Wedding Planning Adventures

I don't really want to write a wedding blog. In part because I don't even read wedding blogs (though that's probably about to change), and in part because I don't think I have a single original idea or experience worth reading about. On TheKnot.com, when you do a venue search (which I have done countless times in the last 9 days) they have an option for "Unique/Alternative" venues. This makes me laugh. The fact that it exists as a wedding venue means that, likely, hundreds or even thousands of brides have had exactly the same wedding you are about to plan. And who wants to read about the same damn wedding on 100 different blogs?

Alas, I have done precious little since getting engaged except plan my wedding, so that's all I really have to talk about. First on the list is to find myself a venue available on a date I want to get married. It's not as easy as it sounded. On multiple nights last week I came home, opened my laptop, and was "just going to return this one email" only to find myself 3 hours later, still looking at venues. I currently have 23 venues in my spreadsheet, all of which I have been exchanging emails with, crunching numbers on, and setting up tours for. The venues are different- indoor, outdoor, bring your own caterer, all inclusive, some inclusive, hotel, reception hall, resort, cabin in the woods... we don't know what we want. We don't know what there is available to want.

Houston, if you didn't know, is a massive city. Well the city itself is only ~30 miles across (still large), but the metropolitan area goes on for 50 miles in every direction. I live in a suburb to the south called Pearland. Work is even farther to the south, and boyfriend lives even farther south of that in League City. Here's a Google Map representing some of the venues we are looking at in the greater Houston area:

Last Saturday we drove 65 miles (that's only one way) from my house to the turquoise bubble in Magnolia and stopped at the red bubble in Tomball (red because we didn't like it). Thursday we went to the purple place at the bottom- a cool vineyard location but far from civilization, and really far from the airport. This Saturday we will be going to the green ones. That is around 200 miles round trip, which will take 4 hours all by itself. Plus there's the time spent at each venue.
The due north venues are most attractive for their closeness to the major airport (little blue airplane), especially since 80% of the guest list is coming from out of town. Yes, I am color-coding my Google map.

I'm not gonna lie, I was hoping that one of the ones we saw Saturday would be hands down the right place. Mostly because I'm already tired of driving around town. Spending 3-4 hours in the car on one weekend is enough, now we have to do it again! However, neither of them was the perfect spot, so the hunt continues. If the green bubbles aren't our place, we will go to the pink bubbles on the following Saturday. Those are 2 hotels and an event hall in Houston proper, and are more expensive because of being hotels and being in downtown. They also don't have the rustic, outdoorsy, not-so-fancy vibe we are hoping for . They are super convenient though, for our guests to stumble upstairs after a night of drinking.  And you never know, they might be awesome in person.
If we still have no luck, we'll be scheduling with the blue ones- many of them only offer tours on weekdays so we will have to take a day off of work to visit them together.
I know in the past week I have posted twice about wedding planning and once about work... because that's basically all I do anymore. Once the venue is sorted out, I think I can probably find some time to do something, anything else.

MCC Update: ATV 3 Docking

Artist rendition of ATV.  Source

Today we are docking ATV 3. The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)  is a European Space Agency unmanned cargo carrier. They come up, full of food, clothes, water, science payloads, and more. The crew empties them of all these good things, fills them with trash, and sends them off. Since they are unmanned, they do not need to safely return. Instead they burn up in the atmosphere on re-entry... a giant, space-age incinerator. Two have previously visited space station, hence the number 3.

ATV 3 Launch last Friday morning. Source

Dockings of any kind are a busy day for the ISS Mission Control Team. They are considered complex operations and carry a higher level of risk for the station and crew than an average day, running circles around the Earth. In orbit, spacecraft are going extremely fast (ISS goes about 17,000 miles per hour), so you have two fast moving objects coming together in space. Of course, the relative speed (difference between one and the other) should be very small, but that doesn't mean something couldn't go wrong. To be sure that everything is as safe as possible, we do a lot of advance preparations.

At the Spartan console, we have 12 rotating joints: 2 TRRJs in blue (Thermal Radiator Rotary Joint- which move the external cooling radiators to get the best heat rejection angle), 2 SARJs in pink (Solar Alpha Rotary Joint- which move 4 solar arrays each in one dimension) and 8 BGAs in yellow (Beta Gimbal Assembly- which each move a single solar array along a different axis from the SARJ). Between the SARJ and BGA we can point the solar arrays pretty dead on at the sun to maximize power generations.

