January 17th, 2017
International Space Station
Zarya Control Module
GMT: 19:37
We’ve all had a busy day, but there’s a few important items on the agenda, so let’s try to keep our energy up. I’m going to start with the roll call. Sergey? Peggy? Thomas? Thomas? Would you please say “here,” Tom? I know I can see you’re here, but it’s protocol, okay? Thank you. Andrey? Robert? Oleg? Here. Obviously. And that’s everybody.
Sorry? I can’t understand what you’re saying, Andrey, will you please take your helmet off during meetings? Thank you. What were you asking? Well, since we’re not “officially” recognizing the existence of, I mean it’s all getting redacted in the final reports, so I thought – no, no, you’ve got a point. Sorry about that. Real quick, let me jump back to the roll. Blurg? Great. And Mog? Wonderful. Really glad you both decided to sit in.
To begin, I want to ratify the minutes from last week’s meeting. So, briefly, Sergey thought the coffee was too hot and wanted to lower the max output of the water recuperation bus. Thomas agreed and showed a burn on his tongue but most of us couldn’t see anything. Peggy said she preferred hot coffee and if other people didn’t, maybe they could just wait to drink it. Sergey said nobody wanted a cup of hot coffee in their hands they couldn’t drink. Robert said we didn’t need to be spending so much time discussing this but agreed it was hard to not drink a coffee you were already holding. Membership motioned to table the coffee temperature discussion for a later date.
Robert introduced a proposal requesting sour patch straws instead of sour patch kids on the next resupply mission. Andrey seconded. Membership voted in favor of the proposal. Robert, I believe you were going to draft that email, yes? Wonderful. If you want to print and post it somewhere in Kibo, we can all sign off and then I think we’re good to go. Thank you for taking the lead on that.
Lastly, we had a request from Blurg and Mog to sit in on a meeting. Peggy made the motion, Andrey seconded. Membership voted and the proposal passed. So hi, guys, welcome! Is there anything you’d – oh, you shouldn’t have – are these homemade? Thank you, that’s very thoughtful, we’ll pass them around right now.
That’s it for last week; let’s move on to today’s agenda. The first item on the board – oh, these are delicious, oatmeal raisin? – the first item reads, “someone’s been recording over our orbital video archives with episodes of Shark Tank.” Well, that sounds like more of a one-on-one than a group conversation, but I’ll go ahead and say I did tape a tiny bit of the show onto the database. In my defense, I think it’s pretty unrealistic they’d ever need all thousand hours of footage. I would also like to note it wasn’t full episodes, just some highlights from the newest season. We can probably move on without a proposal, yes? No, I’m not diminishing the process, I just don’t know if we need to vote on – fine. I propose that no one will record Shark Tank clips with orbital video storage. Peggy seconds. All in favor? All opposed? All abstaining?
Super. That’s four in favor, zero opposed, and two abstains. The motion passes, so, hope you guys like reruns.
Next up, it just says, “the Incident.” Can whoever put this on the agenda elaborate a bit? Right. No, of course I think we should talk about it, I just didn’t know what you were referring to specifically. First of all, I want to thank Thomas for his quick thinking out there. Unfortunately, some of the footage did leak, but Tom got a hand over the lens before anything really damning appeared, so PR will probably chalk it up to a solar flare.
That said, perhaps a visitation policy could help us avoid similar situations in the future. Oh, gosh no, Blurg, we’re thrilled you came over, and what a fun night that ended up being – we haven’t played Charades in ages. It’s just that we don’t, I mean you don’t exist – strictly speaking – I mean you do, obviously. No, it’s nothing you did, but humans are a finicky bunch and I’m not sure now is the best time to make introductions.
This might be a trite point of reference, and I don’t know if you’ve seen – what’s a good example – Independence Day, but – oh, you saw the second one? You’ve only seen the second one? How did – never mind – you get the idea. We aren’t exactly primed for a friendly meet-and-greet. No, of course I don’t think of you like that. I know I speak for everyone when I say not one of us expects a little Mog to pop out of someone’s chest but – what? That is how you reproduce? I’m so sorry, I wasn’t trying to be insensitive. It’s a conversation I wanted to have, but – oh, very funny. Good one. Touché.
Point is we love having you over, but Earth is a real beachball of mania right now. People are spooked. They’re lashing out at their neighbor, lashing out over the slightest difference, and I worry about adding another life form to that cocktail. I don’t know. Anybody want to try and turn some of this into a proposal?
That’s great, Peggy, thank you. To reiterate – the motion is that we reaffirm our commitment to these new friendships with Blurg and Mog, and want them to feel welcome in our home anytime, but – for the moment – we’ll all do our best to not engage in activities which might be recorded or otherwise broadcast to Earth. Sound good? Robert seconds. Motion goes to a vote. All in favor? All opposed? All abstaining? There you go, the motion passes – five in favor, zero opposed, and one abstaining. Love it. Moving on.
Last big item on the agenda is the theme for our Groundhog’s Day party coming up. Last week, we narrowed it down to three options. Sergey’s tallied the ballots and it was a tight race. I know we all had favorites, so if your idea wasn’t picked, please try to be a good sport about it. Without further ado, we had three votes for jungle safari, two for lumberjacks and lumberjanes, and one for outer space. So jungle safari it is. I think Sergey’s setting up an arts and crafts station in Zvezda, so if you’ve got free time during the week, please stop by and help out with decorations.
Alright, unless there’s anything else, we just need to choose a facilitator for next week. We’re probably going to pick up where we left off with the coffee discussion, so it could be a long one. Peggy, perfect, thanks for volunteering. Who wants to do notes? Great, Robert will be our note-taker. And that’s it for today, everybody, thanks for your time. I think there’s been talk of some Catch Phrase happening in Soyuz MS-03, so if anybody’s interested, we’ll probably head over in the next fifteen or so. Meeting adjourned.
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Written By Conner Marx with artwork by Marika Stephens
Inspired by: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/mystery-flashing-lights-speed-past-9626551