The Three Days of Christmas

It's kinda like Groundhog Day. But with Christmas. And with less Bill Murray.

The town party was Christmas Eve, here. The party wasn't bad. There was no live music nor a DJ. There was a limited bar that offered beer and wine and sodas. There was a corner set up to have your photo taken with Santa, and judging by the photo name I was the first one up for that. It was mostly a social party and I remember talking to plenty of people. I got quite noisy at one point with all the people talking at once.
I did arrive at the party right as it opened and was there until they kicked everyone out.

On Christmas day I slept in a little. I had gone to bed at midnight the night before and got up at nine in the morning as I usually do with days off. I then spent the rest of the day trying to take naps as I wasn't feeling terribly great. I wound up having a nap through my scheduled dinner time, but dropped into the 7pm dinner and wound up sitting with my volleyball team and others I knew from working in Crary Lab. I'll have to see about tracking down all the photos. For dinner I Prime Rib (they had extra), shrimp, potato (it was horrible), a dinner roll, green olives, black olives (I love olives), an ear of cauliflower, and Frosty Boy for dessert (with my usual excessive amounts of hot fudge and dot sprinkles).

And now today is the day after Christmas here, but back in the States it is Christmas, so its like Extra-Innings Triple Special Christmas. I am working Firewatch again.
Apparently a cruise ship was supposed to stop by today. Since the ice breakers have not opened the channel yet the cruise ships fly their passengers over in helicopters and then they get a tour of the town. I had signed up as a tour guide for the cruise ships, but I was never informed of the first training for that and today's training was canceled for the cruise, which was in turn canceled because they did not want to take off in 45knot winds.
I suspect it might also have been too cold for the tourists. Ha.

I realized this is my first Christmas away from family. It would have been nice to have seen everyone together at my Grandparents' house, four of my brothers and my niece and nephews in one place. Conveniently my father did not have to mail out any of the presents I mailed to him, since everyone was in one room.

I am not too worried about not being able to receive presents. I could have had things mailed to me, but it is better to wait until I get back. I also like the thought that there is now a growing pile of packages for me back home, a combination of gifts and things I ordered online.

I know, I've been a bad boy. I need to take more photos for December. I have a few to upload, but nothing really nice yet. I plan to wander around Station soon and take a lot more of the various vehicles down here and maybe several more panoramas.

I am also probably due for a shower and I hope I can get my laundry in tonight.

Merry Christmas!

Excuse me my kind sir, hast thou seen mine brains?

My head is a bit fuzzy today.  It sometimes gets that way after I have spent the entire day reading, which I did.  Today.  And some of yesterday.  And lots of the day before that though with less obvious effects.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an awesome book series that I fully endorse (though am not getting reimbursed in any way, shape, or form to endorse as such).  If I ever go completely insane (which I may do by the end of my contract period down here) I hope it'll be something very similar to the events in that book.

Also, today I was staring at myself in a mirror and noticed a gray hair or two.  This is either definitive proof that 26 is 'Old' (as I have just turned 26 not two weeks ago) or that Antarctica is a harsh continent (I will take that more seriously now the next time I hear it, as I hear it often) and that it will chew you up and spit you out, then set you on fire and dance on the ashes while singing "I'm a little teapot" and rubbing itself down with a bowl of pudding as if it were bath soap, thus proving how much this place is not something to be messed with. 

I am sure there was a much better way to contruct that last thought, but the book I have just finished has severely warped the way in my brain processes.

With any luck, tonight will result in some quite interesting dreams and I will awake to an interesting new reality.

The Grinch who STOLE MY CHRISTMAS DINNER!

Much of the same.  I did another two days of Firewatch in Crary Lab.  This time I took a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to read in the downtime.  I got nearly halfway through the 700+ page novel today.  Good stuff.

I checked my mail the other day.  I saw from the package list I had something, but I did not realize that I had two letters from my Grandmother.  I kind of lose track of the days that seem to go by quickly, and Building 140 (which is home to the shuttles office, central supply, and the post office) is kind of out of the way of my daily routines so I forget to check for regular flat mail.  It was nice to see the birthday and Christmas cards which are now taped up on my closet with the rest of the mail I have been getting from friends and family.  Also, my package consisted of four pairs of REI wool hiking socks.  This brings my current REI wool hiking sock count up to 5 and a half pair (I lost one in the line of duty during laundry day, I may put up 'Lost Sock' flyers).

The program seems to be toying with the notion of using commercial airliners to transport station personnel.  I have already heard about the trip in one of these from a woman who flew down in a big Airbus.  Apparently half of these things are business class (first come, first seated) and that they have flight attendants and drink service.  And everyone has a window to watch the entire trip.

