M-O-O-N: moon

That brilliant orb is back in the sky, and I managed to get a pretty wicked photo by its light yesterday. It is amazing how much light is bouncing around out there, and how defined your shadow is just from moonlight. I guess the reflective snow surface helps, but it doesn't seem like the moon is this bright back in the world.



This week begins the new advanced 300 workout for the two of us that have persisted. We're going to shift to Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday so that we can also join some other folks for yoga on MWF. I definitely am feeling the need to get in more stretching, as my legs seem to be tightening up these last couple weeks. It's probably mostly a symptom of so much desk time, but I'm sure the environment here does its best to exacerbate the issue.



Here's a bit of interesting news that was shared by our physician's assistant:

Of the 60 people wintering at SP this year, we range in age from 19 to 64.5 years. Our average age is 36.6 years. By the time November rolls around enough (35) of us will have had birthdays, so our average will increase to 37.2 years.

The ages break down into decades by:
2 in their 60s
5 in their 50s
12 in their 40s
28 in their 30s
11 in their 20s
2 in their teens

cheating

Well, the moon came up today, and it's so easy to see outside that it feels like you're cheating walking around and working on gear outside. I actually missed the darkness somewhat in that the great sweep of the Milky Way was significantly with all that extra light bouncing around the atmosphere now.

I made a step toward a potential future option yesterday. Last year I applied for a really cool job with United Space Alliance in Houston, Texas. The position works with Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs, a.k.a. space walks) and has a whole lot of cool requirements once you get hired. You must get SCUBA certified within a year, foreign language skills are highly preferable, you get crew rated on the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU = rocket pack) used in orbit, and you also get certified to fly in the weightless simulating aircraft (the famous old one was dubbed the Vomit Comet). On top of that, the job requires 3-month stints to be spent working with international partners in Moscow, Russia. Hello...awesome! Anyhow, hopefully I'll hear something positive back from USA, because this would be pretty much as good as I envision it getting working in Houston, save as an astronaut. I updated my resume and submitted it, and I guess it's just yet another waiting game from here on out.

like buttah

Well, another week is sliding past "like buttah". It just seems like time passes so quickly here when you work all day every day. It is going to be a big adjustment to a slower pace of life if I do get the chance to travel once off the Ice. I guess that will depend a large measure upon just how little my money is worth come November. Frankly, nobody here is looking to positively at the economy given the news that filters down to the bottom of the world. My plans will definitely be driven by economics and how my astronaut application pans out.

I've got a pretty tough project going on right now. A little electronics box for the zenith photometer needs to have two components swapped out, and it's going to involve a whole lot of desoldering and resoldering of small connections (26 in fact). I will probably manage to get it done, but with no diagrams provided by the project it is disconcerting to rely upon circuit diagrams I've drawn myself. Oh well, I guess it's a good learning experience.

Last night we hopefully ensured ourselves omelets and other egg-ceptional treats by oiling many, many cases of the little nuggets of protein-filled goodness. Yes, you dip the eggs in oil and that somehow keeps them fresher longer. It probably has something to do with reducing the permeability of the shell. Anyhow, it was a pretty fun time-with only a reasonably small number of broken eggs-had to the dulcet strains of The Fresh Prince.

Yo Holmes, smell ya later!

busy weekend

Well, what was the weekend for some folks really flew by for me. We've had some progress troubleshooting one of my on-going problem projects, and I think we're probably getting closer to figuring out exactly what ails it.

The sky has been remarkably clear, but there haven't been any auroras that really have stood out in quite some time. The last time I looked at a space weather website the sun was completely devoid of sunspots, which doesn't bode well for having active auroras. The stars have been lovely, and it is amazing to be able to see the sweep of the Milky Way across the sky once again. When I lived on the East Coast for 3 years you could only see the few brightest stars, planets, and the Moon. When I'd get away to visit my very rural home it would be a real treat to go outside on a clear night and appreciate all the sky has to offer. That, and the quiet of not being in proximity to millions of other people. That's definitely the case here at the South Pole, too.

