One Day At A Time

Oktoberfest Here We Come

2009-09-25T17:21:00.000-05:00

Getting prepared for Oktoberfest on saturday, Sept. 26th. We'll depart Wessling at 7am to arrive around 815 at the fairgrounds. Stand in line, get in to a tent. We'll see how it goes.

Mobile posting

2009-09-19T12:27:00.001-05:00

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Long Time No Post

2009-09-19T12:19:00.001-05:00

In all our activities, we've neglected to blog. We'll try to remedy that on our upcoming adventures: Munich for Oktoberfest, SoCal for visiting relatives...

San Jose Part Deux

2008-09-04T21:18:00.003-05:00

Stacey and I are getting ready for another trip to the San Fran peninsula. I've got a user conference to attend in Santa Clara and Stacey is coming along for the ride. We're planning to meet Beth and Ken for a San Jose Giants (A) playoff game, some wine tasting, and some walking around SF. Stacey's flying First Class this trip as we rotate every time I get upgraded. This trip, it's her turn.

It looks like I'll have a last minute request from NASA to support a set of meetings in Japan at the end of September. We'll be looking at airfare this weekend. This in addition to our trip to Munich in mid-October.

Also, Stacey's cousin Cheryl called to say she'd be in Vegas at the end of October and she'd be free over Halloween. So we're looking into plane and hotel reservations to have some fun with our Cuz in Sin City.

All for now,
S2JG

Do you know the way to San Jose?

2008-08-23T11:18:00.003-05:00

Thanks Dionne, but we found it. Actually our Continental pilot found SJC.

Stacey and I are rollin' around San Jose and the Santa Cruz mountains (hills I'd call them) in a white Lincoln Towncar (yes we splurged) with about 9k miles on it. We also rented the GPS nav system, just cause we can. The Garmin nuvi device is cool. We were able to create 'favorites' before we left and saved them on our SecureDigital memory card. When we got into the car we just popped in our SD card and brought up the favorites and voila!

Friday afternoon we headed to the main area of San Jose to the J Lohr tasting room for some yummy wines. Some winners and some losers. We still had an hour before the other winery closed for the day, Picchetti. This is the winery in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mtns. that was a possibility for our wedding reception. It also has the peacocks on the grounds.

At Picchetti, we had an energetic employee pouring wines, selling goods, chatting up the 20 or so folks in the area. They had quite a few wines to offer for tasting but they had run out of our favorite Zin as they were down to just a few cases left from their 400 cases produced this year. When Smiley (or something close to that....I think he was a Kiwi) found out we were from Texas and had been there 8 years ago, he threw the '5 tastes' rule out the window. We were able to sample 4 cabernets from the region: 1 cab/merlot blend, 1 100% cab from sea level in Los Altos, 1 100% cab from the top of the Montebello at 3000', and 1 100% cab from the same elevation but blended from the owner's private vines. All were delicious but the later was just amazing and we're coming home with a bottle. We also signed up for their wine club so we'll be able to share some of their wines 4/year. Dad, there's a port (Zin/Petite Syrah) with your name on it coming back on the plane.

After the winery, we headed to our hotel to checkin. A nice all-suite hotel which I've stayed at before when working our here in 2000 -- Larkspur Landing. After 'freshening' up we decided to head to our favorite Sushi Bar/Dance Club/Sake Bomb place near Stanford in Palo Alto -- Miyake. It was just as loud, crowded, happening, and yummy as always. The names were: Stanford Roll (crab, asparagus, tomato) , Google Roll (fried prawn, avocado, spicy tuna), Microsoft Roll (soft shell crab, spicy tuna, lettuce, tobiko), Caribbean Roll (tuna, avocado, wakame), Texas Nigiri (beef, kaiware, garlic, sesame oil, teriyake sauce) and Potsticker Roll. Yuuuuuuuuummmmmmm. After dinner we walked off the rolls with a stroll down University Dr.

We'd have to call that a pretty successful day.

Ciao, S2

Storm Update 11:30 AM

2008-08-05T11:28:00.003-05:00

We just checked the Harris County Rainfall Map
and see that our area is getting the most, our weather station shows around 5 inches while the county gauges around us are in the 3-4in range. We've also noticed that Katy and Cypress haven't got much yet, hopefully a good drink is on its way.

Our lake looks like its back up close to normal! Yippie.

Other than that we're catching up on bookwork, odds and ends from our Munich trip, and getting ready for our next adventure to Seattle. Stacey is recounting our Munich adventure to post later today.

