Spirit Sol 216

I'm RP-1 again. I come in at 8:30, expecting the SOWG meeting at 9:00. But 9:00 rolls around, and no SOWG meeting. In fact, from listening to people talking, it sounds like they had it already.

Turns out the schedule was erroneous. The schedule said the SOWG meeting would be at 9:00, but in fact it was at 8:00, and I'm apparently the only one who read the schedule. Everyone else goes to the SOWG meeting every day, so they know when it's happening, and don't look at the schedule any more.

So I missed it completely. A great way to start your day.

Well, the other news is good. They got usable data from the APXS the other sol after all, Arthur tells me -- the doors were partly open, though they didn't latch. We're going to hold off on uplinking thisol's sequences until we get confirmation that the doors closed, but we're all pretty confident they will.

Thisol we're grinding this rock -- always a fun thing to do. And Ashitey's my RP-2. Thisol goes a lot better than the last time he and I worked together (two sols back), and I like to think it's not only because I'm the guy at the keyboard this time. (It was true in first grade, and it's true today: I need to learn to play better with others.)

The only blight on the day is that we have to cut the RAT grind. The day is constrained on one end by the fact that we can't start IDD work until after noon (it's getting too cold on Mars as Gusev approaches winter) and on the other end by a comm pass. In between, there's just not enough time to do everything the scientists have asked for. We end up cutting some stuff out, and Ashitey and I find clever ways to squeeze down the timing of the other stuff, and in the end they have to cut only 30 minutes out of the grind. It's still a shame, but since 30 minutes translates to only about half a millimeter of depth, the RAT guys don't look all that upset.

And as I'm always saying, if science is happy, I'm happy. And I'm happy.

[Next post: sol 222, August 17.]