Good Bye

An hour and a half from the end of the last day at this office and they're making me do work.
What's up with that?! Don't they know I'M DONE?

Seriously, though, it's no biggie. Just some correspondence stuff. But it's annoying because it's stuff that should have been specified when I first got it DAYS ago. Which means I would have gotten it done and would be able to blog here without feeling rushed 'cause I gotta finish it before I move to my new temporary office.

Although, I could just hand this all off to Charlotte ....

Meh, then it REALLY won't get done.

It's kind of sad, this whole office closing deal. Okay, really sad. The Shuttle Program is done and my office is the first to disband. We're not needed any more. There are no more flights to operate and integrate.

This whole program closing thing has been kind of anti-climactic. It's like, there was the final launch, it landed, and now we're done. Sure, there have been some "parties," but no big community thing. Well, KSC had a huge thing, but not here. It's all been kept pretty in-house, so to speak. Oh well.

My desk here is cleared (well, except for this correspondence crap), my email has already been changed, and in just a little over an hour I will walk down to my new office and this position will cease to exist. There will be no fanfare, no big sendoff. It will merely slip silently into oblivion, only to be remembered by a small handful of people as they think back to their days in this office, a nostalgic smile playing on their faces.

Nina Knows Naught About: A Game of Thrones

Okay, the votes are in and the winner is A Game of Thrones! Thanks to all those who voted! I had a few people give me their votes without commenting, which is okay.

So up until very recently I had never heard of A Game of Thrones. Apparently, there's also a TV series based on the books, but I didn't learn of it until after I heard about the books. Everyone I've talked to who has either read the books or watched the series (or both) tell me that it's "so awesome" and "you really should read/watch it, Nina!!!!!!!11!"

Well, what is it about? All I ever heard was that there is Alot of sex in the book, and even more so in the show. Well, okay, I can deal with sex. Reading about sex is not that big of a deal. So I'm still cool with reading the book at some time in the future.

Then one of my good friends began to read it and tell me a little bit about it. Here's how that conversation went (I'm paraphrasing a bit, but this is essentially it):

Me: "So how is it?"
Him: "It's SO GOOD! You should definitely read it."
Me: "Okay. So tell me about it."
Him: "Well, there's Alot of sex."
Me: "I've heard, but that's not a big deal."
Him: "Well, it's not just like, normal sex..."
Me: ?
Him: "There's incest --"
Me: "Gross. Well, that's not too ba-"
Him: "And sex with children. Well, a child."
Me: O_O
       "Like rape?!"
Him: "Well, it is at first, but then she kinda ... gets into it ..."
Me: "I suddenly don't want to read this anymore."

So for a while that's all I thought it was about. Which is strange, because when you read what's on the book, it doesn't seem as if there would be that kind of content:

A Game of Thrones

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

Okay, so maybe the "barters his sister" bit gives some insight but still. I never heard about any of that other stuff when people talk of the book!

Anyway, it is now queued up in Google books so I can read it at work and still look like I'm doing something productive. Now I will find out what is so friggin' "awesome" about the book, aside from the child sex.

 

6 months

My baby is 6 months old TODAY! I can't believe it.

I figure here is the perfect opportunity to introduce my son, AKA Nate, AKA thecutestbabyinthewholeworldandidon'tcareifyouagreewithmeornotheis.

When he was born, he looked like this:



And now he looks like this:

 
 
 
 

That last one wasn't really necessary, but I adore that face he's making. I could seriously just sit here and make this post all of my favorite pictures of him so far, but I don't want anybody asploding from cuteness overload.

First Mission ... Quest ... Thing

I don't know what to call them yet. I might go with adventure. Maybe. 

Okay, I've got three options in my head. I'm poor, so I won't be doing the super fun stuff like sky diving or riding in a hot air balloon yet. I'll just stick to some simpler stuff to start off with.

So I figured I would have a choice between a food, a movie, and a book. Here be the options:

• Indian food. I can't say that I have ever had Indian food before. Except I once accidentally made naan because I failed at making the tortillas I had planned. But I don't think that counts.
• "The Godfather." I know, I know. GASP! I've never actually seen it. Not even a little bit. 
• A Game of Thrones. I keep hearing so much about this book and the series but still have not read it.

Okie dokie, there be the options. Let me know which one you'd like me to try first. I guess I'll wait a few days and hear what kind of responses (if any) that I get.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I really don’t. So just, bear with me here, okay? Please?

My name is Christina. I’m known by many people both on and off of the Internet as Nina. I am a single mom and mother to the most adorable baby on the planet (argue all you want, I will win). I am a native Texan, but I promise you won’t get any of that Texan superiority (well … not a lot. Nothing that should make you do more than the occasional eye roll.).

I went into this whole blogging deal wracking my brain for what I could possibly write about. Seriously, what do I know enough about that I could write an entire blog on it? My life isn’t interesting enough to keep people entertained, and I don’t regularly ponder deep ideas about the meaning of life or try to answer “why is a raven like a writing desk?” I’m not even funny.

In trying to sort that whole thing out, I scoffed to myself and thought, “It would be easier to answer with what I don’t know, which is a lot.” And that’s when it dawned on me. That’s EXACTLY what I’ll write about! This is the perfect premise to a blog! 

Right?

Anyway, so that’s what I’m doing. But I’m not just going to babble, I’m going to make a list of things I know nothing about, then educate myself on them. They could be experiences, ideas, recipes, cultures, states, etc. My plan is to write what I think about these things beforehand, then experience/educate myself and then come back and write on any changes of perception I might have had. I won’t go into the deviant here because GOD FORBID one day my son stumbles across this and reads something like that. So none of that now. And in between the learnings I’ll sprinkle in some pictures of my son, any ponderings that I just might have been, um, pondering, and anything else I feel like.

I’m also going to ask for YOUR opinions on what I should educate myself on. I’m not entirely sure how to go about getting your opinions, though. Do I just put out some options and say “Okay, vote for which one you want me to use” or put a poll? How do I put a poll? CAN I put a poll on here? Or a pole? Or even a Pole? 

Huh. I guess the title of this entry should have been: “Nina Knows Naught about: Blogging”