Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The hunt continues

Well, I'm thick in the fray of sending out feelers for future job opportunities right now. I contacted a few folks about possibly working at Palmer Station or on the research vessels yesterday, and heard back that between it being too early to see if positions are open and budget woes for RPSC that they couldn't tell me more than keep checking in as the year progresses to see what might come up. With the passing of July 1, I can now start really wondering whether applying from the South Pole will grab NASA's attention enough to make me stand out amidst all the other applications they have received for the next class of astronaut candidates. I'll keep looking for the jobs, but if nothing turns up I may have to just start making some travel plans and be a bum about the planet for a while. What a burden that would be!

This weekend is naturally the U.S.'s Independence Day, but I'm not entirely sure what festivities will go on here. Most of the celebrations that we have back in the U.S. would break both the Antarctic Treaty and station SOPs for activities outside here at Pole.

This Sunday I am going to show Last of the Mohicans as part of my Sunday Select Cinema recreation event. I put up a poster on the station's information "scroll" with a beautiful picture of one of the places that they filmed the movie. It is a picture in the fall of Hickory Nut Falls in Chimney Rock Park, North Carolina. It's funny how some people have reacted to seeing such a now-alien landscape. I've gotten comments from simply remarking about how beautiful it is to lambasting me for putting something like that up in the middle of winter when we can't go right out and hike around in a similar environment. It's funny how different people's minds work.

Listen for the voice of Killdeer ringing in the hollows...

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