A quick week

This week seemed to fly past as quickly as the humongous auroras we had yesterday afternoon. It was so dark when I initially walked out to ARO (sadly without camera or tripod), but when I stepped out the doors of the building there was this huge tendril of undulating green light right overhead. I actually got to see more than just the green light, but some reddish aurora as well. Though I didn't take any pictures I did get Calee (linked to at the right side of the page) called early enough so she could make it outside to work her photographic magic on the display.

This week was nice in that I finally got some big issues ironed out for some of my projects. The pace of troubleshooting is so much different here than when I worked spacecraft ops for SOHO at NASA GSFC that it really feels like I'm faunching at the bit (sorry, once I heard the archaic word I could never go back to "chomping") in anticipation of getting problems resolved.

Speaking of NASA, I'm really starting to think a lot about what comes next after I leave the Ice. So much of that will be driven by whether or not my astronaut candidate application is accepted or not that I don't even feel like I can make any recreational travel plans in case I get summoned to immediately return to Houston and begin training. It would be just the slightest bit exciting to leave the South Pole and return to studying for rocket launches, living on the Space Station, doing space walks (EVAs for those in the biz), etc.

Keep your fingers crossed!