Surprised, Encouraged, Amazed

Three frames of mind which I went through today.

The past few days I've been down in Iuka, MS for a meeting. Yesterday was fairly interesting, getting to see the project which was just in its final stages, and getting familiar with the facilities down there. But today turned out to be far more interesting.

Surprised

I was surprised today when I saw a dead armadillo by the side of the road. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised...but I was.

Encouraged

The meeting which i was attending was largely to accomodate Mike Griffin, the former director of NASA. The project which was being presented was one which he had personally commissioned, and thus he was very interested to see the results. What was encouraging was that the entire project lasted two and a half years, from innitial conception, to final production. For any of you familiar with govt. work...that's BLAZING fast. And on top of that it was totally awesome. So it was encouraging to me that there are projects that can still be run in a semi efficient manner by NASA that create state of the art results. They may be few and far between...but they do exist. ;-)

Amazed

...at how God opens doors. Mike Griffin is now on the faculty of University of Alabama in Huntsville. In his position there he is pushing for the university to be very closely alligned with NASA, and other industry members. He and Larry Pelham (not technically my boss...but really my boss. :-)) got to talking, and between the two of them came up with a master plan. They suggested that TJ and I start at UAH on a masters program, and that NASA and the University work it such that our work at NASA counts as research towards our masters. Nothing could be more welcome as I've been trying to figure out how to work in a masters. i am not clear on the details of how it would work, but it means that I could potentially finish a masters program in two and a half years. But at the least it means the people I report to at both work and school will be working towards the same goal, which will hopefully make ballancing things easier. and it also most likely means I won't have to pay a penny to go to school. probably not even up front. In any case, I'm very thankful. pray that everything works out well with this. it would be VERY exciting if I would be able to finish the masters in 2 or so years instead of 5 just doing it part time. but it's all pretty amazing if you ask me.