I can't believe this is the same place I woke up in this morning. The nasty rainy weather has completely moved out and it was beautiful this afternoon. That is one of the nice things about Florida- we don't generally get days on end of icky weather, it just comes in spurts. And hopefully the weather will stay fair, because we have a launch scheduled for tomorrow at 11:38 am Eastern time.

There are lots of interesting things about the upcoming launch of Discovery for STS-120. One of the most interesting to me is the roles that women fill in this mission. The Associated Press explains it like this:

It will be the first time in the 50-year history of spaceflight that two women are in charge of two spacecraft at the same time.

This is no public relations gimmick cooked up by NASA. It's coincidence, which pleases shuttle commander Pamela Melroy and station commander Peggy Whitson.

"To me, that's one of the best parts about it," said Melroy, a retired Air Force colonel who will be only the second woman to command a space shuttle flight. "This is not something that was planned or orchestrated in any way."

"This is a really special event for us," Melroy said. "... There are enough women in the program that coincidentally this can happen, and that is a wonderful thing. It says a lot about the first 50 years of spaceflight that this is where we're at."

Whitson, the first woman to be in charge of a space station, arrived at the orbital outpost on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Oct. 12. She flew there with two men, one a Russian cosmonaut who will spend the entire six months with her.

Before the launch, an official presented her with a traditional Kazakh whip to take with her. It's a symbol of power, Whitson explained, because of all the horseback and camel riding in Kazakhstan.

Smiling, she said she took the gift as a compliment and added: "I did think it was interesting though, that they talked a lot about the fact that they don't typically let women have these."

At least it wasn't a mop. The whip stayed behind on Earth.

Eleven years ago, just before Shannon Lucid rocketed to the Russian space station Mir, a Russian space official said during a live prime-time news conference that he was pleased she was going up because "we know that women love to clean."

"I really haven't heard very much like that at all from the Russian perspective," Whitson said in an interview with The Associated Press last week. "Russian cosmonauts are very professional and having worked and trained with them for years before we get to this point, I think makes it better because then it doesn't seem unusual to them either."

In other mission news, those of you who are big fans of Star Wars will be excited to know that the original lightsaber used by Mark Hamill in Return of the Jedi will be flown to the International Space Station and then will return to earth in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars franchise. Whoopee.

Anyway, we are hoping for good weather tomorrow to see this bird off. I will post photos, video or whatever I get from work at the time if she goes.

Ugh. It is not even five in the morning and it is already pouring outside for the nine millionth time this year. What's that thing about rainy days and Mondays? Yuck. I hope it isn't raining where you are- unless you like for it to, that is.

Could it be near? Could it actually be around the corner?

This weekend, especially on Sunday the weather was, for a change, almost bearable. The temperatures were below the upper nineties and the humidity was reasonable as well. It was downright comfortable almost.

There was no way it could last, but incredibly this morning there was more of the same. The weather was mild and very breezy. Was it a dream? Nope. This afternoon the reverie was interrupted by the sound of nothing less than a monsoon of pouring rain. There goes our low humidity. Kiss those mild temperatures goodbye. Boo hoo. I guess we'll have to wait a little longer to get anything more than our very first glimpse of fall weather or even a tiny preview of less summery weather than what we've had. Ugh.

We have been experiencing the most fabulous sunrises lately. I posted the one from yesterday this morning, and then on the way to work today I took these shots of the mesmerizing skies. So beautiful. These were just taken with the point-and-shoot camera I keep with me- not the digital SLR, but I think they are still very pretty.

This picture was actually taken yesterday morning when I first got to work, but I thought it was such a pretty morning sky and thought I would share. This is the sky over the industrial area of Kennedy Space Center.

We had the whole day to laze around doing essentially nothing due to Tropical Storm Ernesto. The space center was closed for the day and Andy and i have been hanging out on the couch with the dogs watching the rain. The storm is now a tropical depression and we haven't seen mush in the way of wind yet, but the center of rotation hasn't gotten here yet. I think it has pretty much fizzled out, so I guess I will be back to work in the morning. It sure was nice to have the day off, though.

I got to see something pretty neat at work today; a waterspout, which is basically a tornado over water was right in our area so I grabbed a camera and got a shot or two. Amazing, isn't it?

I don't know if you have seen it on the news or anything, but central Florida has been plagued by a rash of gigantic brush fires after experiencing some severe drought this year. There have been massive fires covering many acres, and big enough to jump over major interstates and roads, but fortunately even though many homes in the area have been threatened, I don't think any have been lost yet. The major impact to the area has been the smoke, especially at night and in the early morning when it settles lower in the atmosphere, and creates blinding or whiteout conditions on roadways causing multicar pileups and road closings. There have been a couple of days this week that the smoke has been pretty thick on the way to work, but nothing like what it is from those coming to our county from Orlando. I am just thankful that we live on an island, Merritt Island. Even though the fires can jump a highway or interstae, there is no way that they will jump a bridge, so beside the smoke danger, we are going to be okay here.