Source- follow this link for more truss and component details. And an interactive video.

 Well, usually we can point them at the sun. However, when a visiting vehicle like ATV is coming in, we have to park them at specific angles.This is for a couple reasons. We need them to be positioned where the thrusters from either the ISS attitude control system or the ATV attitude control system will not damage the arrays. Thrusters can be powerful and we have concerns both of them breaking the array structure, which could be dangerous to the crew if a broken solar array bit hits a module. We also need to protect them from being eroded by the thruster blast, diminishing their power generation capabilities. We also have concerns called "multipathing"- the communication system of the visiting vehicle works a lot like an aircraft's radar to find the range to the ISS as it is approaching and steer the unmanned craft in. The arrays and radiators are shiny and reflective, which could cause the signal from the vehicle to bounce off and cause the ATV to have no idea where it really is in space. Bad news for docking! Since we position the arrays in what is probably not the best place for power generation, we also have to be concerned with power limitations- some equipment on-board will need to be powered down to ensure we stay within our power generation abilities.
Starting at 10am today (Wednesday), I'll be in mission control, helping to prepare the ISS for ATV 3 docking. You can also watch the docking live on NASA-TV starting at 3:45 CDT or at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html.

Crazy Weekend

Since getting engaged just last weekend, I feel as if I have gone down the rabbit hole. I am now one of those girls who spends hours on The Knot, cramming wedding knowledge into my head. Venues, floral arrangements, party favor ideas. Thank god for Google. I know they're becoming the devil now, or something, but I literally cannot imagine doing this without them- Google docs, Google mail, Google searches. A whole lot of Google in my life.

 My crazy weekend started Thursday night. I went to see the midnight showing of The Hunger Games with a couple coworkers. We pre-ordered tickets (the movie was sold out by Thursday afternoon so it turned out to be a good call) and got there at 10pm. When we arrived there wasn't a soul in sight. We went into the lobby and same thing. Then we found out why... the theater had been open since 5pm for seating, so everyone was already inside. Luckily there were only 3 of us, and we found 3 together pretty quickly. The movie was fun, but LATE. We got home at 3am, and I slept in a little before getting up at 10 to head to the office.

Nicole and me at The Hunger Games. Like dorks.

Friday night Dan and I took it easy and made some homemade meatless Lent pizza on a store bought wheat crust. Pasta sauce, caramelized onions, spring mix, mozzarella, goat, and eggs cracked on top. Easy and delicious!

Homemade pizza, best easy dinner idea ever!

 After a week of venue searching and emailing, we went on a couple of visits last Saturday. We had to be at the first appointment at 10, a 90 min drive from my house. So we left home at 8:30, stopped for McDonald's breakfast (a guilty pleasure, for sure), and hit the road. An hour and 25 minutes of driving later, we made it to our destination.  It was beautiful- a big wooden building with beautiful grounds in the back.

 I definitely loved this place, but as I said, the location is just awful: in a small town without much in the way of hotels, restaurants, or bars. Not much to occupy our guests. After some exploring the town we grabbed lunch at a restaurant Dan found on urbanspoon (ok, but not excellent) and then had another appointment. The place was nice, but not exactly what we're looking for...I can't really explain why I didn't like it, objectively it was pretty and I like those chandeliers, but we both felt "meh" afterwards. Shrug.

After that we had the looong drive back to my place. We both flopped down on the couch and thought about napping, but eventually got up and drove (again!) the half hour to Dan's place. We were both pretty wiped so we had a quiet night of grilling and watching TV. All I do in this town is drive.

Sunday we got up and went on a run. What was supposed to be 5 miles turned into a 2 mile run out and 2 mile walk back. I got dizzy, probably dehydrated, so we took it slow back. It has gotten much hotter and I think I hadn't prepared adequately for the return of summer running (ugh!). After that I went home to clean. Well not clean, more just clear clutter. I am hosting a Passover seder for around 10 people next Friday, so I am already preparing for that. House needs to be presentable and I have tons to cook.