I can only hope they keep these around for my flight back!

Christmas is rolling around.  One more week.  Decorations have been going up all over town and I am tempted to buy candy to dump into all the stockings hanging on doors all throughout the dorms and Crary.  Someone has to fill them.  Lacking lumps of coal, I may substitute with rocks from the ground outside for some.

Bad news on that note.  The galley staff pulled out something like 150+lbs of prime rib to thaw for Christmas dinner.  They left it out on the back loading dock.  It has since vanished.  This could be another product of the McMurdo Rumormill (in which anything goes!) but I have heard it from several people now.  I suspect to hear about a 'steak party' soon, or of the Kiwis the next town over throwing a huge party.

Still Fog

Well, yesterday's fog wall is still rolling over the town.  I have seen the weather do this before.  McMurdo is surrounded by large hills on three sides and open to the sea on the west, I believe.

The wind blows in from the east, bringing fog with it.  The fog rolls over the tops of the hills and creates a low cloud ceiling while leaving most of the town fairly clear.  It is interesting to watch this white blanket slide over McMurdo.

Since I worked all of yesterday I get today off.  Not quite certain what I'll do yet, since my Sunday plans generally just involve 'wake up' and 'go to brunch'.

Condition Fog

As I sit at a computer in the second floor of the Crary Science building I cannot help but notice the closing wall of fog that has been slowly approaching the station. Looking down along the road I noticed two small specks. Upon looking through a telescope I noticed that there are two people on skis heading into the weather. I followed the road with the telescope and it disappears into the wall. I have no clue what they are thinking. That wall of fog looks like it is over a thousand feet high and I have been watching its progress and it looks like it is fast closing. I would never consider skiing into that.

More of the same

A lot of the same still going on. McMurdo is still melting and there are large puddles and streams all over the place. Any of the dirt that is dry kicks up a lot of dust any time a vehicle goes a little too fast across it. Temperature today is 32f, which it has been for the past week or so. I routinely walk across town in just a tshirt when it isn't windy.

My 26th birthday was Thursday. Not really too spectacular, and I was worn out from cleaning out another boiler room. I managed to avoid working American Night shuttles and wound up at Gallagher's Bar where a few people bought me drinks. I also wandered around in a tshirt and swimtrunks and my Crocs flipflops.

We got new mattresses on Wednesday. They were kind of like an early birthday present. For an hour I helped the housing department and some other volunteers haul the new mattresses about the second flood of my door while carrying away the old ones. I was tired when I wandered back to my shop for a meeting.

Right now I am playing Firewatch again on a Sunday.
Firewatch had been turned over to someone else so that they could preform that duty while I was sent inside the fire suppression water tank. Initially my supervisor had intended to keep me on Firewatch and for us to constantly switch back and forth whenever I had to go into the tank, but that seemed excessive given that the key-card I use to get into half the building needs to be reprogrammed every time someone else uses it, as they are linked to your name. I pointed this out to my supervisor and he just had us switch permanently. The other guy is a GA as well, but the UT shop supervisor had decided that the other GA was probably not as small as I am and that he would have trouble wriggling into the fire suppression tank.
The fire suppression tank is a piece of work. A cylinder maybe seven or eight feet around a somewhere around 20 or so feet long, the tank qualifies as a confined space. The entrance itself is just barely big enough for me to get my hips through with the safety harness on. I had to be fitted with a respirator mask to keep dust out of my lungs, and wear a full-body suit to keep the dust off me as well.
I worked with two painters from the carpentry shop and another GA from either the plumber or welder shop. Decent guys, but I don't think liked having me around, as they have been recently doing more work and never requested me back.
Anyways, you have to rotate out workers as it is a confined space. We were only allowed to work for 30 minutes at a time before coming back out for a break. A couple days we went in one-at-a-time while another day we went in two at a time when we wouldn't be getting tangled up in power cords. Climbing in was not fun since the opening is tiny and you have the harness on. Once inside you clip on the air sampler box which tests for toxins
and beeps when you need to GET OUT NOW. The exit gets sealed up behind you as it creates a seal so no dust escapes. The foam seal has a hole in it for a large hose which is hooked up to a HEPA vacuum which filters the dust out of the air from the tank before venting into the attic space above Crary.
The first thing we had to do was grind the rust and bad paint off the inside of the tank with an electric grinder. This was awkward since the grinder was heavy and the tank is rounded which makes it hard to get close to some of the walls. Later on we went through and scraped off bad paint with a combination of brushes, a smaller grinder and a metal blade.
I never got too hot in the tank, mainly because I only wore shorts under the full-body work suit I had on, but sometimes my face would sweat. I think the other workers were getting too hot, but they were wearing jeans and tshirts while in there, too.

