auburnspacegirl’s blog

My friend Erica was in town this week, and I finally got to meet the newest member of her family…little Joshua.  What a precious little bundle!   And, he sure does love his mama!

Erica got married last year and moved to Germany with her husband Zach who is an F-16 pilot in the Air Force (how cool is that?!).  They had little Joshua 4 months ago.  She and I met for lunch on an unplanned day off from work last week, and it was so worth playing hooky for.  It was a great visit, and I don’t think I’ve ever met a more serene and happy baby!  It was fun getting to catch up on Erica’s stories of what it’s like living abroad in Europe, being a new mom, and venturing into a home-based photography business.  It was great to hear that everyone is healthy and happy. 

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in late September, so Heath and I decided to take a trip to the Houston Zoo.  We had a blast looking at all the animals, and - boy! there sure were lots of them!  We were exhausted after 3 hours of walking around, and there were still areas we did not get to.  It was definitely a well-done zoo.

My personal favorite was the elephant and the orangutans.  We got to meet Thai - the male elephant - right about the time he was getting his afternoon cool down shower.  The zoo attendant hollered to him to come close to the edge where she began to spray him with a huge fire hose.  He loved it!  He was opening his mouth to take a drink, and even stuck his trunk up to the fast-flowing stream to suck in water.  After he had reserved enough to his liking, he proceeded to spray it over his dusty back.   

There was a mama oragutan and two babies.  The youngest really loved hamming it up for the crowd on her giant swingset.  The “teenager” sat off to the side sipping water from a jug.  Even mama got into the action at one point and showed us her deep purple tongue.  They are always entertaining!

We saw lots of other wild-looking, interesting animals.  The giraffes were eating a snack of lettuce, the lioness sat right by the viewing window to show off her pretty teeth (yikes!), and the monkeys were hyper and putting on a show.  We also saw a completely white (but not albino) alligator, Nemo, tons of HUGE (eww!) snakes, seals swimming, pink flamingos, and a really large tortoise.  It was a great day!

On August 24th, Christy and Blake welcomed little Ella Caroline into the world.  She is a happy and healthy precious little package!  I can’t wait until I can meet her! 

And…not wasting anytime at all (as any proud, AU parents would do)…Ella has been introduced to her first Auburn game while sporting the tiniest of all Auburn paraphenalia to support her future school’s team.  :)  I’m thinking she’s the cutest cheerleader out there, especially in her proud daddy ’s arms! 

Ok, so I’ve been in a rut on my postings lately.  Chalk it up to really busy missions and postflight work.  I haven’t felt like sitting down to my computer at home after hours of doing that at the office. 

One day last week though, I was walking out to the utility room to start a load of laundry when, much to my surprise, I spotted a beautiful, huge, bright green, shiny banana pepper suspended from the one lonely pepper plant stalk.  

 The most miraculous thing about this is that I had been trying to grow several herbs, peppers and tomatoes all summer but hadn’t had much luck.  Unfortunately, either I don’t have a green thumb, didn’t plant the seeds appropriately or the heavy rains all summer drowned the plants.  I haven’t seen much of a crop this year, other than from my large basil “bush” (it’s taking over!)   It’s been a little disappointing for me because I was really looking forward to watching all the plants grow and flourish and reap the benefits of it’s fruit.  I managed to grow lots of vegetation…just no “fruit”. 

So…the revelation of the one lone banana pepper was a great surprise!  Now, the dilemma is that I can’t seem to bring myself to pick it and eat it!  Isn’t that the irony? 

Well…this is about as real as it gets for me.  This week, I had the wonderful opportunity of experiencing what it’s like to be in the center of causing a launch delay! 

