Every Sunday morning, Andy and I read or at least skim the through the local Sunday newspaper, Florida Today. One of the sections we always look at is the real estate section, just because we find it interesting. There is a book review article each week written by a man by the name of Robert Bruss, which is always a review of a real estate related book. As the last sentence in each review, he always says, "On my scale of one to ten, this book rates a ____." The part that bugs me is that the guy rates almost every book as a ten, with at least three in the last two months rating as twelves. Now, to me, twelve is not on a one to ten scale, so I think this guy is really mixed up. And not every book could possibly be THAT good. The only time I recall seeing one of his reviews that was not a ten or higher, was one time when he rated a book as a seven. If HE rated it a seven, it probably isn't even good enough to use as a doorstop! I don't know why this bugs me, but it does. Andy always gets to the paper first and will yell to me "he gave it a twelve this week" or whatever the review score is for that week. It is like a running joke for us. By the way, today's book was reviewed as a twelve.

It seems that lately I can't remember shit. CRS disease, you know. I finally started carrying a little teeny notebook around with me to jot stuff down in a last ditch effort not to forget my head! The problem particularly manifests itself when it comes to packing lunch for work. First it was with salads; I would pack the salad, and forget the dressing, ugh! Then I started making things like wrap sandwiches and burritos with whole wheat tortillas, only I started to forget the tortillas. Just try to eat a sandwich or a bean burrito without the tortilla to wrap it in. Just try! This has not happened only a couple of times, but rather, repeatedly. I am constantly forgetting an essential component of my lunch at least one, maybe two days a week now. I guess I am really losing it. I guess this is what it is like to get old. What do you think? Is there any hope for me?

Our next-door neighbors, who have been really great neighbors for the past four years are selling their house and moving away to take care of relatives. Every time I see a house near us go up for sale, I think, "please let it be someone my age" because as I may have mentioned before, this area has maybe three people that are between the ages of 26 and 34, and Andy and I are two of them. We haven't found the other one yet. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating just a little bit, but honestly I have only met one person within three years of my age that lives in this area. It is sooo hard to find friends that have things in common. Besides our neighbors that are moving away, and our "work friends" who are all a lot older than us and busy with families, all my friends are either blog friends or long distance friends. So I always hope that someone cool will move in; now especially so because it will be right next door, even though it will be hard to find neighbors as good as the ones we have now. Unfortunately, the chances are worse than ever for someone younger to buy the house, because house prices have climbed astronomically in our neighborhood and the whole county, for that matter, and the only people that seem to be able to afford it are retirees. So, anyways, if you are looking to move to Florida, I know of a great house that is about to hit the market. Let me know.

I am going to have this blog professionally redesigned by someone who knows what they are doing. Don't worry, the birds are going to stay, but they will be more integrated. I have submitted some pictures, and can't wait to see what the designer comes up with. How exciting!

I know, I know, it is my blog, so I should make the template myself. Well, I made this one, and it just isn't as exciting as what I want. I want a blog that reflects my personality better. What do you think?

Well, the fleet is grounded, again. If they would just go back to using the not as environmentally safe foam on the external tank, we wouldn't be having these problems. Just my opinion, though. Hopefully all the issues will be resolved quickly. Everything looks good for a safe return of Discovery in ten days, so that is good news. I wish I had additional insight to share, but I don't.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words and encouragement for the launch. It has been a major ordeal to get back flying. I will say that I do not have any more information about what is going on with the mission now than what is on the news. NASA is very open with the media, and we often find out what is going on from the radio or TV before we hear it at work.

As far as the comments on my last post, I have no idea if there are UFOs or not, and the things that look like "clips" holding the wings are the tail service masts. They are actually not touching the wings at all, they are just right in front of them so it look like they are holding the wings.

It has been a long week already, and it is only Wednesday, so I am going to cut this post short. I promise I'll post something fun tomorrow.

Well, we finally launched. It was a beautiful sight, and you can see it in pictures and on TV, but the one thing you can not reproduce is the sound. It is delayed for quite a few seconds after launch, due to the distance, but then comes a rumbling like nothing you've ever heard. My favorite part is the crackling noise it makes a few seconds after the rumbling starts. You can even feel the noise in your body. They do the countdown and and announcements over the loudspeakers so anywhere on the space center you can hear it. We climbed up the ladders outside of one of our buildings where I work to get a better view. The slideshow above is made up of a couple of launch photos I took and the pictures Andy took at work last night after the Rotating Service Structure was rotated away from the shuttle, better exposing it.

