Not there yet

Though the sun is up, it really is not imparting any great amount of warmth to us yet. The last several days have been quite cold again, reaching -97°F yesterday with an absolutely gorgeously clear (not a cloud in sight, save the power plant and furnace exhaust plumes) sky allowing heat to dump back into the atmosphere. It got overcast and windy again, and the temperature today is 30-or-so degrees warmer.

I got to go on a wild goose chase on the cargo berms and in the science milvans (think cargo shipping containers) this week trying to track down capital inventory. There is so much junk just essentially abandoned out on these raised platforms of compacted snow. I saw a crate for a project I used to support that was shut down in 2008. Why that’s still here, I have no clue. I’m sure there is plenty of stuff that could/should disappear, but once things make it down here, they tend to stick around: like the buried Old Pole station and the utilidor arches from the Dome days that were not removed this summer. We leave quite a legacy for future generations, or the ocean when this all falls in there in however many millennia.

I am feeling a bit under the weather, with quite a lot of sinus congestion and aches and pains. With David Lynch’s “Dune” the Sunday night movie today, I wonder how much a Fremen stillsuit would help counteract the deleterious effects this place has on one’s body. You’d have all the recycled water you wanted to drink, and it would probably be fairly humid inside, so your mucus membranes would be happier than their usual, unprotected and desiccated selves. But, despite the fatigue and relatively rough condition my body is in (nothing different than last time I wintered), I am still enjoying having the oh-so-convenient weight room/gym at my ready disposal after work. Coupling that with all the walking my jobs have entailed this year, and I’m in pretty decent shape. In fact, I currently tip the scales at about 8 pounds more than I have ever weighed, and it is most definitely NOT due to being fat. I will definitely miss that “bene” of living here at Pole.

“The basic rule is this: Never support weakness; always support strength.”
~The Bene Gesserit Coda, "Heretics of Dune"