So, I'm working on a project at work that requires me to look at lots and lots of Twitter accounts. Most are boring, some are less so.

I came across this one and I thought it was really great. It apparently comes from the song "Going Back to Georgia."

After being in my now old position for a whopping 4½ months, the big boss called me into his office and offered me a job on the other side of the office. Now, I was very excited to get my now old position; however, I feel very strongly that when the big boss offers you an opportunity, it's bad form to turn it down.

So, as of today, I am now a public affairs officer. That's pretty darn cool, but I'm pretty scared that I have them all fooled and they're going to realize that I don't know shit about what I'm doing. Oh, well. At least it will be an adventure.

Today is my last day in this office. After 5 long, grueling years, I am moving on. I planned to come in late, leave early, and wear jeans today.

Unfortunately, my current boss had other plans. On Tuesday, he told us that we all needed to support the LCROSS event at the Newseum this morning. This morning. At 6:30 this morning.

I am not much of a fan of The Office, but I did want to see Jim and Pam's wedding. Oh, well. It was lights out at 9:30 (so I did see Jim slip during his toast). Of course with the snorer in the apartment below us, I was up about 3 am and didn't really fall back to sleep. So, I was in the shower by 4:30 this morning.

I left the house about 10 after 5 to head out to the Metro. It was absolutely beautiful. It was crisp, yet pleasant (I didn't wear a jacket). It was so still and peaceful. The only sound was a bus that passed me as I stood motionless just outside my apartment and soaked in the beauty of the predawn.

As I looked up, I saw a perfect 1/2 moon as the clouds parted, and all I could think was, "Boy, you have no idea what you're in for later this morning, do you?"

So, after 5 grueling years in my current office at America's finest space agency, I can now officially say that I am moving on!

Last week, HR called me and offered me a position I had applied for and interviewed for in Public Affairs. True, I am only moving down 4 floors from where I am now, but I feel that I will be moving a world away from where I am now!

I recognize that there will be drama and all kinds of bullshit in the new office, but it will all be new drama and bullshit for me to learn, and that will be fun (until it's not anymore). I have been trying to get into this office in Public Affairs pretty much the entire 5 years that I have been in my current office. Sadly, it took a very lovely woman's death to open a slot for me, so that's sort of bittersweet. I'm not typically into the whole "better place" thing, but this woman was in a lot of pain, and she truly is in a better place now.

I'm not 100% sure what I will be doing in this position, but I know that I will be working with guest operations, exhibits, events, and astronauts (pretty much a lot of what I'm doing now, but in a different office, and in Public Affairs).

I officially begin on October 11.

I'm so excited!

I was, again, stuck in Florida with a shuttle that wouldn’t launch. So, again, after several days, the Sabra decided to come down and join me. And, again, she proved to be the good-luck charm we needed, and that little Shuttle launched.

Since she was in FL anyway, we decided to take a vacation, and we stayed in Orlando for a week. It was nice; we went to Disney World, which was pretty fun. We only had one day there, so we just went to Magic Kingdom. Then we spent the next morning listing to the benefits of buying a timeshare. We were strong and didn’t buy, but we DID get a free breakfast and 2 one-day passes to both Universal Orlando parks, so I guess we did OK.

I started back at work this morning, and I noticed that even though schools are all officially back in session, the Metro was surprisingly empty. Then I got off the train at Gallery Place/Chinatown to transfer. As I walked down the platform, there was a mass onrush of people walking the opposite direction. Someone had opened the floodgates and people were pouring out and over the walkway. It occurred to me that this is exactly how salmon feel as they fight their way up against the currents of the raging rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Where once I felt like drone in the subway, today, I better appreciated the plight of the salmon. Unfortunately for me, I did not spawn at the end of this river of people; however, fortunately, I did not die as do the fierce salmon who make the difficult trek to perpetuate their species.

I merely went to work.

I was in New Orleans a few weeks ago on business. I flew in on Sunday (July 20) and left the following Saturday. Sunday night, I walked the 2 blocks from my hotel to the start of Bourbon Street. I walked from Canal Street all the way down Bourbon StreetRue Bourbon until I got into the gay part of town. It was still light out, but even so, you could tell that not too much was going to happen. It was, after all Sunday.

I got a Po’ Boy at some random establishment that actually had jazz. Then, it was back to the hotel to get ready for the next day—I had to be at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center to set up our exhibit. After the exhibit was set up, we had the rest of the day to goof off. So, I pulled out my camera, and my buddy and I walked all over New Orleans and, of course, the French Quarter.

I was surprised to see that every corner didn’t have some dude on a trumpet…that is how I have always envisioned the Crescent City. I was saddened to see (hear, actually) nothing but loud (and I mean fucking loud) rock & roll and dance music spewing into the street as forcefully as the air conditioning. We did pass a few joints where you could hear jazz, but they were few and far between, and they were competing with the melodic chords of Van Halen and some rave remix. What little jazz I did hear was great. I love jazz.

We went to a bunch of restaurants including Red Fish Grill, Cochon Restaurant, Ralph & Kacoo’s, Crescent City Brew house, Mulate’s, and Café Beignet. Of course, we had Hurricanes at the famous Pat O’Brien’s (although we were there early, so there were no dueling pianos. That was kind of sad). Even though I ate well, and paid dearly for it (both figuratively and literally), I have to be honest…I was rather disappointed in the food. I mean it was tasty and all, but I felt that I have had better “Cajun” cuisine up here in the District.

The rest of the time was dedicated to actual work, but in the evenings, we ended up back on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. Overall, it was a fun experience. I got to see New Orleans, which I’ve always wanted to do. I had my first taste of moonshine. I had a shot of Catdaddy first, but it tasted like Tequila, so the waiter brought me a shot of Virginia White Lightening. Man, did that taste fantastic. I also rode on a mechanical bull at the Bourbon Cowboy. So, now I have scratched 2 more things off my Things To Do Before I Die list.

