(I apologize to anyone who is not expecting political talk on this blog. I rarely go there, and if you hate me for it, you can pretend this post doesn’t exist. )

Let me start this off by saying that I am not a rocket scientist. I don’t claim to be one, but I am married to one. My rocket scientist spouse is a contractor for NASA working on the Space program – both with the Shuttle and with the International Space Station.

Today, President Obama released his proposed budget for 2011. You can read all of it online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/- the part I want to talk about is here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/trs.pdf – specifically page 18, “Termination: Constellation Systems Program”.  You can read all of it, if you like. I did.

In the words of a very famous person… “Let me explain… No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

The President’s 2011 Budget proposes to cancel the Constellation program, allow the current Orbiter/Shuttle program to die of natural causes when it terminates sometime in the next 1-2 years, and replace it with a yet unnamed, yet undetermined, “bold new approach” with “game changing technologies” that “embraces the commercial space industry.” Constellation is being canceled because it costs too much money and because it “doesn’t meet our national priorities.” This budget will, instead, accelerate work in “climate science, green aviation, science education, and other priorities,” all with money previously slotted for space exploration.

There are a lot of problems with this, not least of which is “And what are you going to do with all the people whose living depends on these programs, considering we’re in the midst of a very large economic recession and that job futures are extremely dim for just about all of the aerospace and defense sectors already?”, but I’ll let that go for a minute and focus on that last sentence.

The President wants to increase funding for science education… and get rid of the only active space exploration program (Constellation) to do it, with no actual replacement in mind.

To put it in other words: the President wants to spend lots of money promoting young scientists into making robots, aerospace engineering, all of the specific and technical fields that make Space possible… and then cancel the program that puts those scientists to work, in favor of some amorphous “new and awesome thing that we’ve not decided on yet.” Everyone thinks that it is great! when someone features a young group of scientists that make a robot that will find, pick up, take apart, and store tennis balls. As soon as those scientists grow up, go to college, get jobs, and make a robot that will find, pick up, take apart, and store molecules and objects from other planets, asteroids, or whatever… nobody cares.

It’s as though they don’t see the connection.

We instill in our youth the joy of space exploration – go see a movie like October Sky – only to take away their opportunities to follow that career later in life to greater fund “green aviation” and funnel more kids into math and science careers. (I’m sorry, I don’t work in the field, but even this pea-brained Anna can tell you that it’s a lot cooler to say “I ran data for that project that went into space” than it is to say “I ran the data on those fuel efficiency cells on an airplane that nobody’s ever heard of” not to mention the buzzword “green” thing.)

As for embracing the commercial space industry…

“… investment in a well-designed and adequately funded space technology program is critical to enable progress in exploration, that increased international cooperation could lead to substantial benefits, and that commercial services to launch astronauts to space could potentially arrive sooner and be less expensive than Government-owned rockets.”

When I read that, this is what I hear: “We think that commercial space programs are going to get here sooner, so we’re not going to bother, because it’s expensive. Instead we’re going to do a Bold New Thing like make all our people that are here to work in space exploration into R&D scientists in buzzword technology like “green aviation”. All those kids that we’re spending all that money on can either pray that they get picked up as a corporate shill or come join the lab rats working at NASA.”

To add a layer of complexity, there is currently one commercial space exploration company in the United States – SpaceX. To some extent, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, The United Launch Alliance (which is both Boeing and Lockheed Martin) and Orbital Sciences all operate rockets as well, but currently SpaceX is the only US company actively entering the manned spaceflight field. All other commercial manned spaceflight is foreign, and that – combined with the phrase “increased international cooperation” smacks too close to outsourcing to make me really thrilled, especially considering the constant pushing of “science education” and the number of engineers already trained and working in the US.

The other possibility with this statement involves the government purchasing spaceflight technology from those companies instead of developing it themselves… which probably doesn’t do a lot in the saving money department, or will end up screwing over the engineers that developed it in the first place. (I bet they don’t tell students about that when they’re doing all that “science education” promotion.)

Don’t get me wrong. It’s 2010, we’re at the ass end of a NASTY bit of economic downturn, and though the “end is nigh”, we’re not seeing a lot of bounceback yet. I get that it’s all about the dollars.

But if it’s all about the dollars, why bother funneling millions into creating new aerospace and robotics engineers at the expense of the jobs of an entire generation or two of existing aerospace and robotics engineers that really would like to continue working in that field.

It doesn’t make any sense.

