Friday, August 22, 2008

I’m so tired….

Since the NASA workshop ended in the middle of July, the weeks have been really low key and nothing new both at home and at work. The last 2 weeks have been, I don’t want to say exciting, but I’ll say interesting. I’m going to chunk it out to help explain better.

I didn’t expect to get so caught up in the Olympics, but I did. So I’ve been taping and trying to watch as much as I can at home between the time I get home from my second job and the time I go to bed; which usually is 9:15pm – 10:15pm or 10:30pm. I missed out on seeing most of the individual gymnastics events. :( They were the events I wanted to see the most. The last few days I’ve been trying to catch the BMX bike events, but I can’t figure out what time they are on. I think they were on late last night, after I went to bed. I’ve been struggling with sleepiness since I’ve been staying up later to watch the events.

The lady that I work with at my second job car broke down 2 Sundays ago. Her car breaking down is not what she needed and sent her finances in a downward spiral. To help her out I have been doing (what my friend Paula calls) missionary work; bring her back and forth to work for about 5 days out of the past 2 weeks. Thank God she is getting her car back this morning. She claims she is going to pay me gas money, but I’ll find out tonight if it is going to be like pulling teeth to get it out of her. I’ve been bring her back and forth because I can’t clean what we both clean in one night by myself, so I needed her to be there.

Last Sunday night, as I was in my bathroom brushing my teeth, I hear out the window “Stop, don’t run!” and police radios. I quickly looked out the window to see 2 police officers chasing my neighbor in between our houses into his back yard and on to the deck. They asked why he was running and he said he wasn’t and that this was his house. They said prove it, so he yelled in the house for the other guy that lives there to come out and ID him. They then sat on the deck taking to him and I couldn’t hear their conversation too well over the teeth brushing and water running. When I was finished, I went to the front of the house to see if there was a group of squad cars, because I didn’t see any lights flashing outside. I found one squad car parked in front of the neighbor 2 houses down with just the parking lights on. I think the police was following him from out on the main street. That sort of creeped me out for a couple days and got me thinking about his weird behavior in the past. Since the spring he has been parking his mother’s car (that also lives there) in the back yard. He never uses the front door to go in or out of the house, he goes through the back sliding door. Even though there is a car in the back yard, he always seems to be waiting at the end of the driveway for someone to come pick him up and always stares at me when I leave for my second job (like he is noticing when I come and go). On Saturday, he came outside while I was mowing my grass and sat on the deck to watch me. As soon as I went behind my gigantic bushes he went back in the house. If I can swing it, it may be time for either an alarm system or a big dog.

My NASA job has even been lively this week. Tuesday we were going to have a Crew Visit. A Crew Visit is NASA’s way of getting the crew of each Shuttle flight out to each NASA Center to thank them for their hard work and getting them safely to and from space. We often invite schools to participate in the crew visits. My boss had put me in charge of making sure the logistics for the school that was invited this time was all set. Tuesday morning rolls around and I get a call at 8:30am saying the crew visit is cancelled because of weather in Houston, TX. So I had to call the school to tell them the crew visit was cancelled, but the bus had already left. So I thought I would catch them when they got to the US Space & Rocket Center, where I was going to meet them. I then remembered that we had activities for them after the crew visit, so we were going to just do those activities. After I was waiting for about 30 minutes for the bus to arrive, I called the school and they said they caught the bus and had them turn back around. So that whole morning was pretty much thrown out the window.

So far that is it. Here's a sneak peek of what I'm doing on Sunday - watching the Dixie Derby Girls bout (Roller Derby).