After a whirlwind spring, summer has arrived, both in terms of schedule and weather. School got out about 10 days ago and it’s hard to believe that in a few short weeks our family will start our last year of elementary school and — gulp — our first year of HIGH SCHOOL.
Miscellaneous updates since last time:
- We went to Hawaii for spring break! It was awesome. We stayed in Waikoloa Village on the Big Island. Highlights included Volcanoes National Park, snorkeling in the hotel lagoon, touring a coffee and chocolate farm, and (for me at least) visiting two quilt shops. Our return trip was a nightmare of cancelled and delayed flights and we got home a full 36 hours later than originally planned, but it’s been long enough now that I can mostly let that go and remember all the good parts. Ha!
- Lots of kid sports! Emma wrapped up basketball, ran track, then played soccer — all for her middle school teams. Charlotte played rec soccer again and enjoyed it, and decided to try out for the competitive level. She made one of the teams so we’ll be doing that next school year.
- But at the current moment, it’s summer swim season! We’ve already had two meets and both girls have already set champ times so our Saturdays for the rest of June are already booked. Ha.
- Emma will be joining the high school band, and already had a few days of “spring marching band camp” plus auditions. Her audition clearly went well and she was one of only 5 incoming freshmen to be selected for wind ensemble, the highest band. She’s was pretty excited about that!
- We celebrated Jose’s birthday, and then our 17th wedding anniversary!
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We also enjoyed a long visit from my mom, purposefully planned to overlap the end of the school year. She was able to see Emma’s last middle school band concert, Charlotte’s 4th grade awards ceremony, and the first swim meet of the year — not to mention plenty of walks and just enjoying downtime. It had been quite a while since she came to Houston, and we all enjoyed having her here. We’re in such a busy phase of life right now, and having mom around just makes things feel a little calmer and easier.
Career and various life choices led us to living — and staying — in Houston, away from both of our families. With my job change earlier this year, Jose and I are both remote employees now, which led us to the surprising realization that moving away from Houston is a viable option…but of course our kids are at ages where they very much do NOT want to move away from their schools and friends. Not to mention that we have lived here long enough that even though we lack local family, we do have a pretty good community around us. So we daydream, but also we are probably committed to Houston for at least another 8 years. After Charlotte graduates high school, who knows….?
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I’m 4.5 months into my new job and overall I think it’s going well. On the positive side: I like my team, I like my lead, I am learning TONS. We are building a rocket, and while I knew a decent amount about rockets going in, I hadn’t actually worked on one so the ol’ “drinking from the firehose” idiom feels very appropriate. Another positive? It is impossible to overstate how much I LOOOOOOVE that I no longer have 7:00 or 7:30 or 8:00 meetings.
I’ve been out to Long Beach 3 times now — for onboarding in January, again at the end of March, and then last week — and the travel thus far has been so easy that it’s actually pleasant. I’ve found a hotel that I like, close to work and with a good selection of restaurants and amenities nearby. There’s one direct flight per day between Houston Hobby and Long Beach, which is just a delightful small airport that only has about 10 gates. Getting my rental car has always been quick, and the security lines when leaving have been short-to-nonexistant. Surely I will have a less-than-ideal travel experience at some point, but I’m happy to report that it hasn’t happened yet at least.
On the negative side: I’m still struggling a bit to determine what my role is/should be, and even after several months I’m feeling imposter syndrome on a daily basis. Rationally, I recognize that 1) my background is trajectory and operations, and I am now in a position that is very hardware-focused and 2) it’s impossible for me to become an expert on rocket structures and propulsion and fluid systems and all the things — especially in mere months. But I feel very dumb on a daily basis, and that is getting old. However, I know the only cure for this is time, so I just try to keep plugging along, and pick up a few new things each day.
This summer, I’ll probably take a trip to NASA Stennis in Mississippi (where we do our engine and stage testing) to observe part of a big test campaign. I never got to do anything like that at NASA, where my roles were so far removed from the actual hardware being built and/or flown, so I’m excited for that.
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Finally, there’s been a few exciting-to-me things going on behind the scenes of this blog. I’ve been wanting to sunset my “Saroy” moniker for a while, plus take most of my blog posts from 2001 through ~2011 offline. Both of these things are fairly simple for someone who does that kind of web work on a regular basis — but that is not me. I finally accepted that while I could do these things myself, I likely never would do it because of the time it would take to figure out how to make that happen without breaking something.
So! I contacted a lovely web designer recommended by another quilter, and she has been incredibly helpful. This page now shows up as sarahruiz.com instead of saroy.net, but any old links to saroy.net will still work — magical! In the coming weeks, I’ll be making some tweaks to the site template and structure, and archiving a lot of old blog posts that are of zero interest to anyone other than me. It feels good to have help with these nagging tech tasks!
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