Wilma is long gone now and the weather behind her is much cooler and beautiful. It was in the low fifties this morning and the air was much drier. This is the first time we have seen temps below 69 or so in almost a year! Lucky me, I don't have to go to work again today, because Kennedy Space Center is still closed. Andy had to go in this morning at eight, because he is a member of the DART team- Disaster And Recovery Team that has to go in first to asses the damage after the storm and make sure it is safe for everyone to return to work. Hopefully he will be home soon. I have been around the neighborhood and most of the mess is cleaned up already- just some small trees down and the like. The worst I have seen is at a small business just up the street, Walter's Orchids. The entire greenhouse is completely smashed flat. It is pretty sad.

Well Andy just made it back from KSC and work starts back at six am tomorroow, so this will be our last "free day." The windows are open, the day is beautiful and I for one, intend to enjoy it!

I say almost aftermath because although the rain has stopped, the wind is still blowing quite hard. We went out and started dragging some of the fallen branches around and surveying the damage. It looks like damage to the house was limited to a window screen being torn, and damage to the yard includes the loss of a few plants, a lot of palm fronds and some papayas. Click on the photo above for a slideshow of the pictures I took around the house when we finally emerged.

Well, I think we are in the full fury of Wilma, as least as bad as it is going to get here. There is a little water coming in our french doors even though there is a huge covered porch over them. Our papaya tree is losing a lot of leaves, and there is all kinds of crap in the pool including half of one of our plants that broke off and fell in. According to our electronic rain guage we have had 3.94 inches of rain since midnight. The wind started blowing through the dog door a little while ago, and I had to close it off, but the weird thing was that the wind that came in had a really strange smell to it. I guess it is the smell of the hurricane.

OOHHHH- our big heavy cabinet on the back porch almost blew over and we had to make a rescue mission to save it. There is starting to be the sound of debris hitting the house. It is getting a little scary out there. We are now up to 4.29 inches of rain and counting.

Hurricane Wilma has been moving closer all night and luckily we still have power and get some "breaks" of less wind and rain between feeder bands of the storm. We are under tornado watches now for the next couple of hours and one touched down last night in an area called Cocoa Village that is only a couple of miles from here. We saw a transformer explode last night in the distance and flash blue-green light. The power flickered off here about five or six times, but always came back.

If the storm wasn't enough, last night I was brushing my hair and something went dreadfully wrong with one of the muscles in my upper back near my left shoulder. It is a pulled muscle or something like that, but more excruciating than I have ever felt. It feels like I am being stabbed in the back of my left lung. It was almost imposssible to sleep or sit or move, etc. So I have that to deal with as well. If I find the perfect position to sit and don't move at all then it is okay, but I can't just stay still all the time.

The worst of the hurricane isn't expected to be here for another couple of hours, but it looks like we already have some trees down in the neighborhood, as you can see in the picture I took out the window. All in all we are faring pretty well so far; I will keep everyone posted.

We don't get snow days here in Florida, but tomorrow we are off work for a hurricane day, which is the only natural disaster we get out of work for. Believe it or not, last year we got ten days off work paid for hurricanes. This year this is the first time we have been able to stay home for a storm, and the whole county and a few neighboring counties are shut down with no school and no government offices and most businesses closed. The storm is supposed to move fast and by Tuesday the weather is projected to be nice, and it is even going to be cooler finally.

I am not really worried about this hurricane. It is coming from the west coast of Florida, and we are on the east coast and it is extremely unlikely to do much damage in our area. I seriously doubt we will even lose power- we are on one of the strongest power grids I know of. Even last year after all the hurricanes we went through, we only lost power in one out of the three of them, and then only for about 24 hours, while many around us were without for weeks. I think someone important, like a high ranking person in the power company's organization lives on our power grid. That is the only thing I can think of. I mean last year, our power was brought back up before the nearby grocery store's, and the gas stations' and everything.

Whatever happens with Wilma, we are prepared. We have a generator standing by in case of any outages, it has it's own electrical box where it plugs right in to the house. We have a window a/c unit that we can use so that we don't have to run the whole house central a/c on the generator, which would probably work, but would suck down a lot of gas. We have 20 gallons of gas in cans and both vehicles nearly full for the generator. We have flashlights and batteries and radios and rabbit ears for the TV if the cable goes. We have plenty of groceries and propane for the gas grill as well. So we are all set. No need to worry at all. I am just going to sit back and enjoy the fact that I don't have to go to work tomorrow!

It seems these recent hurricanes are devasting the space program, one center at a time. Last year we had Charley, Frances, and Jeanne, each of which had some impact on Kennedy Space Center, then this year Katrina devasted the Michoud Assembly Facility where our external tanks are made and NASA's Stennis Space Center in coastal Mississippi. Now Hurricane Rita is on a path toward Houston, home to Nasa's Johnson Space Center and our Mission Control Center. Today they closed down all operations in Houston and turned over the International Space Station operations to the Russians for the duration of the storm. Many computer systems were shut down, and everyone at JSC was sent home from work to prepare for the storm. If only we could get a break and get back to the business of human space flight!

