might have guessed, I’ve been debating whether or not to keep posting here. No decision yet, but here is an update with mostly wedding stuff.

We have a date! We’re getting married on April 25, 2009, one day shy of our 4-year anniversary of dating. The wedding will be in Fort Lauderdale, FL, with the ceremony on the beach and the reception at my uncle’s house. It’ll be very small—just immediate family and a few close friends. Josh’s nieces and nephew will be the flower girls and ring bearer, but we aren’t planning to have anyone else in the wedding party. I’ve ordered my dress (sorry, no pictures because Josh might peek!) after A TON of shopping and even more debate. The caterer and photographer we want are still available for that date, so hopefully getting that set will go smoothly. I’ll feel much better once we have the minister lined up and our wedding bands ordered.

Josh and I are also moving into a new apartment. We’re currently in a one bedroom, but a two-bedroom place in our building just opened up, so we’re moving in at the end of January. Josh is very much looking forward to having an office and no longer paying rent for his storage unit, and I’m looking forward to no longer living right above the benches that are the unofficial teen hangout for the complex. But neither of us is looking forward to actually moving all of our junk down 3 flights of stairs. At least it’s down.

I Voted

Josh and I woke up just after 5:30 this morning to get to our polling location a few minutes before it opened at 6 am. We stood in line for nearly an hour and a half before actually getting into the school cafeteria to vote. It was neat to feel like we were participating in a historic election, but I think Josh and I voted for different candidates for president, so in reality, our votes just cancelled each other out. Oh well. At least we have “I Voted” stickers to take to Starbucks for free coffee today!

Pop vs. Soda Map

I love this map showing where in America people say pop, soda, coke, or something else. I grew up in the Midwest so it was always “pop,” but when I moved to Boston for college, it seemed like everyone else laughed at me for it, particularly the cool kids from California and the sophisticated ones from New York, as if I were some cute backwoods hick. Having not much of a backbone at the time and convinced that the rest of the country called it “soda,” I converted.

Then I moved to Houston. Now it’s “coke,” and I’m calling it the wrong thing again.

(This made no sense to me at first, but I discovered that the ordering process goes like this:
“You want a coke, hon?”
“Sure.”
“OK, what kind?”
“Mmm... I’ll have a Sprite.”)

So who wins? According to the map (by area, at least), the soda kids are in third, the cokes take second, and the cute backwoods hicks claim the majority. Ah-ha!

We’re engaged!

Josh and I are engaged! Josh proposed during our trip to Hawaii and, of course, I said yes. :) We spent most of the trip on the Big Island, and on our second day in Volcanoes National Park, we drove down to the southernmost end of the park where hardened lava flows meet the ocean. The road ends abruptly before it reaches the coast because recent lava flows have buried the asphalt, so we got out of the car at the end and hiked the last half a mile or so on the rocks until we got as close as we could to the water. The area was completely deserted, so Josh set up his tripod to get a picture of us together on the rocks with the active volcano in the background. We took the first one and then Josh says, “How about just one more?” Okay, sure... So while I stood around and admired the volcano and the waves, Josh went back to fiddle with the camera. He set the self-timer and jogged back to where I was standing, but instead of turning around to face the camera, he took my hands, got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him!

More about the rest of our Hawaii trip to come...

My computer is struggling to transfer many GB of files from my harddrive to the server. To reduce its workload, I’ve done everything else I can think of that doesn’t involve my computer—straightening up my desk, filing papers, talking to a few coworkers to get some questions answered... and my computer is STILL transferring files. Bleh.

Today is my 1 year anniversary at work. Sadly, this is the longest I have held a single job in my entire 26 years of life, not counting the two years I was in grad school and working for the company that paid my tuition. It’s been... different than I expected. Recently I’ve gotten an opportunity to work on a new program, and it’s been nice to stretch my brain a bit and do something different. I have a feeling this won’t be a long-term job for me, but then again, I have trouble seeing anything as a long-term job for me...

I got a haircut yesterday, and I think it’s the first time that my wonderful stylist here has goofed. I spent forever messing with it this morning and eventually ended up going to work with my hair in a ponytail. Ugh. I can’t decide if I want to go back to have her trim it, or if I want to wait a few days to see if I get used to it (or at least figure out how to not gag when I look in the mirror).

My paper for this conference is due on Monday, and in typical fashion, I’ve put it off the final edits until the very last minute. I’ve had a hard time getting motivated for this thing, especially now that our travel arrangements for Hawaii are all set. :) I’m not getting graded on the paper or the presentation, although it would suck to look like an idiot in front of people I’ve never met, just like it would suck to look back at this paper in several years and wish I had spent more time polishing it.

Meh.