I guess a big part of my day at home is caring for animals. When I get up in the morning, just before five, I first take a shower, unless Ollie the old dog is awake. If Ollie is awake, I carry him downstairs and make sure he pees and put food out for him, then take a shower. If Ollie stays asleep, (rare) I try to get as much dressed as I can before he wakes up and then I take him out. He has a dog door, but like I've said before, he is seventeen and a half years old, deaf, and is a bit disoriented when he wakes up and it is safer for me to just take him out. When I get all dressed and combed and all, I get Cody off the bed and carry him downstairs. I prepare his diabetic meal which he scarfs down in a few minutes. While he is eating, I get his insulin out, mix it, and carefully draw eight IU in a syringe, and then get a diabetic friendly dog treat ready. When he is done, I pick up his bowl and him, give him his shot then immediately give him the treat. Then I dispose of the needle in the sharps container, wash his bowl in the sink, and take him outside to pee and poop. When he's done I have to check his butt to make sure it is clean (it is so fat that and furry that sometimes he has poop problems) and then carry him upstairs and place him on his towel on the bed. Then I go get his water bowl from the bathroom and water him there in the bed. He is stubborn and likes the water brought to him. After that I am free to eat breakfast, make my lunch, etc. This is all before six am. Lucky for me, Louie, the black dog has turned lazy and doesn't get up until Andy gets up in the morning, and then he feeds him. Charley (the parrot) hears me moving around the kitchen in the morning and talks to me, but after it is quiet for a while he goes back to sleep, and Andy feeds him when he gets up as well.

When I get home in the afternoon, I have to quickly come up with an "interesting" meal for Charley, comprised of fruit, vegetables, cheese, etc. I can't give him the same thing too often or he will just pitch it out of his bowl. I am constantly searching for new and exotic foods for him. This week I found Cape Gooseberries and Champagne Grapes (very tiny). He loves nuts, eggs, (yes, it seems cannibalistic) and potato chips, but his absolute favorite food is ice cream, which he likes to eat from the cone. Anyway, I have to feed him his afternoon meal quickly or he gets a little pissy. And I have to wash his food bowls, and usually the ones from that morning as well, as Andy generally leaves them in the sink for me. Then I have to spend about an hour (sometimes only a half hour, sometimes an hour and a half) with him outside of his cage, like on his playgym next to my computer desk. Some days he needs a bath. At 5:45 to 6:00, I have to give Cody his dinner. Then I have to give food to the other two dogs while not letting Cody get to it, for he is on his special diabetic diet.

I love my dogs and bird immensely and would do anything for them, but when I step back and look at it, they are a lot of work. I wouldn't have it any other way, though.

Everyone please keep your fingers crossed for a successful launch today. Keep your eyes to the skies (or on TV). I think it is really going to go this time.

The launch is scheduled to lift off at the same time as Columbia did over two and a half years ago, I hear. I have included these pictures of me in the crew compartment of Columbia taken the summer before it was destroyed.

It has been so insanely hot this summer, that it is too hot to even swim most of the time. The pool gets up to 93 degrees and it is like "piss water" as Andy says. I am designing a way to cool it off using the drain line and a sprinkler-type thing, but until then, wow, is that ever hot!

I got my first real pair of sunglasses ever yesterday at Ron Jon's. They are Maui Jim's and I have been wanting them since before Christmas. They were expensive, even with my 15% off Locals Only discount card, so it took a while to convince Andy that I really had to have those and no other. I like them becuase they have a metal frame, but the nose pieces are molded instead of the little "feet" like on most metal frames. If you have long hair, and you like to wear your sunglasses on top of your head you will instantly know why I don't like those little "feet." The salesman at Ron Jon knew; he said he has had to cut people's hair to release their sunglasses from the top of their heads where the hair has wrapped itself all around those little feet.

Andy finished the pool cabinet he has been working on last week. It is a wooden cabinet that we use to keep all of our towels, chemicals, test kit, etc. if you look closely you can see that the handles of the cabinet are small wooden tikis (my idea). The top of the cabinet is covered in copper. It is on wheels, and he found the basic plans to build it in a magazine. It was my idea to take a torch and burn the surface of the wood to bring out the wood grain before staining it. I think in the magazine they spent about $300 to build it but we probably spent around $600. Stuff never works out like the plans in the magazine.