As calm as it was (given that I was there during the week and it’s not Mardi Gras), it was clear that debauchery is still a constant, and that people still party all day and all night. New Orleans definitely missed out when it came to taglines. I think that “What happens in Nahlins stays in Nahlins” is much more apropos than Vegas (granted, I’ve never been to Las Vegas, but still).

All in all, I had a good time. I was disappointed that there wasn’t as much jazz as the city is known for. I was also sad that I didn’t get decent, proper Creole and Cajun food. I understand that after Hurricane Katrina the Crescent City ain’t what she used to be, but at the same time, things are happening again down there. I can only hope that the next time I go, even more folks will have returned.

OK, so thanks to the great and wonderful GOP, our country is in the shitter, and money is scarce. As such, the great space program I work for has to find ways to save money. In one of its more brilliant moves, NASA decided to stop funding a particular education program. We were sent a memo titled “Standard Response to Potential Frequently Asked Questions.” In it was the following question. Normally, I would just sigh, shake my head, and hit the delete button. But since this was written and sent out by a particularly odious human being in my office (and I use the term human being extremely loosely), I thought I would publically ridicule her.

Q: If I have some concerns, to whom should I contact about those concerns?

A: The Project Manager is the direct person to whom persons should contact. As appropriate, the project manager will inform and involve additional senior leadership. Persons and order of persons for whom project manager will share concerns are listed.

I would like to add this sorry excuse of a person is (supposedly) a Harvard University alumna, and is currently in law school. There are clear reasons, in my humble opinion, why she was invited to attend such a prestigious school as Harvard, and, no doubt, why they helped her every step of the way, ensuring that she would receive her diploma.

Here we go. New Year’s Eve and Day have come and gone, and now it’s time to get down to business with my New Year’s Resolutions. Below are all my resolutions, in no particular order, for 2008. Let’s see how many I actually do:

• Buy a new suit
• Cook more, eat out less
• Find a new job
• Finish my 10 year old article
• Get angry less
• Get back to doing research
• Go to the Gym
• Keep "It" up for another year
• Learn a new language
• Lose 30 pounds
• Make a new friend
• Read a classic
• Start my book
• Take a class
• Take more pictures
• Tick off something else on my “Things to Do before I Die” list
• Travel to a country I’ve never been to before

When I was little, I always wanted to go to my father’s work. He was a career civil servant, and he never felt that it was appropriate taking children to his place of employment. Of course, this always made me very sad. I wanted so much to be with him, to spend time with him, and it hurt to think that he didn’t want to share his time at work with me. Likewise, he never wanted us to call him at work unless it was an emergency. This, too, was not a pleasant feeling. Why? How could such a wonderful, loving father as mine not want to be with his son? Not want to talk to his son?

In all fairness to posterity, I must confess that I did get to go see his office on rare occasions, and from the span of 20-odd years, my limited memory recalls that my father’s desk was by a window. He had a flat desk with papers and books piled high. On the right-hand side, across from the window, was a long return that was rounded at the end. The other important feature that I can recall from the mist of memory is that the walls of his office didn’t reach the ceiling. How weird I thought that was. I didn’t know from cubes and open space layouts at that time.

Now, as a civil servant myself working in a cube in an open space layout, I understand that it wasn’t that my father didn’t love me or that he didn’t want to talk to me, but rather, he didn’t think it was appropriate for children to be in a space that would disturb others. He didn’t like to talk on the phone about personal things because there was no privacy. I feel like I owe him an apology.

Today, thanks to the cube environment, it all became clear to me that this was the truth of the matter. The woman in the cube on one side of me has her daughter here. This daughter has not yet learned inside and outside voice and talks entirely too loudly. I think it’s wonderful that she has such a creative mind, but a grown-up office is not the place for her to express her creativity or bang on the desk or run up and down the hall or run into and out of other people’s cubes.

I should mention that this disrespect for others working so closely together is not limited to children who don’t know any better (indeed, the child’s mother should have known better than to bring the child in the first place). The odious woman on the other side of me is on a teleconference and is using her speakerphone. When I politely asked her to take it off of speakerphone because it was disturbing me, she said that she was on a conference call. I said I understood that, but it was still a distraction to others in the office. She said, “I’m going to go ahead and leave it on speaker.”

In the immortal words of Jar Jar Binks: “How wude!”

Here’s a pretty useless list I’ve come up with. These are the mission patches for each of the Space Shuttle missions that have occurred since I joined America’s greatest space agency:

STS-107
January 16, 2003—February 1, 2003 when Columbia and her crew were lost during entry

STS-114
July 26, 2005—August 9, 2005

STS-121
July 4, 2006—July 17, 2006

STS-115
September 9, 2006—September 21, 2006

STS-116
December 9, 2006—December 22, 2006

STS-117
June 8, 2007—June 22, 2007

STS-118
August 8, 2007—August 21, 2007

STS-120
October 23, 2007—November 7, 2007

STS-122
February 7, 2008—February 20, 2008

STS-123
March 11, 2008—March 26, 2008

STS-124
May 31, 2008—June 14, 2008

STS-126
November 14, 2008—November 30, 2008

STS-119
March 15, 2009—March 28, 2009

STS-125
May 11, 2009—May 24, 2009

STS-127
July 15, 2009—July 31, 2009

STS-128
August 28, 2009—September 11, 2009

STS-129
November 16, 2009—November 27, 2009

STS-130
February 8, 2010—February 21, 2010

STS-131
April 5, 2010—April 20, 2010

STS-132
May 14, 2010—May 26, 2010

STS-133
No earlier than November 1, 2010