Here are the top ten interesting facts that I found on the ISS…

1. The Space Station is the largest manned object ever sent into space, encompassing 43,000 cubic feet of living and working space – the equivalent of two Boeing 747’s.
2. Assembling the Space Station will require 45 launches – 36 from the United States and nine from Russia – and 1,705 hours of space walks, which is double the number of hours U.S. astronauts have walked in space since the beginning of the space program.
3. When fully constructed, the Space Station will be visible to more than 90 percent of the world’s population.
4. Humans need a little less sleep in space because our bodies do very little work in a microgravity environment. It takes no effort at all to raise your arm, hold your head up, or move large objects.
5. The Space Station consists of 70 separate major components and hundreds of minor ones, all of which will be assembled for the first time in space.
6. Astronauts aboard the Space Station will spend more time working on experiments than anything else. Many projects require teamwork, so astronauts frequently work in pairs.
7. The Space Station circles the Earth every 90 minutes.
8. The human body tends to lose muscle and bone mass rapidly in space. To fight this loss, at least two hours of strenuous exercise is built into every astronaut’s daily schedule on the Space Station.
9. The construction of the Space Station is a collaboration of 100,000 people, hundreds of companies, and sixteen nations spread over four continents, among them the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
10. The Space Station is the most expensive single object ever built. The United States’ participation has been estimated at $96 billion – a figure that nearly equals the combined cost of all of the Apollo missions to the moon.

Ike came ashore at 2:10 this morning and slammed Galveston, completely flooding the entire island.  I have been glued to the weather channel for updates to see how much damaged Clear Lake and the  Johnson Space Center received as Ike passed over.  It’s a weird feeling to watch the weather on tv and see this hurricane completely destroy places that you have been to before with 100+ mph wind while dumping a foot of water every hour.

I’ve been checking my email to see when I can go back home but all the emergency websites that I am supposed to check are down because the power is down across most of Houston.  I have to depend on my friends in north Houston to let me know when they get power so that I can have an idea on when I can come home so that I can assess how much damage there is to my stuff and then worry about getting back to work.

Kemah

Car trapped in water.

Downtown Houston

Debris on 45

I feel bad for the people that decided to stay home and ride the storm out because that was exactly what I was gonna do because I just got tired of leaving every weekend.  Oh well…  I guess I am officially an Ike refugee and at least I get to stay at a kick ass.  La casa de Hernandez is in the Domain which is no other way to say but an awesome place for young professionals to live.

The Domain view

Here is a zoomed in view…

The Domain from the street

Oh man for dinner I got to go to CPK…  Last time I was in Austin I mentioned that I really liked the pizza at California Pizza Kitchen but the one in Houston is a major trek.  So we went and I had the Santa Fe pizza, that pizza was awesome but I have yet to be disappoint with a pizza selection there.

After we ate all the pizza we could we started walking around The Domain just window shopping to see what new stuff the shops were selling.  I don’t think I told you that the bottom layer is shops and resaruants with the second and the other floors being the apartments.  We walked past this wine bar called Crú.  I have to let you know that I am by far anykind of vino conisouer but I do know what I like.  I’m not a huge red wine kind of guy unless I am eating pasta (which I already ate earlier so I couldn’t eat anymore) I wanted to try a new white wine.   The weather wasn’t too hot so we decided to sit outside and enjoy the band that was plaing out in the courtyard.  When it was time to order I had no clue what I wanted to try since there were too many options.  So I used a trick that I learned from a lady whose name is J-lo [true story] when i went to my buddy Dennis’s birthday party at a wine bar in Houston.  Jennifer used to be a wine rep so she was making recommendations for everybody on what they should try and everyone loved her recommendations.  I was amazed by this so I asked her what her secret was.  Basically she knows what regions of the world produced the best tasting grapes for a specific type of wine.  I knew that Italy makes good wine so I tried two flights of wine from the predetermined categories that Crú groups together for you.  I found out that I really like the Gewürztraminer (guh-VURTS-trah-MEE-ner) which this particular bottle came from New Zealand but hey whatever.

After the conference we met up with Doan to grab some dinner then we headed over to Blockbuster to rent Baby Momma and the new Madden 09 game.  I’m so exhausted I’m gonna just crash tonight.