I just came in from the backyard where I watched the International Space Station go by. Andy called me from work to let me know it would be passing our area. If you've never viewed it before, it looks like a bright star hauling ass across the sky. You can find out when the ISS will be visible in your area by clicking here and looking for the city closest to you. It will give the exact times and direction to look for the space station. It really is a neat thing to see it going overhead and to think that humans put it there. Kind of awe-inspiring. Check it out if you get a chance.

Mama Duck over at The Kept Woman hosts a Way Back Wednesday each week. This week the theme was drunken college photos. My entry is a little late, but due to the magic of the internet, it appears that it is on time. Ha! Here I am in Toronto.

I am one of those people who has to get seven to eight hours of sleep each night or else I am worthless. Well, sometimes I am worthless even with plenty of sleep, but that is beside the point. So last night, I had been asleep for a little over an hour, and the phone rang. It was almost ten o'clock, and when that darn phone rings at night I swear it peirces my very soul. I am sure that someone is dead or maimed. No one was this time, but I wanted to kill or maim the person that called.

It was Brian, the Homeowners Association vice president. Those of you who are my regular readers will know that Andy is the president and I am the secretary/treasurer of the HOA. So he was calling to discuss some mundane crap that certainly could have waited.

The conversation went like this:

Me: "hullo" (in a sleepy pitiful voice)

Brian: "Hi, this is Brian, did I wake you?"

Me: "yes"

Brian: "Well, I wasn't sure of your schedule. I talked to so and so and blah blah blah blah blah.........." ( and about five or six more minutes of blah)

Me: "okay bye"

Not sure of my schedule? Stick your damn head in the window and look across the fucking street, for chrissakes. If you don't see any lights on, I AM ASLEEP!

Brian workes at the space center also (in a different area from me) and knows I work first shift, so he should have known better. Which brings me to the fact that Brian is an engineer. Calling someone at an inappropriate time is a very "engineer" thing to do. No offense, Ramblin' Girl, but I notice that a lot of times engineers (not all of them, but a surprisingly large percentage) do some pretty stupid things. Maybe it is just that they are too wrapped up in their thoughts and don't stop to think about what they are doing before they do things. We have one engineer at work who reportedly peed in the urinal, didn't flush, walked over to the sink, washed his hands and then walked out leaving the water still running in the sink. It's like something just isn't connecting in his brain.

Anyway, it took me almost an hour to get back to sleep after that, thank you very much, Brian. I can't wait till we get out of this association crap. Never again.

The new dishwasher was installed today. Yay. Andy said the guy had a hell of a time getting the old one out. He was really glad we had someone else install it this time. It had to be one of those deals where the old one came out and the new one went right in, no screwing around, because one thing I have learned is that a dishwasher is absolutely essential for a happy marriage for us. Andy is one of those who will stack dishes in the sink when there is no dishwasher, and wash them later. I absolutely can't stand walking up to the sink and not being able to even wash my hands because there is so much shit stacked in there. So the dishwasher keeps both of us happy.

I feel so much better now. This morning, I went through my closets and storage areas and filled up the back of the truck with old shoes, clothes, bedding, bags, etc. and took them to Gooodwill as a donation. It is always so liberating to me to get rid of old stuff that is bogging me down. I also made a pile of some of the more expensive items and kept them to sell them on eBay. This is one of the first steps towards a new home improvement project Andy and I are thinking about. We have an unfinished attic space adjacent to our bedroom that we would like to have finished. It will require us to hire a structural engineer and a contractor, but it is really something we are thinking about doing. We will also have to get rid of a lot more stuff that we have stored up there, but today's work was a good start.

I found a clipping from "Reader's Digest" that I had saved for quite a few years. It was one of those little things at the bottom of the page and was called "Pats not Pending". It reads:

The Washington Post challenged its readers to send in ideas for useless products. The resulting list included:

Silicone thigh implants
Nuclear hand grenades
Fire alarm with snooze bar
Jarvik-7 artificial appendix
Inflatable dartboard
Salted bandages
Can-opener-in-a-can
Dyslexic's edition of Scrabble
Mobius strip toilet paper
Lobster Helper
Popeil Pocket Wasp & Hornet Teaser

I thought these were good, and I came up with a few of my own:

OSHA approved safety contact lenses
Personal oxygen tank with built-in ashtray
Crayola clear markers
Pilot's manual in braille
Teflon shoe soles

What useless products can you think of?

