TCOB...It's alright.

So, assignments are now out for the MEGA MOUSE house mouse cleaning done in and around the station.  Unfortunately, I don’t get to just clean my work centers like some, but am on a team tasked to clean the recycling room, laundry, and computer lab.  It probably won’t be too terribly bad, but it definitely will take some time to finish properly.  I’m pretty much squared away and ready to begin turnover, with a couple reports just being held back until I find out some final details about things.  In general, I seem to be in a good position with all the final extra issues to attend to on top of the usual 7-days-per-week tasking.

One thing I’m not spending much time on this year is travel planning.  There are all the usual uncertainties about when Pole will open and I will have completed turnover and actually be back in the World once again.  On top of that is the ongoing (awesome, no really!) waiting game regarding the astronaut candidate selection process.  I just found out that the selection dates from here on out have been slipped by a month.  That is, all the dates up to and including the now-June announcement of the people that get the few positions being hired for the new class of AsCans.  The start of work date for them (us) is still set for sometime in August 2013.

Wednesday we are scheduled to get a couple small aircraft in from Rothera Station on their way to McMurdo.  The weather forecast is looking unfavorable for that to happen, but we shall see what we shall see.  It is certainly the time of year for Polies to demonstrate whether they have learned their lessons in patience and resilience.

“I do not think there can be any life so demonstrative of character as that which we had on these expeditions.  One sees a remarkable re-assortment of values.  Under ordinary conditions it can be so easy to carry a point with a little bounce.  Self-assertion is a mask which covers many a weakness.  As a rule, we have neither the time nor the desire to look beneath it, and so it is that commonly we accept people on their own valuation.  Here the outward shows nothing.  It is the inward purpose that counts.  So, the gods dwindle and the humble supplant them.  Pretense is useless.”
~Robert Falcon Scott, Terra Nova Journals