Just enjoying our 'free' day.

Love, s2

2008-08-05T07:51:00.000-05:00

TS Edouard -- UPDATE

Well we woke up this morning to see that our weather guru at Lockheed, Bryan Batson, was corrent in prognosticating a curve into the mainland before getting to Galveston. For the record that guess was at noon yesterday.

So now we hopefully will have a day of watching our lake fill up with water to bring the level back to normal after a long, dry summer. Drink up fishies.

I also remembered to restart our weather station this morning so give it a look at:

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KTXSEABR4

Hopefully the software won't crash too much today.

-s2

2008-08-04T18:24:00.000-05:00

TS Edouard

We've moved all our outdoor items into the garage. On the interior, we've collected all our critical items in one place. If we need to leave, it will be a quick pack. We put all of Jake's dried flowers into ziplocs and also collected all his memorable items to go with us.

We've got our batteries, flashlights, candles, lanters, and radio ready to go.

We're now ready to prepare our yummy pasta and cheese dish for our Anniversary dinner with a 'cake for 2' from Kroger.

Work (& JSC) is closed tomorrow so I might go to work on Wed and Thurs of this week before heading to Seattle to visit Toddorado.

We'll keep you posted.

Love, S2

2007-06-14T16:12:00.000-05:00

TOULOUSE - 14JUN07

Today went walking around Toulouse. Took some pictures of sights and finally had the well spoke of dish, cassoulet. Tres bien.

2007-05-06T06:32:00.000-05:00

All went well at the airport today. The eTicket check-in wasn't too crowded and the security went relatively quickly. I saw online yesterday that my ticket was upgraded to BusinessFirst class. I had sacrificed 25k miles to be put on a waitlist. Well it worked. I was able to hang out at the President's Club until boarding (a perk of having a business first ticket).

President's Club offered some bagels and muffins along with juices/coffee and the bar. I had a bagel, grapefruit juice, and a spicy bloody mary. I was also able to grab a Chronicle and send a quick email using their wireless network.

We boarded the plane around 10:15 and were given our amenity kit, slippers, and night shades. Seat 2B. Wow, the seats are nice. Tons of leg room, I can extend my legs and barely touch the seat in front of me. Nice and wide too. We were also given the extensive menu to place our lunch order. I selected the strip steak with the side of spinach, potatoes, and a piquillo pepper stuffed with eggplant and cheese.

There was a lot of food served. I guess they figure full bellies are content. Wine selection was Bordeaux, Burgundy, or Shiraz for the reds. The lady next to me ordered the Shiraz and let out a 'oh my!' when she saw it was Kendall Jackson ;)

The steak was great but man it was HUGE! At least 12oz. I could only eat half after the crab, shrimp, sushi appetizer and salad. Then for dessert, Dreyer's Ice Cream served with caramel, fudge, or strawberry topping. Good grief!

Port, cheese, fruit cart just in case there are any empty spaces left in our stomachs.

Mid-flight snack: onigiri ume - rice ball and Asahi. The flight attendant informed me that I just drank the last Asahi on the plane. Hope its not like Airplane when they run out of coffee.

Watched a really crappy movie called Children of Men. Horrible. Had to fire up the laptop and watch Three Amigos to purge my mind. I'll probably fire up 'The Rock' or 'Usual Suspects' next. Just passing south of Anchorage right now (5:10pm CDT). I wonder what the crews from Deadliest Catch are doing right now. I'm on the south side of the plane so if I look really close I might be able to see Dutch Harbor down the peninsula (not really - its probably 500 miles from where i am).

All went well at the airport and the bus trip to Tsukuba. Got checked in to a room on the 9th floor. Freshened up a bit and had a late dinner downstairs. Then came back up to the room and crashed hard.

2007-05-03T22:02:00.000-05:00

All packed and ready to go. Looks like I'm in BusinessFirst on the way out there. 13 and a half hours of air. Check out flightaware.com and look for Continental Flight 7.

Funny Stuff

2006-10-18T21:24:00.000-05:00

Jake discovered laughing at his belches today. He's officially made it to manhood.

2006-03-09T02:26:00.000-06:00

Thursday, March 9, 2006

Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
45F Sunny

Happy Birthday
to Rahi...He's celebrating his last cool birthday. The big 2-5. He can celebrate his insurance rates going down now.