Charley has learned a new phrase which he really likes. He says "green chicken" over and over. He got it from me, and I know it sounds funny, but I call all the dogs my "chickens" because of the way they flock around me, and naturally Charley had to be included as one of the "chickens." So I call him Green Chicken, and now he calls himself Green Chicken. He is so smart. Some of his other favorite phrases are "I got your foot" "whaddya doin'?" "no biting" and "look at you, you're so cute."

It is a scrub, so here are some pictures Andy took with my camera last night at work. I am going for a swim and will post more later.

So far, so good. As of this morning we are still "go" for launch. Everybody keep their fingers crossed and pray that we will be able to go today. This will be an interesting launch for me because it has been two and a half years, but also because I have met this crew personally.

This time of year always makes me a little nostalgic. You see, I was one of the lucky kids who got to go away to camp. You may have horrible memories of camp, I know they aren't all great, but I was fortunate enough to go to the best camp in the world, and some of the best times of my life were had there. At the end of each session, I would call home and beg to stay longer. I couldn't stand the idea that camp was going on and I wasn't there.

The camp I went to is called Camp Juliette Low, and is an all girls camp in Cloudland, Georgia on top of Lookout Mountain. It is not affiliated with the Girl Scouts, but was founded in 1922 by Juliette Gordon Low who also founded the Girl Scouts. It is an amazing place and there are many girls there whose mothers and grandmothers attended as well. I have been going through a lot of my old stuff looking for items for the scrapbook I am making, and I have a whole huge box full of letters from camp friends. None of them lived near me, but we managed to write hundreds of letters back and forth all year long. I had some good friends in school, but none of them ever compared to camp friends, some of whom I am still in touch with.

I used to look forward to camp all year long, and it was nice that is was all girls, because we were left to just be ourselves without having to impress anyone, and could be as silly as we liked. The only thing that ever makes me wish I was a kid again is the possibility of going back to camp. They have a reunion weekend there at the beginning of every summer; I really must get back there some time.

So, you may wonder why I haven't mentioned much about the quickly approaching return to flight of the Space Shuttle, being as I am so closely involved with it. I guess it is just that it has been so long that I have a hard time believing that it is actually going to happen. The launch is supposed to be wednesday at 3:51 pm. It will really be great to see a sucessful mission after so long. I am posting a few pictures of some places around the space center that I have taken over the past couple of years. This is Atlantis, still stacked for launch just weeks after the Columbia accident. It was eventually de-stacked, an operation that is not often performed, and was returned to the Orbiter Processing Facility for modifications. It is currently almost ready for launch again and will be ready in case of any problems with the current mission.

This picture is of the Freedom Star, which is one of the boats that goes out to retrieve the spent solid rocket boosters and bring them back. They are then reworked and reused on another vehicle. I made a wrong turn on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station when I went over there to take a training class one night, and I ended up there, where the boats dock, and had to take a picture. The clouds in the sky were pretty interesting that day as well.

This is a photo of Hangar AF on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the very intersting and ominous clouds over it the day I went over there for training. The buildings over there are all small and old and funny looking in a retro sort of way. The buildings were used a lot in the space program in the early days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

So, this is just a little taste of space to get everyone all fired up for the coming launch. I am excited about it, i just hate to get my hopes up too much and then have it delayed (it is always delayed). I can't imagine how hard it must be for the astronauts and their families with the constant uncertainty of when they are going to launch. It drives me nuts and I am not even going into space.

When the orbiter gets back after a successful mission, it will travel
this tow-way back to the Processing facility with it's nose wheel on the blue line. It has been a long time since any orbiter has traveled this tow-way. It will be accompanied by a whole entourage of people and equipment, making sure that everything is as it should be and carefully monitoring the path ahead for any debris that could harm the tires. It will be a long hot walk for many engineers and technicians on that day, with the only shade being the shade formed by the wings of the bird.

Okay, so everyone, be excited for America's return to space. This is a big deal. I will provide photos of the event if I can. This is going to be a historic launch, and in a good way this time.

By the way, click on any picture for a larger view- at least it works for me!

As I went downstairs this morning, I noticed that Ollie, my seventeen year old dog was standing outside at the french doors waiting to be let in. Odd, since there is a dog door that he usually uses. I have posted before about this, how poor little Ollie has the right idea about going pee and poop outside, it is just that his timing is off, now that he moves a lot slower. Well that was definitely the case this morning, when I was confronted with this:

Now I know why he didn't want to come in the dog door! Iiiiccckkk! His timing was way off this time. I had to laugh though, even though it was gross. He is seventeen and a half years old, I consider myself lucky that he at least heads in the right direction when he has to go. Poor baby.