Last weekend, the guys at KSC had trouble getting a good leak check of the crew cabin on the shuttle that is at the pad currently.  The launch was scheduled for this coming Tuesday, and once most of the work is completed on the pad, they do an integrity check on all the hatches to ensure they aren’t leaking.  It isn’t intended to be a leak check of the hardware I am partially responsible for, but unfortunately, all signs were pointing towards an issue with one of our positive pressure relief valves (PPRVs).  These valves are used in launch, throughout the mission and in landing if there is an overpressure event in the cabin, and the air has to be relieved overboard.  It’s a fairly big deal, as they are considered emergency hardware.  If they fail to function, the crew cabin can become overpressurized and essentially burst.  (Not a good day!) 

By Tuesday night, we were scrambling to get a story together to tell our management.  We had  A LOT of “help” from A LOT of higher up’s this week, which is also not another situation you want to be in.  Turns out, the head guy we had to convince was sending out emails to headquarters before we were even able to bring forward the story with the opinion that we could assume the risk and leave the ”bad” hardware in place since there is a backup valve.  He obviously didn’t fully understand the hardware or the failure scenarios, so we had to go in on Wednesday with a very unpolished story and a whole lot of unknowns and convince a very intimidating NASA community to change out the valve.  Luckily, they agreed.  Then, we had problems testing the new valve!  So, they jumped over and started testing the 2nd valve and accidentally left tooling on that they weren’t supposed to and almost damaged the 2nd valve!  Uggh!  We finally got that worked out and had a good replacement valves, so that work began.

By this point, I was getting really nervous.  I had planned to go to Buffalo on Thursday night with a few of my teammates to checkout the bad valve that was being removed from the shuttle.  By 9am Thursday morning, I got a call that they had already removed the valve, and the guys were flying up on the USA plane and starting the work that day!  Unfortunately, because I am a NASA employee, I couldn’t ride the contractor plane, so I had to fly commercial.  The only flights available were out of Intercontinental airport, which is at least an hour drive from my house (on a good traffic day).  I had less than 2 hrs to go home, pack, drive to the airport and catch my flight.  I had to race across town in pouring down rain, and the clock was ticking.  When I finally made it to the airport, I found out that the funding had not gone through on my travel orders yet, so I had to use my credit card to pay for the ticket.  Then I forgot about the “no liquids” restriction as I was standing in the security line, so I had to stuff all of my toiletries into a quart sized bag in about 20 seconds.  Of course, I was pulled aside for a bag check.  As the security officer was taking her time, I could hear my name being paged over the speakers.  I ended up running to my gate and stepped on the plane that left at 12:15 at 12:14!  Needless to say, I got my exercise for the day!  Then, we sat on the runway for 20 minutes which made us late for all of our connecting flights in Detroit.  I had to run through that airport and barely made it to my next flight.  Then, the caterer opened the door after they had it secured for departure and broke the pin.  Maintenance had to come out to replace it, and 30 minutes later, we were ready to head out.  The tug that pulled the plane away from the gate then broke, so we had to wait for a new one to be delivered.  By this point, I thought I had some wiggle room because the team decided not to work on the valve that night but start on Friday morning.  When I got into Buffalo and turned on my phone, I had 3 messages from the guys asking where I was because they decided to start the troubleshooting after all.  I told them the story and said I would race to get my rental car and head down.  When I got to the rental car counters, it was a madhouse!  Even though I had reservations, I had to wait 45 minutes because they were out of cars!  Oh brother!!!  At this point, I just had to laugh. 

I missed the first part of the inspection, but they were nice enough to wait until Friday morning when I could be there to witness the more invasive inspections.  By 8:30 Friday morning, we had solved the mystery.  We found a tiny little rice-sized piece of teflon or nylon debris on the sealing surface of the valve.  Although it was good to find the culprit, it wasn’t good to know that we can get debris in the valves after all the checkouts are complete.  We have a lot more work to go do, but hopefully we’ll resolve it. 

