cheating

Well, the moon came up today, and it's so easy to see outside that it feels like you're cheating walking around and working on gear outside. I actually missed the darkness somewhat in that the great sweep of the Milky Way was significantly with all that extra light bouncing around the atmosphere now.

I made a step toward a potential future option yesterday. Last year I applied for a really cool job with United Space Alliance in Houston, Texas. The position works with Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs, a.k.a. space walks) and has a whole lot of cool requirements once you get hired. You must get SCUBA certified within a year, foreign language skills are highly preferable, you get crew rated on the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU = rocket pack) used in orbit, and you also get certified to fly in the weightless simulating aircraft (the famous old one was dubbed the Vomit Comet). On top of that, the job requires 3-month stints to be spent working with international partners in Moscow, Russia. Hello...awesome! Anyhow, hopefully I'll hear something positive back from USA, because this would be pretty much as good as I envision it getting working in Houston, save as an astronaut. I updated my resume and submitted it, and I guess it's just yet another waiting game from here on out.