Andy has to work second shift today, so I am home alone until midnight tonight. I thought it would be a good idea to go online and complete the traffic school that I have to take in order not to get points on my driver's license due to the ticket I got a few weeks ago.

In Florida, you can take a four hour traffic class to avoid getting points when you get a ticket. You can only do it once a year, or five times total. You have to pay for the class, but it gives you a small discount on your ticket. It used to be that you had to go to an actual classroom, but now you can do the whole thing online.

I went to one of the approved school's websites and started to sign up for the online class. It costs $29.95, and I started filling in the information. Then I realized that the female sheriff that wrote me the ticket was a dumb ass. She wrote my name completely wrong. Nearly four years ago, when I got married, I changed my last name, and my maiden name became my current middle name. It is a fairly common thing to do. Well, she wrote my middle and last names as my last name, hyphenated, AND left off the last letter of my middle name. So the name she wrote on the ticket bears little resemblance to my actual name. Then, somehow she got the driver's license number wrong as well. She wrote down my old driver's license number from before I was married. In Florida the driver's license number starts with the first letter of your last name. So the old number matched my old last name and also the fake hyphenated one she came up with. Needless to say, I couldn't take the class, because if I put in my correct information, it would not credit me for taking it since the numbers are wrong. I guess I will have to put in a call to the clerk of courts tomorrow to find out what to do. What a pain in the ass.

I have been busy most of the day putting together a scrapbook. I am new to the madness that is scrapbooking, and I don't want to be a "scrapbooker," I just want to document my travels and adventures instead of leaving all my stuff in a box and letting it rot. I have discovered a few things about scrapbooking in my first trips to the store. One is that you can spend your whole life savings on scrapbook stuff if you want to. Someone is getting really rich off this stuff. Another is that the more creative you are, the less you need to spend. And also it is a very messy process- I covered the entire dining room table with crap and most of it is still there.

I am tired now after spending most of the day searching and sorting through photos and scraps and stuff, so I will have to post pictures of some of the pages I made later- if they are good enough!

Cody loves to thrash around on the carpet upside down. He is playing with a little stuffed chipmunk here and having a great time. As you can see he blends perfectly with the rug.

Here are a few disjointed thoughts for the day because that is how I am today, disjointed.

Cody went to the vet this morning to have his glucose checked again and it was good, so it appears that we have the right dosage of insulin. He doesn't have to go back again for a month. He has also lost almost one pound on his new diet. That is a lot for him since he is only 14 pounds. He should be 8 to 10 pounds though. A few more pounds and his tail should come back.

I found out today that Andy is going to get the award that he was nominated for that I posted about here. So that is really good news. I still have to keep it a secret for a few more weeks until it is presented to him. I have done well so far, so I don't have to worry about my big mouth this time.

It has been ungodly hot the last three days. The fourth was the first day in ages that we didn't get any rain and we haven't gotten any since. It has been in the mid nineties and even the pool was 92.7 this afternoon. I went swimming anyways since it was way too hot to run, but I like it much better when it is about 86 or 87 degrees.

Despite my prediction earlier this week about there being no hurricanes to hit this area, I will really have to keep an eye on Dennis. Crap, it is really starting early this year, but at least we are somewhat prepared.

We ordered a new dishwasher on Monday. In my previous post when I wrote about re-doing the kitchen- the dishwasher was the one thing we didn't replace. It was white and we went with stainless steel and black appliances, but the old dishwasher had a little panel in the front that you could change the color of by flipping over, white on one side and almond on the other. I purchased a piece of stainless steel cut to the same size and put that in the front of the dishwasher, and it fit in perfectly with all the new appliances. You can see the old dishwasher with the stainless panel in the picture. The old dishwasher is 13 years old, and doesn't clean that well and is loud. It was time for a new one. It should be here in about nine or ten days and is a black Kitchen Aid model. The stainless cost too much more; I couldn't justify it.

I had a nightmare last night about the drug dealers across the street. I heard them ring the doorbell and it woke me up, but it was just my dream, because the dogs never stirred, and they would have gone nuts if the doorbell rang. I turned on the TV upstairs to monitor the cameras to see if anyone was out there, but all was calm. Scared me though.

I finally got my painting stuff out and started to paint a little last night. I didn't get much done, but it was a start. Hopefully I will have new creations to post pictures of soon. I am quite rusty at it, but it should come back to me.

