DC & NC

Speaking of the Tar Heels, I've been delinquent in posting about my recent visits to DC (Greenbelt, actually) for work and then down to NC to visit Wendy, Jon, and my 1-yr-old nieceling Claire. I was very happy that it worked out to tack a weekend visit in Durham onto the end of what might be my last trip to Goddard for a while.

While at Goddard, we had some crazy thunderstorms one night (even including a tornado warning in the area) that forced an early end to our work, so we went out to a local brewpub-type place. I got the beer sampler (as I wasn't driving), and wow it turned out to be quite the sampler. As you can see, but with quite a bit of help from Claude and Juli, I managed to "sample" them all adequately. While sometimes this type of work on a satellite program involves lots of waiting around for tests to start or for your time to do something, it has been a neat experience getting to work with the NASA folks at this level on a spacecraft program, especially having the opportunity to do hands-on work on the instruments during the integration phases. When something looks a lot more like a satellite, i.e. with solar panels, antenna dishes, thrusters, etc., it's a lot easier to picture it up in space happily collecting data and beaming it back down to earth (*crosses fingers*). Also, it's been a pleasure working with the people out there too, especially our instrument liaisons on the NASA side, Chad and Juli, who have helped all us Lockheed folks have a good time outside of the work when we are out there. Thanks, Chad and Juli!

Juli, me, Claude, and Alex

So, following DC, I drove through South through the sweltering heat to Durham, where I spent Friday through Sunday with my sister and fam. We had a lot of fun hanging out and playing with baby Claire, who is surely going to start walking any second now. Here's Wendy and Claire at theDurham Museum of Life and Science. (see, Greenmen - further proof she's not a phantom sister!)

And Claire hitching a ride from me at the Durham Farmer's Market:


And at the risk of embarassing Jon, here we are getting some indoors exercise (since it was stupidly hot and humid outside) with Gilad:

Not a connoisseur of on-screen exercise regimens, I was remarkably impressed with how enjoyable and effective it was! Perhaps part of that was the comedic value of Gilad himself, who reminded me of some combination of Sylvester Stallone and SNL's Hans 'n Franz. Anyways, it beat going for a run outside or something, but still required a trip to the neighborhood pool afterwards.

Another highlight was getting to go to a Durham Bulls (AAA, Tampa Bay Rays) game - luckily for me they were in town against the Charlotte Knights, the AAA team for the Chicago White Sox. Their stadium in downtown Durham is really nice, and it was a treat to get to go back there again. I have some fun memories going to Bulls games growing up in the area, even back to when they were the single-A team for the Braves playing in the old park of "Bull Durham" fame. Some of the major-league prospects (or not-quites) that I got to see were:

Charlotte: Josh Fields, Danny Richar, Jerry Owens

Durham: Dan Johnson (formerly a popular Oakland A), Joel Guzman, Andy Cannazario, Reid Brignac

In a couple years a few of these guys will almost certainly be starring in the nightly SportCenter highlight reels. Fields was most impressive, hitting a couple doubles as well as 2-run go-ahead homer. Sorry Frank, but AAA stats don't count for your fantasy team. Here's a shot of the DBAP from our seats.

I'm not sure if you can really tell, but there's a temperature sign just above the berm in centerfield, and it's reading 93 here, at about 8pm. When we left at 10pm or so, it had only dropped to 86. Fortunately the DBAP had delicious, cold beer from Foothills Brewing - this is becoming an overly beer-themed post, I fear. Well, beer is not all the DBAP has to offer. There is, of course, the famous sign (now in LF) that I'm sure has tempted many players in the mold of Babe Ruth, Cecil Fielder, or John Kruk in years past:

We wondered out loud how many people have really ever won a salad by hitting the grass. Anyways, a night at the ballpark is always enjoyable for me. And it was great to see Wendy and Jon, and of course Claire.