Well, another year has ticked by in this journey we call life. I turned 26 on August 30th, which seems like its getting to be an awfully large number. Now all those times when my parents told me, "Well it seems like just yesterday we were in highschool." Yeah, had one of those moments. Although I don't really remember a lot of high school for some reason, but college is definitely vivid. That may be in part because I haven't stopped going to college and for some insane reason I decided to take on this second masters degree. Refusal to grow up, probably. I always get slapped with that "idealistic youth" at work, but thats probably because I go around preaching about how awesome space flight is. Not sure why you would work for a program as stressful and tough as this one if you didn't really believe in it... but thats a rant for another day.

This year for my birthday, since I needed some time away from work and school to reset the stress-o-meter, I decided to fly back to Maryland and visit the parents. Haven't seen them in a while, and the year just flew by. Felt kind of bad I hadn't seen them in so long, you just get so caught up in everything and I believe in staying busy. They were really nice and took me out to dinner at this fancy seafood place where I got some excellent Tuna, and then today took me over the the National Air and Space Museum to see Enterprise. That was the final orbiter in the space shuttle fleet that I had not seen, and it was really interesting to get an up close and personal look at the grandmother of all the orbiters. I work on those girls every day, and had always dreamed of doing so, yet I had never been to see this exhibit before this point. Got some great photos and earned the jealous emails of several of my fellow space nerd co-workers.

All in all, not a bad birthday. I've definitely done worse, so I am satisfied with this years celebration.

Cheers!

Cal

Check out my Space Shuttle Launch video from the VIP viewing site! [link] Make sure to crank up the sound to get the real launch experience! I love my job!!