Good news!

I am thrilled/relieved/amazed to report that my eyes are doing better! I have a few theories on why they’re doing better, but I can’t be sure... best case scenario, it’s because I started allergy shots a few months ago and the shots are working. Worst case scenario, the past few weeks have been a complete fluke. My best proof so far is that on Saturday night, I spent a few hours outside on a friend’s porch and drank a single beer and my eyes only looked mildly pink the next morning. Hooray! Just a couple months ago, spending two hours outside, staying up late, and drinking any kind of alcohol would have turned me into an unbearably itchy, red-eyed monster, so this is definitely an improvement. I think it’s also helped that we’ve had the air conditioning on almost all the time that we’re home these days. I still have a ways to go—the whites of my eyes aren’t yet that beautiful healthy pale blue, no contacts yet, and I’m still on the allergy eye drop, but even small improvements are fantastic. (Seriously, sometimes I look at makeup ads in magazines and wonder if the whites of the models’ eyes have been photoshopped because it’s been so long since my eyes were that clear.) And believe me, the contacts party is still on if I make it that far!

The other interesting/exciting thing that’s been consuming my time lately is looking for a townhouse. When Josh first suggested it a few months ago, I scoffed at the idea because—come on—only grownups buy houses! We’ve been looking primarily in Reston, which is a wonderfully green, outdoor-oriented city a few miles east of where we currently live. I’ve fallen in love with a couple of places that we’ve looked at so far—one was a top floor condo on Lake Thoreau with an amazing balcony overlooking the lake and a dock for us to keep our own kayak (!). But it was a foreclosure, small, and needed A LOT of work. I loved how much potential it had, but it would have quickly stretched home-repair skills and budget, even before the $300/month condo fees. Josh was not amused.

The second place was a contemporary townhouse a couple miles west of the south Reston lakes. It was HUGE, very well maintained, had a beautiful deck and yard, and backed up tons of mature trees and running trails. Plus, we met several neighbors the couple times we were there to look at the house, and everyone was extremely nice. The icing on the cake was the turtle Josh found in the backyard. :) We had a couple reservations though, so while we debated the merits of this house for a couple days and the “oh my gosh, are we actually going to do this??” another couple swooped in and made an offer, and the sellers accepted it. I was really disappointed.

Unfortunately, everything else we’ve seen since then hasn’t lived up to the turtle townhouse. We found another place this past weekend that’s possible, but we haven’t fallen in love with it like at least I did with the other two. The size and layout would work very well for the two of us, but it has a few potential resale issues and it would require some work (although nothing too involved). Still, I like the area and it meets a lot of my top criteria... we just haven’t fallen in love.

Work has been frustratingly boring recently. I’ve been finding myself at work daydreaming about all the other glamorous careers I could have—journalist, photographer, environmental activist or researcher, writer for HowStuffWorks.com, any work for National Geographic. Then I get even more carried away and start wishing I lived somewhere like France, for example, where I’d only have to work 35 hours a week. The wife of a friend of mine has a job where she’s required to work 50 hours a week, but she’s compensated by a salary that’s 1.25 times what the standard for that position would be. From a standard 40 hours a week perspective, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t take the extra hours for the extra pay. When I turn it around though and think about whether I would take a 25% pay cut to work only 30 hours a week, I’m less sure of my decision. Once you have the money and your lifestyle “inflates”, it would be harder to go back.

Yesterday I finally booked my ticket to go to Hawaii this August.

!!!!!

I booked my flights through work, because officially, I’m going to to Honolulu present a paper at the AIAA GN&C conference. Josh got on the same flights using miles, because unofficially, we’re going on vacation, baby!

I’m presenting in one of the morning sessions on Thursday, August 21st, so we’re arriving on Wednesday afternoon and then staying an extra week until Sunday the 31st. We get to stay at the swanky Honolulu Hilton Wednesday night, but after the conference, we’re getting booted out of the hotel and will probably be staying in grungier places the rest of the trip. But hey, grungy in paradise is better than anyplace here!

So we basically have no idea what we’ll be doing for rest of the time that we’re there. Josh wants to see the areas where they filmed Jurassic Park, I want to go surfing, and we both want to see volcanoes. We know another couple that is staying in Hawaii after the conference, so we might tag along on a few of their adventures. I’ve heard that island-hopping isn’t cheap, but I spent a week in Oahu a few years ago, so I’d like to at least go to the Big Island and Maui or Kauai. Ahh, so many choices...

Funniest work compliment I have ever received (sent in an email today):

“Melanie, these are absolutely amazing charts. You are my favorite plotter of all time.”

So I may not have any analytical skills or guidance & control talent, but at least I can plot stuff in Matlab.