Walls closing in...

And the ceiling too, for that matter. On Wednesday we had a pretty cool emergency response drill here practicing the extraction of a patient from a confined space. One group went down into the ice tunnels and "rescued" a simulated patient from those chilly, sub-ice passages. I was in the other team that went into the sub-floor beneath the music room and gymnasium and pulled out another simulated patient on a back board, like he'd had some sort of spinal injury. It was neat getting to see a different bit of the station, but boy was there a lot of dust (mostly from gypsum board, I think) to inhale as all those folks scooted around.

I've still no word back from Belgium about the ISS Ops Engineer job. Hopefully something (good or not so good) will come winging down the ether into my inbox before close of business tomorrow, which will still be Friday back in European time zones.

Extraterrestrial visitor

Wow! Walking back from ARO this afternoon I saw a beautiful meteor (or piece of space junk) streak its way across the sky. It was a brilliant green color, and didn't just wink out really quickly. I actually got to watch its progress across the field of stars. It was very lucky that the wind had died down from last night/this morning and that the clouds had dissipated so that I could see this event take place.

There's no word from Belgium yet about the ISS Ops Engineer job, but it's still early in the week. It's also still Monday night in that part of the world, so that has undoubtedly got something to do with it.

I definitely am thinking a lot about this crossroads at which I find myself. I have been pretty down that it seems like there is little chance for me to be able to continue chasing my dream of becoming an astronaut as well as continue to come down to this remarkable continent at world's end. I find myself doing what Frodo did in the Shire before setting out on his quest do dispose of the One Ring. Is this the last time I shall see the aurora? Is this the last time I will stand and listen to the sound of nothing on the Antarctic Plateau? Is this the last conversation I will have with this person? Both paths have their ups and downs, but it's a shame it feels like they have to mutually exclusive.

Run for the jungle

Well, I got to see a new (as in I'd never seen it before, not illegally downloaded) movie last night. The Sunday Select Cinema showing was of Mel Gibson's gorgeous flick Apocalypto. The scenery and costumes were really top-notch. It's amazing how alien that jungle landscape looks after this much time in a nearly sterile landscape here at South Pole. Yesterday on my walk out to ARO I stopped and listened, and since the breeze was really low there was essentially not a sound to be heard, nothing alive, but beautiful nonetheless. I even recognized some of the Mayan words from a trip in 2002 to visit some friends down in Belize where they were living in a Mayan village. Somebody told somebody else to go kill that dog, and they used the word "peck", which I recalled from my time in the village. So, that was pretty cool, and a nice indicator that my memory isn't being too adversely affected by my time here in stir at the Pole.

So far this week things are pretty routine here. I just spent a couple hours sorting electronic cables of different sorts, which was different. People keep talking about travel and their next jobs, and I have one friend that bounces at least one new idea for a trip off me every day. I'm still in holding pattern, but will hopefully have some light shed on one option (in Belgium) this week if the company notifies me like they said last week. In researching Belgium I came across this Kattenfestival (Festival of the Cats) where fake cats are flung from the belfry of a church in Ypres. Now that sounds like one happenin' festival!

Weekend nigh

Well, the last few days have been pretty peaceful here at Pole. Today we actually have scalding temperatures up in the -40s Fahrenheit range, so that's nice for a change.

I've begun the process of updating procedures and documentation for the various projects on which I work, so that should hopefully be out of the way before I have to start to really think about how I'm going to facilitate turn-over to my replacement in October/November.

NASA has been potentially going to take our satellite passes on the TDRSS birds for the last couple days, but-evidenced by my posting here-that has not yet come to pass. They are doing upgrades and tests to the ground system, as I understand it, to help ensure mission success for the next and final trip the Shuttle will make to the Hubble Space Telescope here in the next few weeks.

I've been practicing music for both the bands quite a bit, and just last night one of the other guys and I had a vocals-only practice to go over the harmony parts we'll be singing in some of our set list. It's going to be a real challenge to get my hands and voice to work at different things at the same time and have it still sound good, but I think the harmony will add a lot to the overall performance.

So, all's well here at the bottom of the world. Folks are definitely thinking and talking about plans for After a lot these days, despite the months we still have to go before redeployment.

Rude awakening, sort of

Well, I got to do a middle-of-the-night check of all my projects equipment last night because we had a brief power outage here at Pole. All my projects were working properly, and it is nice to see that the UPS systems here actually can function properly. I generally don't trust these systems for some reason. Anyhow, it wasn't all that bad, and I was thankful that it wasn't much worse. The wind was really blowing on my way to ARO, and boy is there nothing quite like an Antarctic breeze blowing right through the vents in your goggles to wake you up.

The moon is down again, and it's like somebody turned the light switch off for the great outdoors. We don't really have all that long, just a couple weeks, until the sun starts glowing a bit on the horizon. I'll probably miss the night, as there is so much more to see in the sky without that pesky ball of fusion blotting it out with its glare.

The details of our redeployment off the Ice are plastic to the extreme. The latest dish is that we might all be delayed one extra week (weather dependent). I'm sure loads of us will take that poorly, but for me-whatever. I do want to make sure I have enough time to hang out and travel with friends in New Zealand before they and I separate paths. It will be nice to be able to put down the radio, get off-call, and just relax.

Here's to a future day without work!

Let's get pedagogical!

Well, Sunday night was a busy one for me. In addition to running my Sunday Select Cinema (showing The Last Samurai), I first had to give my much-belabored science lecture titled Three Remarkable Spacecraft: SOHO, Mercury MESSENGER, and Mars Phoenix Lander. It went pretty well, despite the video not working on one of the computers I was using with a projector, but the other computer worked and folks could see everything on the big flat-screen TVs in the galley. The length actually came out to be just right, with plenty of time left at the end for the few questions people had to pose. It's a bit of a relief having that behind me, but I'm glad I did it. It was interesting getting to research some missions I didn't know a whole lot about, as well as present information about the spacecraft I have worked on for the longest period of time (SOHO).

Last night the band practice The Doors' "L.A. Woman" in earnest for the first time, and boy is it a fun one to play. I think our sets for the band (soon to be formerly) known as Re-Tardis and the Irish band (yet to be formally named) are going to be a whole lot of fun. I'm now just a bit worried about getting all my parts memorized and polished up, as well as simply being able to carry the key in which I have to sing Prince's song "Kiss". Talk about reaching for the stars...

Saturday afternoon

Well, most of the station is off right now for "safety stand-down", but I'm still here-as always-plugging away. It's actually really nice outside right now. The temperature is in the -50s F and the wind isn't blowing all that hard. Call me crazy, but it almost felt balmy. I can only imagine what the World will feel like once I redeploy from the Ice.

I've started thinking about what sort of travel I might like to do once I leave, and sailing has been looming extremely largely in my head. It still feels like a waste of time doing this research online, since I have no idea what sort of job offer might come along and trump everything else. Still, it would be nice to catch up on the time off I've missed while being down here on-call and working ever day.

Here are a couple pics of 1) outside and 2) my rack of science electronics with the lights in the lab turned off.