Ramblings of an itinerant rocket scientist...

Stayed awake yesterday through the morning drilling papers and the afternoon breakout groups, an accomplishment on 2 hours' sleep. Made connections with prospective proposal co-investigators.

Afterward... rather than nap, I went out with patgreene and bought a new (low-end, top-loading Whirlpool from Costco)clothes washer. We decided to buy a cheap one now, as we'll need to go to front-loading stackable units when we expand my garage bedroom in a couple of years, but didn't want to spring for $2K now. But to install it... required cleaning out the garage, at least half of it, to clear a path. On 2 hours of sleep, I'm lucky that I didn't cross the hot and cold lines. cyan_blue, who had taken the kids out yesterday while I was at work, further showed her devotion by hanging around and gamefully piling into the boxes of old clothes, papers, camping gear, etc as well as helping in cleanup. There's now actual clear, cleaned space in my garage... it looks vastly better than it did prior to last June. And the new washer is letting us catch up on laundry, now.

Then... Geri babysat while Pat and I went out to Tied House, whereupon I was dull dinnertime company, actually dozing off briefly twice over my buffalo and beer.

This week... work on proposals of various types, celebrate an anniversary, go skating and help patgreene celebrate her final departure from the Pacific Art League. :)

I was up nearly all of last night -- I took an hour nap between 6-7am -- and successfully drafted, proofed, and produced two 40-page research proposals in time for today's submission deadline. After just 4 hours, the night before. Meanwhile meeting here in Albuquerque over how best to heat and process lunar soil to make oxygen. I finally met with my task lead here, and it went well, and I will have a budget and enough authority to start making the November Mauna Kea demonstration happen.

I've also made and shipped chocolates for Valentine's (previous post), supported patgreene in her ongoing work trauma, gone to ice skating lessons, and travelled here despite the snowy weather and delays on Wednesday. As well as getting sick for 24 hours on Monday and Tuesday. It has been an intense-but-successful week, thus far.