Yesterday Terry, Butch and I had a day off to celebrate the US holiday Thanksgiving. I like the thought of having a day specifically dedicated to gratitude and the things we’re thankful for: from my side, I was really happy about a day off!
I did have to do some work, mainly in support of our Russian colleagues Sasha and Elena working in Columbus on the assembly of the experiment Plasma Kristall 4, but most of the day I could use to get my space life a bit more organized and to get started on using the exercise machines.
My biggest achievement has been organizing my little sleeping station: it’s about the size of an old telephone booth and it contains of course my sleeping bag, which I typically roll up and stow out of the way during the day.
My two personal laptop computers also live in my sleeping station and a footrail is convenient located on the floor to provide anchoring while working on the laptops. One is called SSC and I can use it to look at the schedule, to use my onboard email, to read procedures, to download pictures and videos to the ground, to search the inventory management system and much more – it’s connected to the onboard network, so I can even access it from my iPad (which also lives in my sleeping station).
The second computer is completely disconnected from the onboard network and can be used to remotely login to an image on a server in Houston: it’s our way of connecting to the internet.
I also keep in my sleeping station the clothes I am currently using, a few hygiene items like deodorant, handcream and chapstick, a water bag with straw that I can refill at the water dispenser in the nearby module, my crew notebook.
How do I secure all this? Well, like everywhere else on Station: with Velcro, bungees and clips (with Velcro on them). Luckily, many people have lived here before me (the last one, my fellow Shenanigan Alex!), so all that is needed for a 5-star space accommodation is already set up.
Ah, my camera with flash is in here too. For internal photos, we try to use “our own” camera as much as possible: it makes it easier to track photos and download them. It’s not only about taking pictures of our life and work onboard: very often the ground will ask that we photo-document a piece of equipment or an activity.
As I said, I also had my first workout yesterday, first of CEVIS, our ergometer, and then on ARED, the Advanced Resistive Exercise Devise, on which we can perform a number of exercises, from squats to bench presses. Butch gave us a great briefing about the peculiarities of these machines, especially ARED: if we don’t treat it right, it will break on us, which we really don’t want. We need exercise to preserve our muscles and bones!
The picture was taken by Butch from the Cupola. One of this days I will take a camera and show you the view from the other side. Certainly the best view from an exercise machine, on and off the planet!
Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42
avamposto42.esa.int
(Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiCAST qui:
https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook
(Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici:
https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha
(Trad ES – Currently not updated) Tradducción en español aquí:
https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora
29/11/2014