Christmas photologue - New Jersey

Little kids are so much fun to get presents for!


He had so much fun!


She helped everyone unwrap their present, so thoughtful.


Sister and Boyfriend's surprise faces!


So cute!


We were all reindeer, but the dog was a bit confused by all of it.


Heather's birthday! The boys helped her blow out her candles.


Milly was upset we were taking her blanket from her.

Christmas photologue - Nebraska

We baked 18 dozen cookies!


It snowed and was very cold (like 6 degrees!) This is the view from Boyfriend's parents' balcony.


His parents had a very pretty tree.


For some reason, they like to open presents at 6 am. I'm not sure why.

This is Boyfriend's surprise face!


This is my trying-to-be-surprised-and-not-fall-asleep face!

Why the Kitten and I get along so well

Boyfriend says the reason the Kitten and I get along so well is that we have the same goals in life.

1. Find a warm spot to snuggle.
2. Look cute.

My cat likes watching TV about cats

So this evening I took a nap with the Kitten and Ben played on the computer and watched TV. He recorded a show called Cats: In the Womb because he thought I would like it. I thought I would too, so we decided to watch it. The Kitten was fascinated by it.


I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but it's definitely been on before, and I've never seen her react like this to it. She watched the whole show with us!


She especially liked hearing the narrator say her name and talk about house cats. She wasn't as interested in the lions and would stop watching at each commercial.


She also liked hearing the mother cat purring and meeping. (It's a lot easier to see her perking up when the mother cat purrs on the original video; unfortunately, it lost some quality when I uploaded it.)

My cat is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Endless hours of amusement.

Where I want to live

Criteria:

1. Palm trees and sunny beaches
2. Close enough to visit my family regularly
3. Has all 4 seasons, winter in moderation
4. Good hiking and camping and walking
5. Has houses that are not in developments
6. Good local government - schools, libraries, police, roads, recycling*!
   
7. The grocery stores carry gnocchi and prosciutto and avocados and nutella and stromboli
8. Lots of good restaurants, Italian and sushi and Indian and Thai and Chinese and pizza
9. Close enough to a city so that I can go to museums and theater when I want
10. Nice spas
11. Has people who don't call me "y'all" or "sweetheart" when they don't know me. Or "ma'am."
12. Cost of living is not too high

*Apparently Houstonians don't recycle because they are so "independent." Yeah, that's bright, wasting resources which are becoming scarcer is very independent, good job guys.

Oh yeah, and someplace I can get paid to live. That's the hard part, unfortunately. I love working in the space program, and I think it is the most important thing we as a culture should do for our future, but I am really getting tired of Houston. I don't want to buy a house here. I don't want to live here.

I've kind of kicked around the idea of getting a Ph.D and working for a university, doing research and teaching, and I think it could be cool. I'd have a lot more options on where to live that way. I'd probably focus on Astrophysics, cause that's what interests me most.

I just don't know if I would be as happy doing something that I liked in a place that I liked, if I'm not working on something I feel is as important to the entire human race as exploring and colonizing space. The space program gives us a direction as a society, something to work towards, something amazing that no one has ever even come close to doing in the thousands of years we've existed as a species. I feel that the work I do now, small a part of the program as it is, will someday enable people to live wherever they want, give people options about what planet to live on if we continue to trash this one and make it uninhabitable.

I kind of think of it like building Magellan's boat, I may never get to travel as far the craft I work on but someday people will cross the distance without thinking twice about it, and their lives will be better and richer and they will be more free than I can imagine now.

Maybe I can do research that is needed for space exploration, and help indirectly with it.

Photojournal - continued

I got my hair cut and the color evened out, and my hairdresser blow-dried it straight. The first time I've ever had straight hair!


It was cute, but took her almost 30 min to do, so I don't think I'll be doing it myself! Ben liked it once he got used to it, but when I first walked in the door, he almost didn't recognize me!

We were supposed to go to a Christmas party tonight, so I baked a cake I will hereafter refer to as a Chocolate Ridiculousness Cake:


Yes, it has a layer of a creamy peanut butter icing topped with chocolate ganache dripping down the sides. Ridiculous!

But the party was canceled! So now I have a huge crazy cake we have to eat!


Ben and I split a slice, or at least that was the plan. He claimed the cake was much too rich as he finished the last of the icing :)

7 more days til Christmas break!

The Shuttle flew over JSC! It's on its way from California back to Florida, and apparently when they fly over Texas, they circle JSC a few times, to let us see how cool it is. It's very cool!



I still can't believe that it's transported this way, it's crazy! Awesome-crazy though, not crazy-crazy.

I love seeing stuff like this over lunch. Totally worth standing outside for 20 minutes in the pretty-cold to see.

It snowed!

It snowed! In Houston! And stuck to the ground, more or less! We got about an inch over a few hours. When I came out of work my car had snow on it, for the first time ever!


Luckily it didn't really stick to the roads, at least where they're not elevated, so I was fine driving my mile home after work.

Some people made a snowman than must have been 6 feet tall in the field next to my apartment, which was pretty impressive for an inch of snow on the ground! And when I walked into work, I walked over the grass and heard the crunsh crunsh crunsh sound partially melted and refrozen snow makes when you walk on it. I haven't heard that in so long! It made me remember trying to follow my dad's footsteps through the driveway after a snowfall when I was little, jumping and turning to try to land each foot in his footprint. Someone also built a little snowman next to my building, when I have no idea, but it's so cute!

One more Sunday

I only have to work one more Sunday and then I will be done! I will have all the comp time hours I need this Wednesday, then next weekend/week I am flexing one more day, and then I will be done! I can't wait to go back to having 2 day weekends! I didn't mean to work the last 8 Sundays in a row, excepting travel; I wanted to spread them out more but then we got a hurricane and it ruined everyone's plans. But it will definitely be worth it.

I also can't wait until I am down with class this Friday. It was a long semester for one that was broken up so much by the aforementioned hurricane and a decent amount of travel by my professor. It was an interesting class, I like orbital mechanics, but it was hard to follow when it seemed we were out of class every other week with one thing or another. Next semester I am taking two astronomy classes, which I am very excited about, I like OM but I love astronomy. One class is on the origin of the universe and one is on the evolution of the solar system. I love having classes like that!

Diamonds, my opinion on

I don't particularly like diamonds. I don't usually tell people this, because I know a lot of people who wear diamonds and every one I've seen is beautiful and perfect for the wearer, and I don't want to foist my own tastes on anyone else. But I would never wear one. I have some moral issues with them, but also, I just don't really care for the way they look. I like rocks that absorb some light, rather than refract it all. I like amethysts, and opals, and sapphires, crystals with pretty colors and interesting stories about them. The word amethyst actually comes from the Greek meaning "not drunk" because they thought it would protect you against drunkenness if you wore it or had it embedded in your cups.