Which means, in just over seven months, we’ve redone every single room in this house, with two exceptions – the little yellow bedroom (since it was little, and yellow, and you can’t really screw that up) and the great room (which has gorgeous hardwood judges paneling and therefore hasn’t been bothered with). In that time, I’ve learned a few things. Some of them seem obvious now, but we didn’t know much going in.

1. No matter how many tools you have, you will need more. Don’t forget to add “tools” into your project budget. This includes a lawnmower and a weed-eater/edger. You didn’t need those in an apartment, but if you don’t have both in about 2 weeks, your neighbors will HATE you. Also, it costs about $50 to pay a landscape company to do your yard each week. You’re not really saving any money in the long run.
2. You need a real mop, and you need a real broom, and you need a real dustpan. The people on TV lie. Swiffer ain’t gonna cut it when you have construction mess. I like my Libman mop, but any good, sturdy mop with a head that you can remove and wash will work. I’m also a huge fan of the GreenWorks Dilutable cleaner.
3. You really don’t need any fancy, expensive cleaners. I use the GreenWorks Dilutable stuff for floors/buckets of soapy water, a biodegradable toilet bowl cleaner, and vinegar+water.
4. Goo-Gone is wonderful. I could sing many praises to the wonder of Goo-Gone.
5. There is very little you can’t do yourself if you’re not willing to take the time to learn how. This is frequently the kicker between “we’ll do it ourselves” and “we’ll pay someone else”. Time.
6. Asking the internet is a really wonderful thing. All kinds of people want to teach you projects! Just remember to watch more than one youtube video. This is the internet, after all, and you might find the moron before you find the master.
7. Remember that anyone who gives you a time estimate on a project has done that project before. You haven’t, and so you will take longer, due to learning/trial and error/oh shit we forgot to… etc. By “take longer” I mean double, if not triple, your estimated time. Also double your budget. And did you remember the tools you’ll need?
8. Make friends with someone who’s done it before. It’s a lot easier to learn to fix a faucet if you have someone to show you how to do it the first time. My dad and father in law have been our resident teachers in that department. Also known as “I don’t know either, let’s call dad.”
9. Some things you can do by yourself (painting).  Some things you can’t (hanging drywall). Learning to tell the difference can take some time.
10. Schedule your projects wisely. We decided to tackle our rotted out, sinking back porch in June, because it was leaking water into the house when it rained. As such, we had the hottest two weeks on record, it was 100+ degrees and 80+% humidity all week. Granted, we didn’t have much choice (water in house = BAD!), but doing that project in November would’ve been a lot nicer.
11. Schedule your projects around your budget. You can repaint a room, including primer, for less than $100. You can’t redo your bathroom for that.
12. Water, water everywhere… Find a good plumber. Ask your neighbors, ask your mover guy, ask around. We asked our electrician and he told us the name of HIS plumber. When our bathroom ceiling fell in, and we had to have the entire plumbing system in the house replaced – not a job we were up to doing ourselves due to that “Time without working water” thing – that number was VERY handy.
13. Wallpaper can be removed with a mixture of a little fabric softener in a spray bottle of hot water. If you can peel off the vinyl layer before you spray, great. Otherwise, you’ll also need a wallpaper scratchy tool thing. You don’t, however, need really expensive wallpaper removal solutions except in extreme cases.  As an aside, however, if you’re going to remove wallpaper this way, make sure you like the smell of the fabric softener. ‘Cause it will be everywhere.
14. Don’t be afraid to mix paint, especially if you bought too much of something. The lovely green of our back bedroom and the soft beige of our hallway and piano room are self-mixes from leftover other paints.  And we have PLENTY left for touch ups. This is another great use for the “oops” paints you’ll find at the hardware store – which are usually at a really great discount.
15. Don’t underestimate the power of the little things. A new coat of paint, new cabinet pulls, maybe a new light fixture or a new ceiling fan, even different art on the walls can make a HUGE difference. If you’ve got a real fixer upper, sometimes those aren’t enough, but small changes can be very effective in the long run.

All in all, I think we’ve learned a lot. In that time, I’ve stripped walls, learned how to drywall (including tape and float), learned three different kinds of wall texture, primed, painted, ripped out a porch and put it back, taken down a tree, cleaned out flower beds, cut sod, made curtains, hung blinds, changed cabinet fixtures, watched as my husband changed out faucets (<3 him for that) and learned how to do electrical repairs, replaced showerheads, resealed a tub, and cleaned more goo off of more random crap than I’ve ever done before in my life.

It was definitely worth it, though.

Because this isn’t just the house we bought, or our first place, or a house in Houston. This is OUR house.  We have the bruises to prove it.