So I'm here at work with only 2.5 hrs left to go until I leave for TRF opening weekend!!!!! It's beyond exciting! It's a new job, so all I'm doing is reading and training and it's just not able to hold my attention for long. It's so very sad... but at this point I can't even SIT STILL!!!! I know all you rennies out there feel me there. What is it about opening weekend and the crazy amounts of anticipation associated with it!
So to occupy my time for the next bit, I've been on R/F forums posting about fair stuff. And then checking on finances. Going over lists of things I'm going to do this weekend and people I need to see. Then looking at pics of my costumes and imagining wearing all my georgous garb. And so on....
Let me hear from you my friends, what is it that you do to occupy your time the day before opening weekend of your respective fairs?
My 5 weeks of vacationing were phenomenal!! I went to NC to visit my dad for 4 days, then to LA to visit a friend for 4 days, then home for 1 day, and then off to Athens Greece for 4 days. Then back home for 2 days and away again to Dublin Ireland for 9 days, then to London for 6 days, then to Paris for 5 days, and back to London for 2 days and home. I made travel books with shutterfly which I'll be bringing to TRF to my tent, but probably not inside. If you want to see them, just ask.
So I returned from my 5 weeks of travel 2 weeks ago only to end up spending a week cleaning up from Ike and doing other house chores. We only had minimal damage from Hurricane Ike, some shingles needed replacing and our back fence is down.
I started my new job last Monday and am definetely liking it so far! I have a blackberry, laptop, company credit card, and will take lots of trips in the company airplane! As for what I actually do, I'm still sorting that out, but it seems right up my alley in talents.
TRF opening weekend is this weekend and I'm getting very very excited!!! Rachel and I are finishing up costume things and starting to pack up and get out our garb.
I am also busy finishing up my friends wedding dress I started a million years ago, but had to put on hold due to job issues! She'll be at TRF, so it needs to be in trying on order, which should be doable.
Other than that, life is as usual and going great. I am so glad to have had the time off I did and to be in this new position at work, nothing else seems to matter!!
So probably no one knows this on here, but my job is not easy and is not really my forte... My degree is aerospace engineering and that's the line of work I will hopefully stay in, but this particular job is no longer right for me. It all came to a head with a "sit down" meeting with my bosses the DAY I came back from a 10 day vacation to Panama (read previous blog for info on that trip). After this meeting I prayed alot, cried alot, and was generally extremely bummed... Then I realized God was wanting me to leave this position, and as soon as I made that decision, it felt like this HUGE weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I also felt I needed to tell my management because I am lead on lots of projects and we needed to start planning to hand those over to others. So that started a clock on July 14th counting down to when I'd leave. I was able to make them see that leaving in 2 weeks would not even closely be possible due to all my tasks!! So my end date is August 15th, which is actually 5 weeks from the day I decided I needed to leave.
Since then, I have been applying all over the place and had 1 interview and offer, but I'm not interested in it. This week I have 3 interviews and 2 of those jobs I think I'd love.. and they invovled travel which i love!
Another change in my life is that my girlfriend who I get to fly almost for free with is leaving her job at the end of September... so I have to get in all my fun flying prior to then!! Wish me luck there...
And yet another change is that I think it's time to leave my church. I'm currently church shopping, but I have found an amazing singles group at a church near my house!! The fellowship and worship there is so wonderful and I really love the group!
This week has been extra fun because we had a supposed Hurricane coming to wipe us out... so NASA gave us a day and half of leave, kind of like a snow day really. It was awesome, especially since Tropical storm Edouard basically passed us by with very little rain and never became a Hurricane even! So the past 2 days, I've gotten in all sorts of crazy amounts of sewing. I'd taken a summer "break" from sewing since I'd been doing so much of it in the fall and spring of this year. I picked up last week because I'm working on my girlfriends wedding dress and needed to get it in a state for her to try on when she comes to town this weekend. So in the past week and 2 days I've done the following:
For the wedding dress: I made a satin trained skirt, made a chiffon under dress, did finishing work on a sating bodice.
For my stuff: I made a black velvet hoop skirt, a set of tight balck velvet sleeves with lots of pearling, finished beading my gold underskirt on both the front and back side, made a new white and black purse with lots of beading, made gold silk bloomers for my fairy costume, redid the back of a bodice to add more eyelets and a higher privacy panel, and reglued the eyes on my zebellini's.
