Sensory Overload

Today was beautiful, although extremely cold. Brien called into today to say that there were good auroras out, so I went out on the deck into quite the sky show. First off, the sun light was glowing orange out by the berms and fading slowly into a dark night sky that still houses several bright stars. Directly opposite is a full moon, which is preparing for an eclipse tonight so that was lighting up the other half of the sky. Then from end to end, directly from the glowing horizon to the moonlit sky was a long green/pink/purple stream of auroras that was so powerful and excited that it steadily flashed and weaved across the sky. Truly awesome, especially at this point when we aren't sure how many more auroras we'll get to see.
Here is one of Jason's pictures of it, although that hardly does the scence justice, especially taking into account that light has been sparce for 5 months:


And we got a great view of the eclipse after all. Here is Robert's photographic rendition. How late did you stay up to finish that one? Turned out awesome!

Lighting Up

My spirits have been up, probably due to the sun coming back most of all. We also had a two day weekend which went way to fast, but it sure makes a difference for morale.

On Friday we had our 'Mass Causualty Incident Drill", which basically is a practice for an event in which a handful of people are injured. This one took place in the power plant and Dainella did a great job prepping Dan, Paul and Dave who were all injured or unconscious in the smoky power plant:

All I had to do was "man" the control room, since Dan, the Power Plant Supervisor was one of the victims. That made for a pretty relaxed drill from my end of things, plus we had a great view of the power plant floor and the fire team extracting the victims:

That evening we had a 'Ladies Night' and Travis and Richard chivalrously delivered us dinner in the lounge the farthest from the galley. It was almost like being at a restaurant, but we didn't have to pay. Lots of fun and laughs talking to all the women. (Yes, those are real flowers on the table that Terry grew in the greenhouse):

Here is some proof that light is returning to our neck of the woods. Dainella and I stepped out on the deck real late on Friday and were completely floored since the clouds were completely gone and you could finally see the sunrise getting started.


Pictures by Robert, Heidi and Dainella

Lost Time

Generator Chaos
We had a few hiccups with our power early on in the winter, but it has been rather quiet the rest of the season... until last Saturday. Generator 1 busted a cylinder lining and spewed glycol and vapor all over the power plant just before work started that day. With only 54 people on station, it took nearly everyone to get the assess the situation, get the mess cleaned up, get other equipment up and running, get food, check people in and out of the power plant, etc. The whole event went rather smoothly, probably because many of us had deja vu from the summer season.

Tuesday morning, however, brought more drama, when Generator 1 went down again from some strange control issues. We spent the next several days looking at the programming, fault logs etc to trace back the problems to the origin. I certainly don't mind having something new to learn at this point to keep my mind on the sharp side.

Fundraising Party
Travis organized a party to raise money for 'Save the Children'. The galley was decorated up once again:

People donated gift certificates, chores, outings, flags and Robert's pictures for everyone to bid on:

Brian and I ran the bar, which was quite a bit of fun, and everyone was having a good time despite having to actually pay for their drinks.

Travis said we pulled in a couple grand, so that was pretty successful. We were asked to dress up a bit, so we had some color on the dance floor:

-99.9F
Every winter the station has been here (except for one) it has reached -100F or lower. July is usually the time for this since it's in the dead of winter, and we have been waiting all season for the occasion. On August 14 we nearly made it. In fact, the guys at AERO got below -100 for a couple minutes, but since it is the meteorological department who keeps the official temperatures we only got as far at -99.9F. Well, that is about as close as you can get. As I write this we've had a couple of days where it has consistently been in the -90s, so we'll see if we can make another run for it before it's gone forever.

Birthday Events
I'm officially old. I round up to 30, my bones ache and my eyesight is fading. Actually, it is pretty hard to feel old around here since I am the second youngest on station. It has certainly been different hanging out with a crowd of friends who range from about 5 to 30 years older than myself, but its funny to think about how many friendships I would have missed out on if I was around the same demographic as back home.

For my special day, I got breakfast in bed, got to go to work all day, and got some great gifts that consisted of a lot of sugar (no problem!). My sister sent my email address to loads of friends from McMurdo and even people I had never met before, so all day long my inbox was flooded with messages from far away which was a nice change. We watched a Harry Potter movie (uh, not sure which one that was....) that evening with an awesome carrot cake that Francie made:

On Sunday, Brian made a fajita dinner outside on the grill which were amazing. We made tortillas the night before, but its tricky to perfect it in the high and dry atmostphere, but I think we did pretty good:


Color in the Sky
No denying now that the sun is on it's way back up. There were clouds in the sky for a few days, so all we saw was a faint orange strip below the clouds, and now that it is clear, it's quite light on the horizon.

My 9-Ball Demise
The Queen has fallen in the 9-Ball League. I won the first 3 games and soared to the top of my conference, but after losing the next 4 in a row I'm near the bottom already. I'm suprised I even got this far.

Blurry

So this is sort of weird. Another physical effect of this place, besides dehydration, feeling dizzy when you work out, and seeing your veins through you're white skin: I had Heidi do an eye test on me since things have been getting a blurry lately. I have attributed this to the fact that I simply don't use my long distance vision anymore. Rarely am I looking more than 10 ft away from me, unless I'm going down our long hallway and sometimes if I'm outside. But even if I'm outside it's so dark that you can't really focus on anything far away or you'll trip on a drift. Anyway, I still tested 20/20 with my right eye, but I couldn't even GUESS at "Line 8" with my left eye, leaving with 30/20. That's a real shame. I can't really read the scroll on the TVs in the galley anymore. I assume it will come back, but I'm thinking Heidi should do a documented test so I have proof that I went down hill while I was wintering. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Thankfully it's not so bad that I couldn't see the auroras yesterday which finally came out again. It looked just like a green ribbon trimmed with light pink, streching and scrunching up across the sky. Not to bad to have to take a break from work and see a light show.



(You know you are a Harry Potter geek if you looked at this picture and thought "Dark Mark")

Photo by Emrys

One More Down

So, I made it through July, the darkest, and [supposedly] coldest month. Three months left. Things haven't really been that boring, but when half my family is climbing Mt. Hood today, it makes this place seem pretty confining. Here are some recent tidbits:

Jamie took my undefeated title last night in the pool tournament. I suppose it was just a matter of time and my lucky streak buckled on the first shot of the first game.

Some of us dyed our hair this past weekend, which was going to be a subtle change for me, but I ended up throughly blonde. Not sure how I feel about it, but who really cares at this point. Ironically I think I look even more pale now.

Heidi got us various prodeals from several companies, so shopping has become everyone's vice. Too bad I can't even remember what I DO have at home anymore and I have to keep reminding myself that everything must fit in my car.

We finally got 4 on 4 for full court basketball again, and we are all paying for it. I think it'll be another 3 days before my legs are back to normal.

I made one phone call to the real world last week. Pretty good, huh?

Today it's -74F, 13 knot winds, -113F windchill, tacos for lunch, striploin steak for dinner, and poker at 7pm if you can make it over the mountainous drift that the 'lounge' has created.