Who I am and What I do
Hi!! I just wanted to introduce myself. I work at NASA's Johnson Space Center as a journalist, the JSC on-site coordinator for Quest, and chat lead for the project. The company I work for is Raytheon STX, a NASA contractor.

I have the coolest job!! I meet people, interview them, and write up their stories to be put on the Internet for others to read. The things we talk about, and I write about, help inform young people (and anyone else interested) of what's going on at NASA, and the diversity of jobs, skills and people it takes to keep it going strong. The people I interview all work in some capacity with the shuttle or the International Space Station. Sometimes I take pictures of these people and of some of the things I see. I do a lot of work on the computer -- composing stories, sending e-mail and attachments, scanning pictures, and keeping records. I put all my stories and bios in HTML code. I enjoy that.

As the chat lead for the project, it's my job to set up chat rooms, do practice chats with the NASA experts, moderate webchats and webcasts, and then archive the webchats and clean out the chat rooms. It's really fun to be right in the middle of the live events! Sometimes, I compose webpages for these events.

One other aspect of my job is event coordination. I work with other education entities to provide ideas, experts, and anything else I can for partnered events (usually webcasts). I love to do research, especially on the Internet. But, I find the library is cool, too.

Growing up
My dad was in the service -- the Navy, then the Coast Guard -- so I moved a lot growing up. It was hard sometimes because I didn't really have any life-long friends, but I learned to adapt to new situations. I met a lot of interesting people, whom I fondly remember; and I lived in some cool places -- Long Beach and Huntington Beach, California; Corpus Christi and Houston, Texas; and Hawi, Hawaii. I grew up pretty much on the water, to some extent. We always lived on or near some coastline, since I was 5 1/2 years old. I have always liked the beach and the water. I love the way it sounds and smells.

In elementary school, I wanted to be a teacher. I played school all the time. In junior high, I wanted to be an 18-wheel truck driver -- with me being five-feet tall it seemed an unlikely career choice, but it was 1974/1975 and the heigth of the CB radio/trucker craze. I was never really raised thinking of writing as a career where people were paid. When I was in junior high, one of my friends and I wrote and produced a weekly newspaper for ourselves, called The Rabittville Gazette. I've always written poetry. I always loved to read and began my reading career with Henry, Beezus and Ramona; Encyclopedia Brown; Nancy Drew and biographies of Helen Keller, George Washington Carver, and Presidents Lincoln and Washington. (I still love to read true stories about real people.) I was a tomboy, and I enjoyed sports and animals, including bugs.

I remember being exposed to the space program in the 1960s when I was in elementary school. We were watching it on TV. I never imagined that I would work at NASA, especially not as a writer. I spent my junior high and high school years in Seabrook, Texas where I went to school with astronauts' kids in the late 1970s. I thought what their dads did was neat, but unfortunately I never asked them how they felt about it. I wish now that I would have.

My family
I live in League City with my husband, Nicky, and my daughter, Rachel. Rachel, who's 14, likes to hog the phone and hang out with her friends, shop and listen to music. We have battles over whose stereo can go the loudest, as I love to listen to music, too. Nicky is an electrical instrument technician, and he loves to fish and play computer games (flying and racing).

We have a big, black dog named Rebel, who is part Golden Retriever and part Newfoundland. He is the smartest dog my husband and/or I have ever had. We also have a gray hamster, named Sadie. She is pretty smart, too, which amazes me. She has eaten through a plastic cage & the mesh top of an aquarium cage. She knows she wasn't created to live in a one foot by two foot cage :-) The funny thing is, usually when she does escape, she comes out of hiding when I call her name, with a bit of coaxing.

My family enjoys going boating/fishing together. We love to rent videos and pig out on all the junk food that goes with it -- pizza, soda, popcorn, etc. We also love seafood, so fish/shrimp frys and crab/shrimp boils are a regular thing at our house. We all are fanatical about Mexican food!! I also like to read, cook, and mess around on the computer.

Career journey
I graduated from the University of Houston - Clear Lake, in May 1998, with a bachelor of arts degree in media studies/communications. I obtained my associate of arts degree at College of the Mainland, in Texas City. I love the school environment, and did well there. I didn't go to college until I was in my early thirties. I wish I had gone when I was younger, but I don't think it's ever too late.

This job began as an internship, which is where you work so many hours a week and the work counts as one of your classes. After I graduated, they still needed me, so of course I stayed. I like that what I do is educational and fun. I enjoy meeting the diverse group of people I'm exposed to at NASA, and introducing them to you -- this is what I like most about my job. What I like least is transcribing tape after interviews. It just seems so monotonous, yet so tedious at the same time -- and it seems to take forever. Once I have the tapes transcribed though, I love working with the words and the story. That's the fun part! The live events, and every thing that leads up to them, are totally cool, too!

Future plans and goals
I plan on going back to school and getting a master's, and maybe even a doctorate, degree. Although I am always interested in communication and media studies, I am also interested in instructional technology, which is using computer technology for teaching and distance education.

My daily goal is to appreciate the little things in life, as this is what life is, in my opinion -- a bunch of little things rolled up into one. I also strive to always be the best I can be, and on days when I'm not, I try again the next day. :-)