So from my "to do" sewing list, I only have about 3 real needs left to finish before fall and a few ones I could do if I have time and effort!!! Yeah for being productive and having the desire and time to do stuff again!!!
Pray for my interviews and my new job... I hope to have something set in stone by end of this week early next week.
From July 1- 10th I went to Panama City, Panama on a mission trip with Christ for the City International. I felt God wanted me to go on a mission trip this summer and so I originally signed up with my church to go to Ukraine. But then they changed the dates and I wasn't able to go, so I started looking for another trip on the internet and ran across the one I went on.
The focus of this trip was children's ministry because more than half the population of Panama is under the age of 18. What we did day in and day out was go to schools and give a presentation. We went to elementary school and high schools, both public and private christian ones.
We would sing spanish childrens songs in a group to the little kids and do a puppet show with spanish translation. We'd also do skits of all kinds, mostly mimed ones or with a spanish reader. I had a solo I sang everywhere in Spanish based on the 23rd psalm and I also played the lead in a number of the skits.
The most amazing day of all was at the high school though. We saw God really actively moving there in the kids lives. 24 high schoolers gave their lives to Christ and were willing to do so in front of their peers in an auditorium. Many broke down crying about their sin, and others were literally slain in the spirit (which is somehting I'd only heard of before). I also got a chance to talk to about 30 of the top kids in the school for 1.5 hrs on what it's like to be a christian in the engineering/science field. It was amazing all around!!!
We also got to do some site seeing of Panama. Above are two pics of the Panama canal which is one of the wonders of hte world!!
We also had the opportunity to stay in a local families house for the duration of the stay. Above is a pic of my Panamanian family!! Mitzy is their daughter of 27 who lives in the house still. Akdiel is the 9 yr old grand son of the couple there who also lives with them. And the mother and father are Jonas and Betty. THe other woman in this pic is Sandra who was the leader of our team and has been a full time missionary for over 20 yrs!!
Akdiel and me became bestest friends!!! We played together each day and had the best of time even though he spoke no english and I spoke no spanish... we just made due with hand gestures and silliness!!
Our team alone showed how God's hand was truly in this trip. Above is a pic in the van we took everywhere!! And to the right of htat is a pic of the whole team in front of the Bridge of the Americas which was the first bridge between central and south america. On our team, we had a mother and daughter from Arizona, a couple from Floriday, 4 people from Omaha, a single school teacher, and then me from Houston. We met up with 1 guy who's a full time missionary with Christ for the CIty in Panama CIty, and he hired 2 interpreters for us who are sons of a local pastor, and the associate pastor of the church we worked closely with also joined us (he was the father in the house I lived in).
The city itself was very unusual. THere were rolling hills everywhere. They build right into the sides of these mountians and left all the beautiful trees too!! Panama city is also 3 cities in 1. There is the very very old city built in 1519 and burnt down by a pirate in 1680's.
Then there is the town they built after that one that is now considered the "old city" and reminds me very much of New Orleans. It's called Casco Viejo seen in the picture below on the left hand side. In the background of the pic is the NEW city of Panama City and it is a great international business city.
Another interesting fact about Panama is that they use the American dollar as their own currency since we occupied Panama for 100 years and only left in 2000....
One of the last places we got to visit was the beach... and boy was it beautiful!!! That day a huge rain storm came in and you could watch it out at sea as it rolled in. The last pic above you can definitively see the line of rain!!! Quite amazing looking really....As I believe the whole country of Panama is!!
First day: We flew into the Moscow airport and arrived around 10:30am. I came to Moscow to support the Shuttle mission by working direclty with the Russians who work on the propulsion system of the ISS here in Russia, which are basically my counterparts. I will be in Moscow until roughly March 26th and then I'll take a two day trip to Saint Petersburg. After checking into our hotel which is really an apartment building and unpacking, we (my other co-worker and I) went to the Pushkin art museum which has awesome impressionist pieces and other such works that I love, like degas and Renoir and Monet and Manet and so on... then we went inside this very famous church called Christ the redeemer I think which was so beautiful and all gilded gold. It was impressive! Reminded me of a Russian style Saint Peters basilica in Rome. I got a pic of the outside, but you weren't supposed to take them inside and there were tons of devoted orthodox people there kissing the pictures of saints and other such people and I didn't want to be rude. Then we had dinner at this outrageously expensive place. Spent like 60$ on literally 1 piece of salmon and the tiniest helping of rice and some water. The food was great, but WAY too expensive. Honestly EVERYTHING in this city is expensive.