Its been nice to email and talk with Stacey the last couple of days. I can't wait to get home in 2 days. We can't thank our family and friends enough for their support and assistance this week. It really means a lot to us.

The meetings have been going very well here in Japan. We reached agreement on several items that have been open for several years. The topics over the last two days have centered on the test plans for the next 4 years in preparation for Japan's launch of their HTV rocket which will send a large container vehicle to the International Space Station in 2009.

Last night we had a social with our Japanese hosts at a local restaurant. Plenty of good food and drink. A large group went to Karaoke afterwards but a couple of us got separated from the pack and tried to find them at the Karaoke bar but missed them. Oh well, it was probably for the best considering how I felt this morning. I did get over 15000 steps in yesterday with 10500 on Tuesday.

We were hoping to get out early on Friday and head to Tokyo for the evening but it looks like will be hard at work for the whole day. Bummer.

After the festivities last night and other dinners with a group of 10-20, a couple of Lockheed people and myself are going to do our own thing tonight. We'll also stop by the bus station and buy a ticket for the bus on Saturday to the airport. I think I heard its an 11:15am bus +2hr drive so we'll have about 4 hours to kill at the airport before takeoff. Thank goodness for Sudoku :)

Cheers,
Scott

2006-03-06T04:51:00.000-06:00

Monday, March 6

Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Cloudy
~50F

All that climbing yesterday took it out of me. I laid down for a quick nap at 5pm and woke up at 1am. I then proceeded to toss and turn for several hours. At 4am I woke and surfed the web, then returned to bed and slept till 6am.

Stacey surprised me with a wakeup call just after 6am. I wasn't to hear from her until Thursday but she was back in Seabrook. It was great to hear her and Jake. I can't wait for her next call tomorrow morning.

After breakfast we boarded a bus to head to JAXA. At JAXA we spent the morning reviewing the week's schedule. Lunch was spent at the cafeteria...Ramen noodles w/ wontons. The afternoon session was spent reviewing how we were going to setup a test with JAXA, NASA/JSC, NASA/MSFC, and TDRS. We rapped up around 430pm.

After a 20 minute stroll back to the hotel, we met in the lobby for a dinner patrol. 6 of us headed to the local Korean BBQ place while a large group headed to Shakey's Pizza for some corn and tuna pizza. We dined on some kim-che, beef, and something called a bah-bim-bah.

Its about 8pm now and we're calling it a night. Another 10594 steps today.

One more thing....what the heck is going on in the NFL labor talks. They've had like 20 'deadlines' over the last week. Everytime they get to the deadline they extend it. Apparently these 'deadlines' have as much teeth as a homeowner's association letter.

And props to the Aggie Men's Basketball team for perching on the precipice of the Big Dance. The first time since 1987.

2006-03-05T00:19:00.000-06:00

Sunday, March 5, 2006
Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
Sunny
~50F

Morning
Well after all that traveling yesterday, I slept right thru the small earthquake at 3:30am local time. A couple of guys mentioned it at breakfast (just a bed shake). I woke up briefly at 4am and was able to get back to sleep until 6:30am. Had a yummy "full american" breakfast at the hotel restaurant.

There's something like 20 people from different NASA groups here this week. There were 4 folks from Huntsville, AL that were heading into Tokyo this morning so 2 from our group joined them. Five of us headed out to climb Mt. Tsukuba (The Mt Fuji of the East) at 877m.

Mt. Tsukuba
We took a 40 minute bus ride to the base. There are two peaks on the mountain and it somewhat resembles the eyes of a frog so there were frog trinkets in all the shops. There is a cable car to take us up to the 800m level and then we hoofed it from there up the rocks and steps to the shrine on top. We were all sucking wind a couple of times during the "ascent". Coming back down to the cable car station, there is a walking path along the ridge of the mountain connecting the two peaks. The second peak is slightly higher and the trail was cast in shadows so there was plenty of mud and traces of snow. The view, however, was worth the trek. It was really hazy so we couldn't see great distances but we could all imagine what a spectacular view might be possible on a clear day. From that peak, a cable car gondola took us down to the south side of the mountain where we grabbed the bus back to Tsukuba.

Afternoon
We were all ready for a sit down lunch and a cold beer. On the walk back to the hotel we stopped at the local drug store to pickup essentials...water, beer, and chap stick :)

Its 3:00pm and I've already got 10000+ steps in for the day. I'll probably take a nap and then walk around Tsukuba some more before dinner.

Hope all is well back in Houston.