After our standard staff meeting on Monday, we had a class on the redundancy management of the switches in the Shuttle. What is this about, you ask? Well, each switch has more than one set of wires that go it - some switches have two and some have three. The multiple wires are usually there to provide backup connections should wires or electrical conduits be broken. The entire class was devoted to how the hardware and software deals with different types of failures within the switches and wires. Two hours of this. Who knew there was so much to turning something on?

In the afternoon I participated in a five hour simulation of the deorbit prep timeframe of a mission. Deorbit prep is when the Shuttle is transformed back from a laboratory into a flying machine. Systems are reconfigured. Stuff is stowed away. The crew gets ready to come home. This sim was just to give us some familiarity with the types of activities that go on during this timeframe as well as let us run through the procedures once. As with the post insertion simulation that we did a month or so ago, this will likely be the first and last time we ever see these procedures on the ground without any failures in the simulation.

Tuesday morning we had a four hour class on astronomy. We learned about stars, galaxies, and the universe. Following our astronomy class I had a single systems trainer class on sensors and controllers. This class was a follow-up to the class we had last week on the sensors that provide information to the guidance software and the controllers that the crew uses to provide manual inputs to the software. I finished my day with a T-38 flight. I went with one of the instructor pilots to Maxwell Air Force Base (Alabama) and back. It is a nice place to go - I had not been there before.

I had a fun class on Wednesday morning. A group of us were in one of the Shuttle training mockups for a class on habitation equipment. We had a hands-on demonstration on many of the different items used in the Shuttle. This included things such as sleeping bags, emergency oxygen masks, and stowage bags. We also learned how to set up and take down the seats that we sit in going uphill and coming back down. The seats are removed from the floor and tucked out of the way while on-orbit. We also learned how to set up various fans and cameras and ducts and how to configure the airlock. It was nice to handle some hardware for a change.

In the afternoon I had a Russian lesson and an evaluated single systems trainer class on the data processing system (the computers). Specifically, the class was on malfunctions that can occur during an ascent. We went over the procedures to ensure that all the systems that deal with the computers are safe and the procedures to try and recover any computers that may be down.

Thursday, after a briefing on some of NASA's awards programs, we had a class on in-flight maintenance. This class covered the types of tools and equipment used to repair things that have broken on the Shuttle. There are tools and procedures to fix or replace all kinds of different equipment. You definitely need the capability to fix broken things when in space. You never know what may break.

After class I had a quick T-38 flight to Lake Charles. This flight had a rather unpleasant twist. For most of the flight I felt like I was having a hard time getting a breath through my mask. The mask was working properly, but it didn't feel like I was getting enough air. I did not notice it at first, but after we had been flying for a little while time it because clear to me that something was not quite right. It just was not apparent what was wrong. All the air and oxygen system indications were saying that everything was fine. I knew that I had a problem when I began to get a headache. I thought all of this was interesting, actually, rather than scary. I knew I had enough air to breathe (mostly). And, we were not at such a high altitude that the cabin pressure was not too low even without a mask. But, getting a headache is a sign that you may not be getting quite enough air. I found it interesting since a headache was not one of the symptoms of hypoxia that I experienced when I did the high altitude chamber run last summer in Pensacola. At any rate, the pilot and I spent a lot of time discussing this issue while we were flying. He was not experiencing any problems. He did say that in his experience the hypoxia symptoms that one sees in a chamber are often not the same that one experiences during an actual flight. Once my headache got bad enough, I switched over to breathing pure oxygen (rather than a mixture of air and oxygen). The pure O2 made my headache feel a little better. We finished the flight without incident and reported the problem to the mechanics at Ellington. A short while after I got back to JSC, I got a report that the oxygen hose that routes O2 to my mask was found to be kinked. So, I was right, I was not getting quite enough air to breathe.

Headache or no headache, I had another class awaiting me when I got back to JSC. I had a single systems training class on malfunctions associated with the closed circuit television system. Luckily it was not too taxing of a class.

Friday was the only day of the week that was not packed with classes. In the morning we had what I would call a job fair. Once we finish our initial training in eight or nine (or ten) months, we will be given technical assignments. These assignments are jobs that will support whatever tasks the astronaut office is doing - everything from working in the control center to helping develop the next generation spacecraft. All the bosses from all the different organizations within the astronaut office came and gave us a rundown on what jobs they do within their organizations. This job fair was for us to start thinking about what we might like to do once we are released from this training flow. Of course, there is no guarantee that we will be assigned a job in an area that we would like. But, as far as I am concerned, I don't care. Any job will be interesting and all jobs have their ups and downs.

No classes for me Friday afternoon. Good thing, too, since this was the day that Andy (Astronaut Andrew Thomas) and I got married! Eloped, to be exact. For those that have not been keeping up with my social life, Andy and I dated for years. We finally decided to get married. Between my training schedule and his training schedule (he is on the first Shuttle back into space after the Columbia accident) it was apparent that it was going to be impossible for us to get any time off together any time soon (probably not any significant time off together for the rest of the year), so we decided to stand before a judge.

Yes, we know it is tax day - hopefully we won't forget our anniversary. And, no, no one in our families knew about our plans before we did it.