Huntsville Concert Band

Once upon a time I hung out with tons of old people every Wednesday evening.....

.....these wonderful evenings included the use of this:

And occasionally, we all played together. And we made music.

But alas, those are the days gone by when I was a member of the Mesa City Band. Oh how I loved tooting my own horn and wearing hideous matching red blazers with the crisscross tie thing and serenading other old folks to the tunes of Sousa and Cohan.

And with my recent move came a shift ...from my roots in Mesa to my new home in Huntsville. I am now a proud member of the Huntsville Concert Band. And in case you're wondering....Yes, there are plenty of old people, yes we have hideous matching blue shirts, yes, it is probably still a good thing that the majority of our audiences have some form of hearing impairment. But, it is so fun, and it keeps my clarinet in shape! Hurray!

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The road to curing Type 1 Diabetes

From the moment of diagnosis, the road is rough, the learning curve is steep and the stakes are literally life or death. The map is less-than-helpful - paths originating from virtually every corner, coalescing at a center point (aka "diagnosis") and bursting back outwards - some paths cross and wrap around each other but others are isolated. And even with all of these roads, most of the territory is uncharted - how did we all get here and how will we all exit? Where are the obstacles we haven't found yet? Which passage holds the key to unlocking the solution?

On any given day I feel pretty isolated with this disease - I'm the only T1D in my group at work, the only one in mission control, the only one in my family. I go through the logistics of calling insurance companies, ordering supplies, changing sites and troubleshooting malfunctions mostly on my own. Even those pesky carbs really only get counted in my brain, no group think for a meal bolus here. But there is b…

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International Travel with Type 1 Diabetes

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3 months prior

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Hot OJT

Last week I had the chance to mentor a newly certified ADCO trainee - the NASA process is called "Hot On-The-Job-Training", or Hot OJT. What makes it "hot" you ask? Well, essentially I am hands off - he is sitting at the console, working all the plan reviews and updates, making calls to other flight controllers and to the flight director, reacting to anomalies and preparing material for the shift handover. My job is to act as the fault tolerance - a backup ADCO of sorts.

Tuesday was his last official day and by Wednesday morning he was in the backroom sending commands to ISS in preparation for the docking of a three-person Soyuz.

The beauty of this system is the gradual buildup in responsibility. There is a subtle shift from student, to subject matter expert, to fresh operations trainee to advanced trainee and finally to certification and real-time operations flight controller - the process takes two years on average and is considered by many to be enough specializ…

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