Second day: We went to the grocery store and spent about 60$ on stuff that would have cost maybe 30-40 at home... or less! And then restaurants are crazy expensive, you basically can't get normal food for dinner for less than 40$, not kidding either! And then we tried to go the state armory, but didn't get there at the right time. So we walked around the Kremlin to red square which is right next to it. And we took a pic in front of saint basils which is a beautiful domed cathedral. And we saw Lenin's mausoleum and this really famous shopping place called the GUM. And we walked around some more trying to get over to the English Court buildings or the Romanov palace, but the streets were all blocked off. Not sure why?? So I took the metro over to the bolshoy and took some pics of it. Apparently it's still under construction, which I was super upset about. On the website it didn't say anything about that, so I thought it had been fixed. It been under construction for 2 yrs apparently, but still not done!!! So I walked all around the "theater" district by the bolshoy and then went home by dark. Then we went out to dinner with the whole group of NASA people over here. And after dinner they took us out to a local bar for drinks. I'm not one to really want to "drink" to get drunk, but these guys kept buying everyone shots of vodka. He bought me 3 and then 2 huge Russian beers. The beers are good here for sure, kind of hoopsy, but still good. And the vodka is very smooth, but after all that alcohol I was not feeling well at all. I think that's going to be the last time I go out with those guys!!!!
Third day: spent the entire day in my apt not feeling good and reading books and watching movies... ya it was a total waste. Not really my fault, I couldn't be rude to this guy I don't even know who was only trying to be nice to everyone... I should have just said I wouldn't drink that third one, but such is life. Guess you've got to live and learn over here!! But it was a relaxing day anyhow and I took a nice long bath. Oh my bathroom is beautiful. The tub is a raised tub that's all sculpted and the tile is pink and white. It's so nice and pretty. And we have maid service that comes in every day to make the beds and bring us new linens and such. In fact, they also wash our dishes, which is pretty awesome too!!
Fourth day: I got up at 7:30am to get to the bus at 8:30. The shuttle launched at 9:30am, so I'm officially going to be here for at least another 15 days, probably longer with my side trip. It took forever to setup everything here in the mission control center and now there's really not much to do. It's 2 in the afternoon now, not sure if any of you are up yet. I think we're 8 hrs ahead of Texas and 7 hrs ahead of NC, so it should be 6am or 7am respectively there. Well I leave here at 5:30. Going to go home and probably take a bath, watch a little TV or read and then take a bunch of sleeping pills and conk out!!! I want to get up at a decent hr tomorrow, but I NEED sleep tonight!!! Didn't sleep well last night at all due to sleeping too long the night before!! Last night after work I rode back on the van with 3 other people from NASA Houston. We all decided to get diner at a local Georgian restaurant across the street from our hotel place. The restaurants name is called Traktor!! Funny, huh? Anyhow, we went there and the food was wonderful!!! I have this great beef soup that had a million different spices and flavors in it. We also ordered that wonderful Khachapuri (bread with cheese in the middle). The best part was that they had a little band there with this old man playing the violin and a guitarist plucking away. They were so good and just added to the whole atmosphere wonderfully!! And they had an inexpensive meal selection as well. My friends got some pics, but I didn't bring my bag with me. They said they'd email them to me, so I'll need to follow up with that later.
Fifth day: So I set my alarm to a new earlier time, but then forgot to enable it... so I got up really late today and didn't have time to do what I wanted so I just chilled at the apartment and got ready really slowly and watched some TV. I've been at working about 1hr now and will be here till 10pm tonight. I'm assuming I'll just go home and go straight to bed so I can get up good an early tomorrow... need to leave my place by around 9:30am. This is the last shift before we dock the shuttle. Thus far there have been minimal problems and all have been worked out such that docking should be just great. With this mission we are adding another international partner to the whole space station community, the Japanese or as we refer to them JAXA. The Europeans joined us last mission, or as we call them ESA. They actually just launched their first space vehicle the ATV which they've been working on for a good 8hrs or so.