After that, I had some volunteering to do. My synagogue runs a non-profit that provides housing, food, and assistance to people coming to Houston's medical center. The Medical Center district here has world renowned doctors, so people with serious illnesses come from all over the world to receive treatment. Often they are far from home, traveling all alone, and must stay for weeks or months on end. The organization my temple runs, called Aishel House, takes people of any religion or nationality, puts them up in apartments they own, brings them food, arranges transportation to doctors appointments, the airport, and anywhere else they need to go. It's really incredible what they do... all the food is cooked by my rabbi's wife (who has 11 children of her own), funded by donations, and staffed by volunteers. Their main fundraiser is a benefit concert. For the past 2 years I have helped with set-up and cleanup for the event. Sunday I got there at 4pm and helped moving tables, setting up displays, taking donations, directing the junior volunteers (a bunch of high school students getting their community service hours... I think they originally thought I was a junior volunteer when they stuck me with them. Sorry, no, I'm a grown up!) and did a lot of heavy lifting and running back and forth through the venue. The next morning I woke up SO SORE. Every inch of my body hurts. So I guess volunteering is good for the spirit and the body, huh? I wish I had worn some kind of fitness tracker or pedometer to see how much I really worked. Feels like a lot!
I got home after midnight and fell into bed. And slept soundly until... 7:30. Rats!

Nerds In Love- Our Engagement Story

If you haven't read How I Met Your Mother My Fiancé, do that first!

Earlier in the week (I think Monday or Tuesday) Dan asked me if we could have a date night after my shift on Friday. Sounded good to me. I was a little suspicious, because as I mentioned in my last post, our first date was on a Friday night after my evening shift too. So Friday afternoon I went off to work. Dan employed some misdirection, telling me it wasn't a date really and that I could invite the rest of the flight control team, if people wanted to go out after the shift. Then, when I texted to tell him that handover was starting which meant I was almost done, he went from slightly sneaky to extremely shady. He asked me to go upstairs to the historic Apollo mission control room to "do something" for him. Now extremely suspicious, I decided not to test his lying powers and just let him have that one.

Historic Mission Control

I got out of work, headed upstairs, and there he was! So, ok, I wasn't really surprised that he was there. What exactly was I going to do for him upstairs, at midnight, if this wasn't it?

There he is, texting me from one floor up. Liar.

But I was still a little shocked that it was actually happening and I went into a bit of sensory overload. I noticed his helpers- Jen and Shawn. That was unexpected, since I had also talked to Jen earlier in my shift. She works in my group and was my on-call power analyst for the night and had called to ask about a potential Debris Avoidance Maneuver we might have to plan. While on the phone she also employed some misdirection that I didn't catch (because I didn't guess she would be in on it). Her husband Shawn has a fancy camera and is responsible for all these pretty pictures.

"Stephanie, you know I love you." "Yeah..."

So he handed me a bouquet of flowers and told me he loved me. Then he got down on one knee and popped open a little plastic space shuttle model, which had the ring inside. Still overwhelmed, I just nodded and he handed me the ring to put on. I spent a lot of the next few minutes staring at my hand.

Then I started to notice other details. Dan was dressed in a white shirt and skinny black tie, just like the Apollo flight controllers used to. The space shuttle model was hand built and painted, and he had made some modifications to it to hold the ring inside. And the best part... The screen in the Apollo room usually plays a slideshow of moon landing pictures and related Apollo snapshots. But he had gotten someone to put on a slideshow of pictures of us. So cool! Every slide said 'Will you marry me?"

"Did you steal all these from my blog?"

Jen brought root beer (couldn't very well drink real alcohol at work) and we hung out and drank as I picked up all the little details and stared at my hand a little more. Its so shiny!

Then Jen and Shawn had to get home so they could run Warrior Dash today. Since I was at work and a couple of my friends were on console, I stopped in the current mission control room (which I had just left half and hour before) to show off my bling. Then Dan and I headed out to a bar and had a drink while we texted everyone. It was after midnight in Houston, which means after 1am where most of our family and friends live on the east coast. We got in touch with a few people and had a ceremonial Facebook-status changing. We are big nerds. If that was not overwhelmingly obvious.

I know he couldn't make it a total surprise, but I am still shocked and amazed at all the planning and orchestrating, and little touches he pulled off. That room has so much history. It's the room they controlled Apollo 11 from, the first moon landing. And it's the room where I said yes. I wonder if any other NASA nerd couples have gotten engaged in that same room, or if we are the first.

Special thanks to Shawn Murphy for the spectacular pictures and to Jen Murphy for the misdirection and bringing a picnic! You guys are awesome! :-)

Nerds In Love

Sorry no proposal story yet. I'm waiting on the pictures. In the meantime, here is the story of how we met, and how we started dating. I knew Dan for 2 years before we had our first date, so it's a long love story. Here we go...

