ja_koniga

One of the inside jokes we used to share when I worked with MSA National’s Programs Task Force was that once you’ve been around long enough, you start speaking in acronyms.  I thought it was funny, cute, and clever how we had the BOD and the BOA.  I had no idea how conservative we were with acronyms until I became an astronaut.

I swear I am not exaggerating when I say that they have developed their very own language of acronyms here at NASA.  Maybe it is a form of security that is necessary in the field of space exploration; I mean, the aliens have almost certainly mastered all of the languages of the earth’s peoples by now, so NASA must have decided to come up with its own indecipherable alien language.  Actually that makes sense.

Today I was in a meeting and I felt like I was being read the unpublished sequel to There’s a Wocket in my Pocket by Dr. Seuss.  It went a little something like this:

We’re giving you the SNEE and you’re done with GENUG.
SNEE’s been all but swept under the rug!
But ignore what is NINS, we’ll get to that soon.
And as for the SNUG, you’ll get it in June.

Ok, maybe I made it rhyme a little to get my point across.  But I couldn’t help but smile as furry, orange Seussian creatures pranced across my imagination. As Snee, Genug, Nins, and Snug frolicked by, I breathed a sigh of gratefulness for having a brain capable of turning a boring situation into a delightful cartoon.

I have always wanted to start a blog, but never felt that I had anything to say of any importance.  I wanted to start a blog when I spent a year teaching, but that never happened.  I wanted to start a blog to document my misadventures as a newlywed attempting to embrace Martha Stewarthood, but this year has whirled by and while I will always have a soft spot for Martha, it is time to move on.  It began with the realization that I should do the grown-up thing and get a job.  It has turned into so much more.

Recently, fate has set for me a path that my subconscious has long dreamed of pursuing.  Three weeks ago, I began my career as an astronaut with NASA.  I know, it’s wild.  My mission?  To put it in general terms, to explore strange, new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

The only catch is that I can’t actually go to space yet (I’m guessing it has something to do with the economy), and they had to hire me with some bogus title, and they have me doing all sorts of work with editing documents, making copies, etc.  But the way I see it, I am basically an astronaut being held back due to budgetary constraints.  Instead of a spacesuit, they prefer business casual attire, and in lieu of a spaceship, they gave me a cube (again, probably budgetary).

But I try to look on the bright side.  As someone famous must have once said, “If every astronaut went to space, there would be no one left to edit important documents.”  And it is that quote that I hold on to when a light drizzle slows my morning commute to an hour and a half and I’m thinking, that spaceship would really come in handy right now. It is that thought that calms me when my feet are aching and I am cursing gravity.  For now, I don’t mind taking one for the crew, putting up with this office gig while my fellow ‘nauts explore the vast expanses of Space.  One day, I’ll be up there with them.

But until then, I manage documents for NASA, and I blog.  Ever since I started this job, material has just been piling up and I can’t contain it anymore.  It’s almost as if I have a constant blog going in my head as I take in the peculiarities that occur in an office where I am by far the youngest employee and from what I can tell, the only one still in touch with Earth (go figure).  I haven’t written anything in a long time, so forgive me for my sloppy writing style which I don’t plan on editing (I do enough of that around here).  I do tend to ramble, and I am rarely serious though always truthful in my accounts.  Whenever I tell my friends stories they say “you are insane,” as if it is somehow my fault that insanity seems to follow me wherever I go.

These are my voyages.