I got moved onto other tasks too. The foremen in the FEMC building 136 which houses most of the trades underwent relocation to some trailers outside. I had worked on these trailers before. Now they were ready for the administrators and foremen to move in. There was a lot of moving old furniture and boxes into the new spaces. The trailers looked like little more than portable offices you would see on an construction site
but with what looks like a door to a large commercial refrigerator.
I must have been the only person concerned with tracking mud in as I was the only one trying not to walk through all the mud everyone else did. At one point a large box got pulled through the mud and then carried into the foreman trailer.
The empty space back inside the building will most go to the UT shop which I am in. They will be getting an extra workroom which used to be the office for all the foremen. The smaller admin office will be turned into a computer kiosk for the tradespeople to use.

Today I am back on Firewatch and about to go back on another round. Sunday is usually a day off so I am taking a shift today. Luckily I'll get a comp day for it, a day off for the one I have to work now. It is pretty empty in here though there are people in the labs.

Only one real problem lately. The guy that took over Firewatch for me came by my room the other day to inform me he wanted me to show up an hour earlier to get the building keys from him. Unfortunately the power of being Firewatch has apparently gone to his head and he now thinks that he is Czar of McMurdo or something and helped himself to my room. I do not remember him knocking, but he opened the door on his own without waiting to be invited in.  Later on he gave me an attitude as if I was at fault for sleeping in my room and that he would would try and get ME in trouble if I reported him.

Fire fire, pants a liar.

Much of the same with a little bit of the different just to keep things interesting.

With the whole town melting all around it is funny to see it suddenly really start snowing quite heavily as it did the other day, though all that fresh snow is melted by now.

I recently got sent back to the UT Shop to help with boiler cleaning.  Another messy job once the soot is in the air, but luckily I got moved around enough to where I managed to avoid getting too filthy.

Yesterday I got assigned to Fire Watch in the Crary lab.  While the fire suppression system is down for inspection and repair I get to go from room to room every hour and look for fire.  It isn't a bad job, but I wish I had wider boots as they have been causing problems for my feet since I got here.  The other problem is every Grantee in Crary likes to think they're funny.  I walk into an occupied room, announce that I am Fire Watch, and I get mixed replies.

"Back again?"

"Is this all you do?"

"No fire yet."

"You just missed it!"

"We put it out already"

"I'll start a fire for you next time."

"Fssssssshfssssshfshfshhfshhfsssssshfsh."

I think that last one is supposed to be the sound of fire, but I am not certain.

I have a key to every room in Crary except for one: the office of the two UT shop members.  Odd.

Why doesn't the Firehouse itself run the Fire Watch?  Good question.  Everyone keeps asking it.  Myself included, as I am everyone too.

I heard that the Firehouse first wanted to run a watch every 15 minutes, but did not have the staff to pull it off and it was deemed rather silly.  Second, they wanted to install an Auto-Dialer to keep them informed of the status, but I think I heard they decided against it since it would mean lots of calls.  So they settled on having someone in Crary do it.  And Crary decided it would be the UT Shop, and the UT Shop decided to relocate one of their GAs to Crary for the task.  So I set about inspecting the building every hour and phoning the Firehouse with the results until they came in later in the day, handed me a clipboard and told me not to call every hour anymore and just to keep the log myself.  I guess Helen in the Firehouse got tired of talking to me.

Working in Crary isn't bad.  I get to see some interesting things, like the one underwater camera that looks like a small torpedo, or the touch tank which is filled with some creepy looking things, like the large aquatic pillbug thing that looks dead but is always in a different place when I check the tank.

I also joined a volleyball team down here.  Two of my teammates work in Crary so I see them daily (for my duration of working in there).  My first game was last night and I apparently did quite well for not having played since High School PE.  Several times I would dive for the ball, bump it back into the air, only to have someone else bump it back to me while I was on the ground and thus have to preform a kind of breakdance spin-in-place to propel the ball airborne again.  I think I got a decent workout and there is now less skin on my knees as a result.  Good times.

I have been sending some packages out to friends and family.  Postage OUT is actually not too bad, since it only gets calculated as leaving San Francisco.  An entire box of Christmas presents wound up only being like $12 and some change.

Laundry has become a problem.  There are only 6 or washers and dryers in the laundry room in this building and they're quite often in use.  Like right now, I would like to do laundry.  I have become quite fond of my REI wool hiking socks and tend to wear the same two pairs every day.  This is bad, as I think the wool has gone flat.  I'll start trying to rotate my other socks tomorrow and we'll see how long I can get until my next load of laundry.

Note for next year: pack more REI wool hiking socks.