By 9:30, we all had changed our flights, and I was back at the airport again for a noon flight.  I finally walked in the door at 8:00 last night.  It was a very long day of travel, and I am sooooo thankful to be at home and have a few days to rest before gearing up again to support the mission.  On my way home, a coworker called to inform me that the launch had been delayed by a day because they didn’t have time to complete all the work from changing out our valve.  After all that, I couldn’t believe it!  The good thing, though, is that we at least know we have good hardware installed now, and we are ready for flight!

I have officially crossed the “insane-cake-baker/decorator/engineer” line! 

Today, I delivered a 3-tiered “Garden of Eden” birthday cake for one of Heath’s coworkers wife’s party.  I was asked to do a BIG princess-like birthday cake that was round and had 3-tiers and orange icing and fit the theme.  The party theme was “Garden of Eden” and would be held at a club decorated with flowers donated from a florist.  It sounded so celebrity-like! 

I really enjoy doing cakes for Heath’s coworkers, so I was excited about doing this one.  The only snag was that it had to be completed before being transported all the way into Houston.  I was so nervous about it because I don’t have a lot of room in my car and I had to pass it off at the half way point to the guest of honor for her to drive the rest of the way. 

Baking and decorating the cakes was fairly easy.  She wanted all yellow cake with all orange icing.  I decided to try my hand at more gumpaste and made several gumpaste daisies in various colors and sizes.  Thanks to my friend Kendra for letting me borrow her cut outs and instruction book and for teaching me how to do them!  She was right!  They were pretty easy, and they looked really pretty. 

When it came to constructing the cake, I was nervous.  I knew that the internal supports had to be rigid enough to hold the cake during transport.  I went to Hobby Lobby to purchase plastic dowels instead of using the tiny wooden ones I had.  They were completely sold out!  I tried Michael’s, and they didn’t even sell them!  I was in a panic at that point because I didn’t have much time to complete the cake.  Lowe’s was across the street, so I headed over there and found high temperature PVC piping that I ended up cutting to size, cleaned really well and covered with plastic wrap before inserting into the bottom cake layer.  I felt like Ace of Cakes with my saw and unconventional use of hardware!  :) 

When all was said and done, I loved how the cake turned out!   It was bright and big and garden-like, and the guest of honor loved it.  But, I will say no next time to a cake like this.  The drive was a nightmare!  It was pouring down rain, and although the layers were sturdy, it wobbled the whole way because it was so tall.  And, it barely fit into the floorboard of our cars!  I was very lucky with this one and was very relieved once I heard it made it to the party intact.  

Well, I am just finishing a 3 cake job week.  I was excited this time because I was able to be more efficient about it, and I really didn’t have any stress out moments.  I think I might be getting the hang of it! Although, I probably won’t committ to doing so many cakes in one week again, but two of the cakes were for family and good friends.  I wasn’t even going to consider not doing those! 

The first cake was for Naomi’s baby shower, the relative of one of Heath’s coworkers.  She wanted lavender icing with pink ribbon.  A pastel yellow was also one of the colors, so I made yellow daisies.  The cake was all yellow cake with buttercream icing. 

 The second cake was for my stepmom’s birthday.  I have been dying to try my hand at gumpaste, and I found a template and instructions online for making a gumpaste shoe.  Since Rhonwyn is the ultimate diva (or so we like to say), shoes were a good theme for the evening.  She loved the cake, so I was happy.  I only had one disaster - the first shoe I made broke the night before the party!  I had to quickly make a backup, and it really did not have the time to fully dry.  Thankfully, it worked out just fine.  Lesson learned:  Always make a backup!  :)  The cake is almond cake with raspberry filling and almond icing. 

The third cake this weekend is for my great friend Julia.  Julia has been a huge inspiration to me over the past 2 years of our friendship.  I enjoy making her cakes because she has been the one to really encourage me stepping out and starting the “cake business”.  This one will be taken to our Monday night group tomorrow night (her actual birthday) for a surprise.  It’s almond cake with blackberry and raspberry filling and almond icing.  Yum, yum!  Now, those are the kind of cake scraps I like to eat!  :)  I’m calling the design “abstract present”.  haha!