July 2008-- I have just moved to Houston, fresh out of college, for the job. I am trying a long distance relationship with my college boyfriend, who is still in school. A coworker drags me out for a night on the town. At a bar, we meet up with some other NASA folks. Dan is one of them, out celebrating a friend's birthday. Funny thing, I don't remember him. He doesn't remember meeting me either. Early in our relationship I told him a story about that night, and we both realized the other was there. No it's not because I was drunk, and I remember several other details from the night, but he wasn't one of them. Luckily the universe would give me a chance to correct that oversight.

Halloween at NASA in 2008 in Apollo mission control. Can you spot me?

August 2008-- The same coworker (his name is Naveen, it'll be easier to call him that later) who dragged me out last time begs me to join him at a party. Being new in town, I have no excuse. Being a lame grandma in a 21 year old's body, I wish I did. While I am sitting awkwardly (my usual behavior in a room of people I don't know) a social-butterfly-type guy comes over to chat with me.  He tells me about his co-ed softball team, and I give him my number in case he needs another girl. Soon I officially join the team. I meet Dan again there, only we think its the first time. I remember thinking that he is the only decently cute guy on the team. I mentally lament the slim prospects for my dating life, and how I hardly ever meet eligible bachelors.

Softball team- Is that a rocket on your shirt or are you just happy to see me?

We spend the next couple years playing side by side in the outfield. I tell jokes as we play and he laughs, even though they are mostly bad jokes.My college boyfriend becomes my ex in December 2009. As previously stated, I don't think I know any eligible bachelors so I do some internet dating in those first few single months. It's exhausting and I'm not finding what I'm looking for, so I have all but given up by April 2010, when softball picks back up for the spring season. I see Dan for the first time since becoming single. The first thing that I notice is that he has the most amazing hair. He's let it grow out since I've seen him last, and it has these perfect curls. I reach out over the dugout fence to touch his hair when he walks up and he stands on tiptoes to make it easier for me to reach. I love running my fingers through that hair. I decide, then and there, that I will date him.

One of our first dates- Drive In Movie

Weeks go by, and I find ways to show up where he will be. Softball games, happy hours, movie nights. He makes no moves, although I feel like I am throwing myself at him. Finally one night I get a bit too tipsy on margaritas at happy hour and he takes me to his house to sober up. Still he makes no moves. He drives me back to my car later that night. I figure he's probably not interested, so I go for it. As I get out of the car, I turn and say "I've been thinking... we should date." He stammers something about going out of town, so I get in my car and close the door. That was close enough to rejection for me, I thought. But the following week, when we're both back in town (I had gone to my sister's college graduation and he had gone to his cousin's wedding), he IMs me and we set up a date. A week later we meet for drinks at midnight, when I get off my evening console shift. It is pouring rain and quite past his bedtime, but he shows up anyways.
The next night we have our first official date. Before this date, I met up with some coworkers, including Naveen. When I tell them about this date, Naveen remembers Dan from that night at the bar and says "You're going to marry him." I protest, after all we've only been on one date. I meet up with Dan for the lamest house party ever- the host had his whole family there and it was much more tame than the bash we were expecting. After such a letdown, he thinks I'll probably never date him again. I think I might fall in love with him. He surprises me by kissing me in the driveway when we leave the party. I think those must be the fireworks all the movies talk about. We go out to a bar after the party. We hold hands under the table the whole time. That was May 14, 2010.

Emily's wedding in January

Sometimes I think about all the dominoes that fell into place to get us together. The party I didn't want to go to. The softball team I never would have joined. The timing of getting dumped, and of giving up on J-Date, of seeing him again. It starts even earlier really, two kids from thousands of miles apart. Our paths didn't cross in college, where many people find "the one," and they wouldn't have crossed at all if we both weren't giant nerds who wanted to be astronauts. As if every wrong turn and every right one, led me to Dan. The man I'm going to marry. See?

Me and my fiancé! I will not get tired of saying that!

I know I'm teasing you by not telling the proposal story, but I am still waiting for pictures so you'll have to hold on a little longer. But, as a bonus, there are a couple elements of this story that will come up again in the proposal story. So now you're prepared...

Photo credits: 1. Paul Reichert and 4. Blue Jade Studio