For those of you who don't know, I was aerocontrols* at wotmania. Sometime before wotmania.com shut down I took a job at a small defense contractor in Huntsville, AL. Lots of aerospace work there. Originally I was hired to work a contract my company had with a space startup, but they cancelled our contract the very week I moved to Huntsville. That space startup is now defunct. Luckily, we had lots of work with NASA, and I've billed most of my time since then to NASA, with some other stuff on the side for various other customers. Right now I work for them full time, on site at MSFC. I love the work and the folks I work with. I've got a niche as a launch vehicle simulation designer and a small team of people who help me build and maintain 'my' simulation. It's the right mix - a whole lot of technical work with just a little bit of managerial responsibility. Plus, it pays very well and the cost of living is low here compared to a lot of places where aerospace engineers can find work in our field.

I wasn't really happy in Atlanta or at Georgia Tech (which is where I lived/worked when I was active on the site). I dislike the city and crowds and noise and crime, and have found Huntsville much more to my tastes. I'm 2 hours from Nashville, 2 from Birmingham, and 3.5-4 to either Memphis or Atlanta, if I want to spend an evening or weekend somewhere with more citified things to do. Dinner at a nice restaurant, dancing, overnight stays at a hotel. The gf likes the shopping in any of those cities. The gulf is close enough that a weekend beach trip is possible, and I get a couple of beach trips every year. She has family down there with access to a boat if one likes to fish (and I do...)

I enjoyed the dating scene in Huntsville moreso than Atlanta. Maybe it's just that I didn't have much cash as a grad student at Tech, though I'm well aware that the problem of little money doesn't hinder everyone. I've fallen pretty hard for a native 'Bama girl. We've been dating for a little more than two years and living together for around a year. (Anybody want to buy my house?) I'm looking to upgrade so we have room for the two of use, her son and two daughters, and our two dogs. She and I started off as ballroom dance partners (she used to teach part time at a studio and was getting back into it after a breakup with a guy who didn't like her dancing hobby) and the romance took a while to blossom, mostly because she (accidentally) misled me about her age. The truth, discovered when I was holding her ID for her in a club in Atlanta, is that we were actually pretty close to the same age.

Besides the work and the dancing, I try to stay active outdoors. This area of the country is riddled with caves, and I took up caving as a hobby around 2010. After about a year of horizontal caving, I got into vertical caving and joined a couple of cave and high angle rescue squads on a volunteer basis. We get call-outs very infrequently (though we've already had 2 this year) for either cave search & rescue (difficult, time-consuming, requires a lot of manpower) or mountain search & rescue (easier, shorter duration, still strenuous). Most of my time with the teams is spent training, which makes me a better and safer caver. The caving led me to rock climbing, which is a difficult sport to begin after age 30. I really enjoy it as well, as much as I can get to it. I've got a circle of friends who are REALLY into it, and I go with them sometimes. Monday was a holiday (and the weather was great here!) so I was able to climb a couple of routes in the morning at Yellow Bluff preserve, then meet some caving friends at Monte Sano state park and rap down into Natural Well (200' deep pit) in the afternoon. I've also taken up SCUBA and been on some really awesome dive trips.

My mom had a cancer scare last summer (bone cancer destroyed one of her ribs!) so I went home more than I usually do last year, but radiation seems to have driven it away for now. We're just taking it test by test now, but the longer that we have 'no sign' of the cancer, the better her future outlook.

*Also lots of other things
AC
Arch Capitalist
A Camel (Lots of names along those lines...)
Broadzilla
Cricket
Wile E. Coyote
Zombiecontrols
Skeletor (Skeletor bought adverts on wotmania to trash-talk He-man and support the site)

Lots and lots of others, too...

Still waiting for the NGFT part? Just keeping you on your toes...