farewell fair light

Well, the days go on and the sun sinks lower. It's all so gradual, but it will be so very decisively night for months on end. I guess it is exciting, but it feel more like the resolution to follow through with something weighty and important (perhaps marriage?) than a rock'em sock'em adventure.



This weekend is one of the station's 2-day weekends, and we will be having a fancy dinner and party in honor of the sunset. I don't know what all else is planned during the days, but hopefully I'll be able to participate around work. I guess the next "holiday" will likely be mid-winter in June, but I'm sure we'll find some reasons in the meantime to celebrate. The next few weeks will be pretty tough for us science techs. By about April 12 we will have to have gotten the winter-only projects (mostly cameras and other optical instruments that study what's going on in the sky) up and running. My walk to ARO and working out on the roof are going to be so very different in the dark. It's going to take some getting used to, I'm sure.

Oh boy, we just watched Platoon. I had a similar alien sensation as when I saw Rescue Dawn last year in McMurdo. To watch people moving through the jungle landscape of southeast Asia while here, particularly Pole where we don't even have soil, is so very bizarre. That there are animals and plants in such profusion as to be dangerous to health and life is about as far from the environs of the Antarctic Plateau as you can get.