Tuesday afternoon I went into the office just to check in and to start going through all the e-mail that had piled up since we left for our NOLS trip.

Wednesday was the first official day back to work for us. Our class was supposed to have our second class on deorbit burns, but the training team was not able to teach us. I guess some folks still had not made it back. Thus the class was cancelled. There was nothing else scheduled for the day, so I read the material that we will be learning when we do have the class. And, I did more e-mail and straightened up the papers that had been piling up on my desk. Then I gathered up materials to start studying for my next qualification test, which will not be for over a week. I must confess that it is hard to get enthusiastic about starting to study for it. Heck, it is hard to get into the swing of going to classes after NOLS.

We had two classes Thursday morning. We began the training flow for the Station's thermal control system. The first class was an introductory class covering the big picture on how temperatures (both air and equipment) are regulated. The second class went through all the piece parts of said thermal control system, both internal and external. In the afternoon I am not really sure what I did, but somehow managed to while away the time. I tried going running. That was the first time I have attempted that in quite awhile. I was hoping that some of my fitness from hiking in the mountains was still lurking within me. I think it was; I felt like I had enough energy to do a decent run. But I could not take the heat. It is still in the upper 90s with a heat index over 100. Is this not the end of September? What happened to Fall? "They" keep saying that it will cool off and we will have rain. . . I am ready and waiting.

Here is a strange aside. All the skin on my fingertips has started to peel off. I guess this is a result of the numbness from the NOLS trip.

On Friday we again had no classes scheduled. Since the deorbit burn class earlier in the week was cancelled, we were not able to go into the simulator and practice the material as originally planned. So, I did some studying and called it a week. I went running again. It went a little better than yesterday, but it was still a tough run. Needless to say, we are still waiting on rain.

I was going to fly this weekend. But, as it turned out, there was a front preventing us from going anywhere. Maybe it will rain after all.