I want to make a scrapbook. I don't want to be a "scrapbooker" that constantly makes scrapbooks of their entire life- this blog is plenty for me- but I have a whole box of stuff and lots of pictures from some of my adventures like my time in the Virgin Islands and my trip to Italy that I don't want to throw away and I thought a scrapbook would be nice. I bought a bunch of supplies on sale this weekend, so now it is time for me to get creative.

That is about all for now- thanks to everyone for all the great comments; keep them coming!

This weekend Andy and I went on our regular grocery shopping trip, only we went in the afternoon, which we never do. We like to go early in the morning before the crowds, but this weekend we went later because Andy had to stay late at work on Friday night and didn't get home until almost 4 AM. Consequently the lines in the checkout lanes were longer than usual and it brough back memories of a time about three years ago when we were stuck in a super long line at Wal-Mart. That day we stood there and came up with our entire financial and home improvement plan for the next few years right there in the check out lane. We discussed paying off all of our debt, except the house, putting a new roof on the house, remodeling the kitchen, replacing the central a/c, and eventually getting a pool. We decided how we would go about saving the money for the projects, we would set up a separate savings and linked checking account just for our home improvement projects to keep that money out of our regular budget. None of this is very exceptional, we simply daydreamed aloud what we wanted to do. I am sure lots of couples do this every day. The interesting part is that we actually kept to our plan and did every one of the things we planned. We kept to the plan we set up in that checkout aisle the whole time, although I didn't even realize it until the other day. I guess it is time for us to get caught in the checkout line again so we can set up a new plan for the next few years. Anyone know where we can find a slow cashier?

The remodeled kitchen we planned that day at Wal-Mart.

How do I know there will be no hurricanes to hit here this year? Am I a meteorologist? No. A psychic? No. I know there will be no huirricanes to hit this area because Andy and I finally purchased a wonderful generator, so of course we will not need it this year. I think generators are kind of like insurance policies. You have to buy one (at least in this area) but you hope you never need to use it.

GlitterGlamGirl05 asked a very good question earlier, and I am going to answer it and talk about some related things in this post.

She wrote:I meant to ask you, when the shuttle lauches in July, will you be putting in lots of crazy hours to get things ready?

And the quick answer is no, my areas work towards this launch is complete, and things have actually slowed down for us. My husband Andy, on the other hand is having to work a lot of extra hours right now, due to the fact that his job is on the launch pad.

In shuttle processing there are two main groups, horizontal and vertical, or ground ops and launch ops. The ground ops group's work is substantially complete by the time the stack rolls out to the pad, then the launch ops guys take over.

The parts of the vehicle that I currently work on are the OMS Pods and the FRCS. OMS stands for Orbital Manuevering System and consist of the two pods or bumps on the back of the orbiter- shown circled in red on the photo above. The FRCS is the Forward Reaction Control System and can be seen circled in the second picture. Both the pods and the FRCS are removed from the orbiters for maintenance and taken approximately five miles down the road to the facility where I work, the Hypergol Maintenance Facility, or HMF. The pods and FRCS contain thrusters for manuevering the orbiter in space, and a bunch of tanks filled with hypergols to fuel the thrusters. This is what allows the orbiter to do things such as position itself, dock with the space station and come out of orbit to return to earth. Fairly important stuff.

Hypergols are chemicals that when combined will combust without oxygen. This is necessary because of the lack of oxygen in space. Due to the volatility of the hypergols, it is safer to work on the pods at a remote location, and that is what we do. So our work has to be completed well before the launch because the components we work on have to be delivered to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) for installation well before the vehicle can roll out to the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) and stacked vertically with the external tank (the orange thing) and the two solid rocket boosters.

Even when we do get busy, most of the time we can't work too many hours because there are limits on that due to safety reasons. We do work some overtime (I think 60 hours is the limit; 40 hours of regular time plus 20 hours of overtime per week) but also most of the space center is a three shift operation with 24 hour coverage, especially when things get busy.

This picture shows Atlantis, known to us as OV-104, with the FRCS removed. Anytime the FRCS or pods are moved it is a delicate operation due to the tanks full of hypergols, as they are extremely dangerous substances and if something was to go wrong there is the potential for spills or exposure so every move is carefully choreographed and takes quite a few people to carry out. I hope this clears things up and I am very glad that our super busy time is over. That way I get to enjoy the long weekend like everybody else, although poor Andy may have to work. He is there until 3:30 am tonight, and may be going in again tomorrow. Everyone has their turn, though, and it has been slow for them out at the pads for a long time after the Columbia accident.