bright sunshiney day

Today the sky is very clear, and the light outside sure looks like it did during our summer months. We've continued to have C-17 flights to McMurod shuttle people down to the Ice for the summer season, and next week the Basler and Twin Otter aircraft should make their arrival on the Ice. Everybody, well, most folks, are hurriedly getting all that last minute work done before the people they have to turnover to show up.

I'm trying to go ahead with travel plans, and can't quite make myself stop applying for jobs. My travel agent really needs to get back to me with airfare, so that I can get on with making all the other arrangements for tours and accommodations and the like.

Our bands keep practicing and sounding better and better. The Irish band is adding another song or two to the existing set, which will be significantly different than anything we've done before. I won't spoil it for any folks that might be headed this direction. That music event at station opening is going to be one awesome way to make an exit after a year down here. It still remains a bit surreal being a part of something like this. Hopefully folks will appreciate all the hard work the band members have put in over the course of the last 9 months.

decisions, decisions

Nothing new to report work-wise or really otherwise here at South Pole. I'm just in the throes of indecision about whether to start booking airfares and such for this trip home I conceived via NZ, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia. ARRGH! Why does the economy have to tank just as I'm about to get my first day off in nearly a year?

same ol' situation

Well, I'm still here and still working at essentially the same tasks. A C-17 flight to McMurdo got "boomeranged" (turned back to Christchurch without landing in Antarctica) this morning, so the huge crowd of people headed for the Ice sitting around in New Zealand didn't get any smaller.

Monday night we wrapped up recording the last tracks for the Irish band and Picardis recording project. It's amazing how well they turned out, and doubly amazing to find myself doing this when in February I wasn't a singer or much of a guitar player. We're now back to the normal practice schedule in preparation for a concert to be given for the opening of the station for the summer season. Considering that we'll have a bunch of new people with a bunch of energy, it will probably be the best gig in which I'll ever have a chance to play.

I'm starting to slowly develop a plan for some travel immediately following my redeployment from the Ice. Yesterday I decided that I'd probably add on a quick couple of days into Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, which has me pretty excited. I have a lot of decisions to make before I lock into any trips, though. Not getting any replies to my various job applications is somewhat stressing, but I may take it as an opportunity to be unfettered by employment and see a bit of the world for a few months following this super-ultra-mega-marathon of workdays on the Ice.

Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
~Seneca

WX Delay

Well, the paid vacation goes on for the folks backing up in Christchurch that are trying to deploy to the Ice. The delay today is due to the fact that there are 38-kt sustained winds with 58-kt gusts and ~100m of visibility in McMurdo. So, the folks on that first flight, ~118 or so of the 400, are on-call every morning to get to the airport and deploy. The rest are just picking up their per diem every day and enjoying the fair city of Christchurch. I think some of them have probably been paid to not work already more days than I've had in the last year. Oh well, it's not their fault.

After a few days inside the ping pong ball here, the overcast is pretty much gone and the light isn't totally flat. I actually like it when the light goes that flat, because it is almost a surreal uniformity that takes over ground (well, ice) and sky. It always reminds me of the loading program in the movie "The Matrix" where the characters are just walking around in featureless white space, until they want something like "guns, lots of guns".

I didn't have time to pack anything up for our first post office of the year, but have been sorting and packing some here and there since then. I unloaded a bunch of my WWII history books I've already read that an uncle sent down this summer. I've still got 6 to go, so some of them may come a-travelin' with me if I can't get through them all. Right now I'm reading a really good one called "Winged Victory" that chronicles the history of the Army Air Force (AAF).

The bands have almost finished our recording project, and things are sounding pretty decent. A couple nights ago we did a bunch of background vocals for the various songs that needed them. It was pretty fun singing along with 5 other guys into one microphone. After that was finished up our ringleader and I stuck around and did harmony parts for "Authority Song", which was a really educational experience. We heard the size of the song just balloon, and essentially did the musical equivalent of making hamburgers into steakburgers. How's that for a dated, bizarre metaphor?

Well, the grindstone is missing me.

South Pole: Endgame

Well, yesterday we had the first attempted flight into McMurdo Station to open the summer 2008-09 season in Antarctica. Unfortunately the flight "boomeranged", turning back to Christchurch, New Zealand without landing at MacTown. I worked some of the flight following here, which likely sounds a whole lot more exciting than it is in actuality.

Work continues apace here at Pole, and some of the station opening activities have begun already. I'm thick into document update mode, and hope to get that all polished off in relatively short order. I finally managed to get those photometers off the roof after a few days gradual thawing, in addition to a little elbow grease facilitated by a pry bar.

I'm still trying to make some plans for travel once I leave, but am increasingly leery of the economic situation. I guess if things really tank then this trip could be a last hurrah for a while. It'd be a shame to lose the opportunity to see some "far off" lands whilst on this side of the planet. Besides, I've only spent like $15 down here since the station closed for winter. I need to re-acclimate to being a good little mindless consumer if I'm going to rejoin The World for a while.

“A man knows nothing if he knows not
That wealth oft begets an ape.”

~Old Norse quote
(I originally found this a few years ago in "The Long Ships" by Frans Bengtsson)

so much for relaxation...

Well, despite the ongoing litany of safety stand-downs, holidays, and normal days off enjoyed by most of the station, I'm still here working without respite. Sunday 9/28 was my 250th consecutive day at work, and it was a productive one, which they might as well be if you have to be at work. I guess the "highlight" of the day was trying to remove some sensors from the roof, but being unable to do so because the humidity from inside the station had worked its way up into the joints around the sensor assembly and frozen it in place. So, there's yet another thing that's going to take a lot longer than originally anticipated.

We're only a few weeks away from seeing the Basler and Twin Otter aircraft transit down to the Ice for the summer season. Once they arrive we'll begin to get folks deploying to Pole sometime (likely) in the third week of October.

We had our time change yesterday morning, springing forward one hour. The lost hour was not appreciated, particularly here where the sun won't set until a few months into the next calendar year. Who needs to save when the resource is effectively endless?

Sunday Select Cinema's showing of Jurassic Park was fun last night. I ended up watching the jungle in the background about as much as the action. The movie definitely isn't high art, but it really is a good escapist story that has special effects that stand up pretty well, considering the movie is pushing 16 years of age and was one of the first movies to really get the computer graphics done right. I consider JP and Terminator 2: Judgment Day to be major landmarks heralding the age of computer graphics in cinema.

recording continues, as does work

The recording project continues to make progress, and we'll hopefully be done with all the drum parts soon and be on to the other instrumental and vocal parts for the various bands. Last night tracks were laid down for Triceratops: The Revenge and House Mouse Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder Blues Project. I'm not entirely sure what will be on the docket for this evening.

I'm really close to having my contribution to the end of season report complete. I just now have to look back through records for what happened with the Aurora projects while I wasn't serving as the Aurora Tech. Turnover to the new Aurora Tech will be interesting, since none of us covering those projects got any formal training on them whatsoever.

I had fun doing shooting for the Sunday Select Cinema skit yesterday evening. It's fun using the locations and stuff we have down here to make our own stab at motion pictures. I'd tell you about which movie it was a spoof on, but I'm 1) not supposed to talk about it and 2) not supposed to talk about it...

It's been a bit more clear as of late, which is pretty, but makes for some colder temperatures.