We are getting a ton of rain and overall general nastiness right now from Tropical Storm Ophelia. The forecast track still shows it moving to the north of us, but if you watch the movement on the radar, it appears to be moving due west right toward our county. We are the little "bump" on the east coast of Florida. We'll see. If there is anything I have learned in the past two hurricane seasons it is that the forecasters don't have a clue where the storms are going until they are bearing down on land.

We have been enjoying some lovely Jeep-top-down kind of days lately. I say that because I am a Jeep owner and there could be no better weather for taking the top down than what we have had. The skies have been crisp and blue, perfect for the final launch of the Titan Rocket that we saw last night blazing against the sky. Our next door neighbor works for the Titan program and yesterday was his last day, as the program has come to an end. Anyways, back to the weather- it was so beautiful that Andy (my husband) and I spent the whole day almost out in and around the pool basking in the sun. The dogs came out to join us and we brought our parrot, Charley, out in his outdoor cage so he could be with us. I took a break from swimming for a while and went for my usual run around the neighborhood. Amazingly, there are still a lot of new roofs being put on, due to damage from last year's extremely active hurricane season. I hope that this year will not be a repeat of that, even though we missed around ten days of work (paid) for the hurricanes last summer, it was not much fun evacuating with all of our animals. Well, I don't have much to say about today; we did the grocery shopping and grilled some chicken and other meat, and besides the swimming and hanging out by the pool that is about it. I got a lot of sun, and am looking more and more like an island girl (after all tan fat looks better than white fat). I know, it is a really boring post, but I think maybe I am a boring person. I guess there are worse things in life; I would rather be boring than scandalous, but in my everyday life there is just not all that much to write about right now.

I woke up early this morning, and my husband and I did the grocery shopping. We like to go early before it gets crowded. Then I took a trip to the natural foods store, the Sunseed Food Co-op in Cape Canaveral, to get a few things and on the way back from there I just had to stop at Cocoa Beach for a few minutes, just to smell the salt air and all. The surf was pretty high and there were a lot of surfers out near the Cocoa Beach Pier. I stopped at Ron Jon's Surf Shop while I was down there too, because I had won a twenty-five dollar gift certificate from them in their "Locals Only" giveaway back at the beginning of the year. The place was packed with tourists as usual , but not as bad as a couple of weeks ago during Spring Break. You could hardly move in there then. I got a new pair of navy blue Reef King Smoothy Flip Flops and a set of Tiki salt and pepper shakers. I now have six different pairs of Reef flip flops, but I wear them all the time (except at work) much to the chagrin of my podiatrist. I tell him they are comfortable because they are squishy and let my bunions hang out. I don't know what he has against flip flops. One of my co-workers goes to the same podiatrist and also lives in flip flops. The doctor even caught him out walking his dog in flip flops; he just happened to be driving by.

Well, we made it through Hurricane Charley pretty well. There was a lot of leaf litter and debris strewn around and a couple of trees, fences and signs down. Basically just a lot to clean up. It is stormy again today. Our power fickered out and browned out quite a few times last night and continued to do so again this morning. We have a back up power supply for our computers and router, but we finally decided to get another small one for the TV and DVR/cable box. When the power fickers, the box takes about ten minutes to reset itself, and sometimes "hangs up" and has to be unplugged to get it working again. The new uninterruptible power supply should solve that problem.

Well, here I am , waiting for Hurricane Charley to come across. The wind is terrible from the south and we have seen something contacting a power line near us, possibly a tree, that sends up sparks of blue and pink. Amazingly we still have power right now, although the cable is gone. There is a horrible blowing outside, and the storm is not here yet. What a mess. And the next two tropical depressions are following the same track. I think we will just leave all of our plants and patio furniture tied up to the porch like it is, if it doesn't blow away.

The north part of Florida, where my parents and sister live is getting pounded by tropical Storm Bonnie right now, although I heard it was just downgraded to a tropical depression. And we are faced with the possibility of being hit by Hurricane Charley late Friday or sometime Saturday. At work we had to cover all of the flight hardware (space shuttle pieces) with plasic in case the roofs leak and plastic bag our computers, tie things down, etcetera. We are still not sure if we will even go in to work tomorrow. We have to call the Duty Office after Eight tonight to find out. The space center has its own method of categorizing hurricanes, based on the ammount of time before 50 knot winds are expected. When it gets down to 12 hours until 50 knot winds are expected (also called HURCON II) they send everyone but the Hurricane Rideout Team home. I sure hope we get the day off tomorrrow, but it isn't looking good right now. If we do have to work, there isn't really anything we can do anyway, because everything is all wrapped up in preparation for the hurricane. And we have our own hurricane prep to do on our own houses. We are hoping that there won't be much damage, but we still have to prepare.