Band practices are starting to spool up as well. Our next show will be mid-winter on June 21. I'll try to get the times up earlier so folks can plan to connect via the Internet connection with more notice. I think all THREE bands I'm playing in are going to sound really good, so don't turn that dial.

My Sunday night space movie extravaganza presented "The Right Stuff" yesterday. We had a pretty good crowd show up, and though I had advertised it as being shown in two different nights, so folks wouldn't have to stay up so late, everybody hung in there and we watched all 193 minutes of its studly goodness. I've seen that flick so many times that I can't count. I just couldn't believe that my sixth grade teacher let us watch it with all the cursing, sexual innuendo, and brief nudity. It would probably be some big to-do today, instead of just letting it be the very inspirational piece of motion picture art that helped drive me toward my main goal in life.

Thanks, Mrs. Seaman!

Pitch Black

Very overcast sky today made for one extremely dark day at the South Pole. I had to spend almost 6 hours out at the Atmospheric Research Observatory fixing a project today, and had to stop for a while each time I went outside so I could even see my hand waving in front of my face. On the roof I had to work underneath a blanket so that my head lamp's light wouldn't interfere with the other instruments operating up there. It all made for a pretty tedious morning, but hopefully the problem is fixed and will stay that way.

Today begins the one-week countdown to the end of our 12 weeks of this version of the 300 club. I've been able to the full 300 for over a week now, so the mission definitely was accomplished. The very few-perhaps just 2-of us that are still performing the workout will probably be transitioning into the advanced version of the workout that the actors used as their final test when doing their conditioning for the movie.

Bands are in heavy competition for the use of the single music room here at Pole. The few weeks we have before mid-winter are absolutely flying by, and I'm supposed to be playing in 3 bands, playing perhaps over 20 songs, and singing at least 3 of them. To say the least, this is probably going to be the most prolific musical time in my life by a long shot.

Keep on rockin', and rockin', and rockin'...

Time flying

OK, I had no real conception that I'd let this go so long without posting. The days, weeks, and now months seem to be accelerating to some unheard of fast pace. Case in point, I feel like I just ran that may-day drill for the firefighters at last month's safety stand-down. Well, here we are, already one month later and the next safety stand-down is this Saturday.

There have been auroras off and on all week, with some really good ones just about 3 or 4 days ago. Today the auroras were pretty good, not quite so big, but there were small regions that just seemed to be pumping loads of green (and some red) light into a few streamers across the sky. There again was enough light being emitted by the auroras to cast a strange green pall over the landscape. It's amazing to think this phenomenon is going to be just a fact of daily light by the time our winter night is through.

The Re-Tardis has now got a tentative set list and is beginning practice for our next gig: the mid-winter party on June 21. I have yet to meet with either of the other two bands with which I'm probably going to play and/or sing. I hope there will be some time to do something besides practice music between now and the end of the winter. I do have a lot of other projects I'd like to keep making progress on. This is all good to have, as I gather it is usually the folks without enough to do that slide into a terminal boredom and have a pretty toasty, miserable time late in the winter.

A quick week

This week seemed to fly past as quickly as the humongous auroras we had yesterday afternoon. It was so dark when I initially walked out to ARO (sadly without camera or tripod), but when I stepped out the doors of the building there was this huge tendril of undulating green light right overhead. I actually got to see more than just the green light, but some reddish aurora as well. Though I didn't take any pictures I did get Calee (linked to at the right side of the page) called early enough so she could make it outside to work her photographic magic on the display.

This week was nice in that I finally got some big issues ironed out for some of my projects. The pace of troubleshooting is so much different here than when I worked spacecraft ops for SOHO at NASA GSFC that it really feels like I'm faunching at the bit (sorry, once I heard the archaic word I could never go back to "chomping") in anticipation of getting problems resolved.

Speaking of NASA, I'm really starting to think a lot about what comes next after I leave the Ice. So much of that will be driven by whether or not my astronaut candidate application is accepted or not that I don't even feel like I can make any recreational travel plans in case I get summoned to immediately return to Houston and begin training. It would be just the slightest bit exciting to leave the South Pole and return to studying for rocket launches, living on the Space Station, doing space walks (EVAs for those in the biz), etc.

Keep your fingers crossed!