The weekend was good. My parents' anniversary lunch at Maggiano's was great. We had a family-style lunch (the "lighter side" option) which was more than enough food for us. We ended up having leftovers for dinner that night. :)

I need to go workout today. I didn't go on Saturday because of the lunch outing, and I was too lazy on Sunday... :)

Today I am back on the bench at work. I think it will be nice to have a little downtime after such a long travel project. But I hope I don't stay idle for too long! Well, I better see if I can find something productive to do here.

I'm finished with my NASA assignment! I'm gonna miss the people here but I'm definitely ready to head back home and hopefully to a new project assignment in the Chicago area. I am glad though that I got to experience life in the "Deep South" for a little while, and that I got to spend time with Tita Fe and Tito Oscar and their family here.

Tomorrow is my parents' 34th (!!) wedding anniversary. :) We're going to Maggiano's for lunch to celebrate. Should be fun (and filling).

Wow, Dave & Katie's wedding was so nice! The ceremony was short but sweet, and the reception was just fantastic. The toasts by the best man (Dave's brother) and maid of honor (Katie's good friend) were funny and heartfelt... then Dave sang Katie a song ("I'll Be" by Edwin McCain) that was so sweet. Several ladies could be seen wiping tears :) ... Anyway, the food was good, the music was great (lots of late-80's stuff, hehe), and I had a lot of fun chatting and hanging out with Erin.

The rest of my weekend was fine, except that my home phone line wigged out Sunday afternoon. No dial tone, some noise. Just lovely. I called the phone company to have it looked at but as of this evening it was still unoperable. Argh.

Oh well. Anyway, this is my last week of my NASA assignment here in HSV! My group scheduled a going-away lunch for me at Macaroni Grill on Thursday. Very cool! While I'll be very glad to be wrapping up my work here and moving on, I'll definitely miss the people I worked with who have been so nice and welcoming.

Well, this week has gone by pretty quickly. Hopefully my flight home will be on time; there's quite a bit of "weather" between here and Chicago right now, according to Weather.com. I'm thinking it will be a rather bumpy flight for at least part of the trip.

I'm excited about tomorrow's wedding extravaganza for Dave and Katie. :) They're gettting married at Willow Creek church in South Barrington, which I have never been to before; I hear it is a huge church campus. My pal Erin will be going with me; she's meeting me at my place before the ceremony, so I guess that means I'll have to tidy up around the house in case she looks beyond the foyer area :)

OK. Better start packing up my stuff to head to good ol' Huntsville Int'l Airport.

Not to jinx myself, but it looks to be a pretty sure thing that I'll be rolling off my assignment in HSV at the end of this month. Woohoo! I've gotten some good work experience here but I'm ready to move on. Here's hoping that my next project will be somewhere in Chicagoland, or if it's travel again, at least with a group of people my age who I can hang out with after hours. :)

Had a decent weekend. Got into an argument with my parents on Friday night but everything's cool now. :) Then I went with my mom to a fundraiser fashion show in Oak Brook, for a group of churches. It was ok. The food was great, the show was so-so. :P

I'm looking forward to my buddy Dave's wedding this Saturday. This past weekend I bought a bunch of cooking utensils for the soon-to-be-married couple off their Bed Bath & Beyond registry. I was a little bummed because one of the Calphalon nylon utensils on their list was out of stock at the store and I wanted to get them the whole set. Oh well. I substituted a whisk. :)

Thankfully it turned out to be a relatively uneventful 9/11 anniversary here. I didn't get to see a whole lot of the memorials on tv but what I did catch seemed tasteful and appropriate. Anyway it was probably good that I didn't watch too much because I may have spent most of the day in tears...

Part of the reason I missed tv coverage tonight (well, I guess last night since it's now Thursday as I'm typing this - eek, I better get to bed!) was that I had dinner with my family friends who live here in HSV. I hadn't seen them in some time so it was great to catch up and chat over a nice pizza dinner. :) They've been busy the past several weeks getting their house ready for sale (they're downsizing) but it was sold last week so they were able to invite me over. Hopefully we'll be able to get together again at least once more before I roll off this assignment.

So, it's been a pretty good week/weekend. Found out on Friday night when I arrived at my parents' house that I've been assigned to some tasks for the upcoming Simbang Gabi (evening mass) in December. :) I was "volunteered" to put together the program booklet, and to be one of the readers during the service. The planning committee (of which my mom is a member) tried to get me to be one of the ushers/collectors too, but then they thought better of it. :)

I think I might be a little nervous getting on the plane again this week because of the upcoming 9/11 anniversary, but I'm confident that airport security will avert any repeats or copycat incidents. Hard to believe that a year ago at this time, I flew out to HSV on a Sunday night, worked on Monday like normal, then like the rest of the world was horrified to see the events of 9/11 unfold. I kept tabs on the news from my desk at work (via the web; I didn't see anything on tv till later), but I really didn't grasp the magnitude of the events until my mom called me to tell me that the WTC towers had collapsed. Then everyone was sent home. I had lunch with a co-worker then retreated to my hotel room to watch the news coverage. It was all so terrible, and I was actually glad that I didn't see anything on tv in "real-time" because I probably would have freaked out even more. I managed to stay composed until I heard a voicemail message from one of my company's managers back in Chicago, asking all the traveling consultants to call in and let them know that we were okay. For some reason it struck me right then that this was a *really* bad situation and I started crying a little. I got in touch with the manager and it was somehow very reassuring to hear her voice and her concern. It's still so unbelievable that this happened, and it's been so heartbreaking to hear stories of families and friends of those lost. Anyway, I'm so thankful I wasn't in the air that day, and that no one I knew was directly affected in the attacks. Peace to all...

Waah, it's raining on Labor Day! Well, I guess I didn't really have any outdoor plans today (my mom and dad are hosting a small get-together tonight, but not planning to grill or anything like that) so it's not all that bad.

I saw a number of old friends on Saturday! First I had lunch with Rebe, then she and I stopped by Mitch's parents' house - I haven't seen Mitch since high school! He lives in Massachusetts now with his wife and was in town visiting for the long weekend. He's had some health problems recently but he is in amazingly good spirits. It probably helps that he and his wife recently found out that they are going to be parents... of twins! :)

Later on Saturday I met up with Shunsuke and his wife, for ice cream. It's been over a year since I'd seen them. It was great to catch up.

My sister has reportedly been feeling a little homesick since she moved into her dorm at IU... but she starts classes today so it will probably help keep her mind off of home. Indeed, soon she'll probably become too busy to think of much else besides schoolwork :)