Soccer at the Pole

After breakfast and the meeting yesterday, I was feeling a little light-headed, so I took a nap. I woke up, grabbed lunch and walked the 1km to the lab. It's fairly warm, for south pole weather, only about -10 so I only really needed my wind pants and a fleece (along with gloves, a knit hat, and goggles). I spent the afternoon reacquainting myself with the lab computers and equipment and started some simple data analysis. Later, I trudged back to the station for dinner and then played some soccer. I still wasn't acclimatized so the doctors would have definitely advised against playing, but I did anyway. I just tried to take it a little easy. Playing soccer at 10,000 feet is like playing soccer in space. Every 5 minutes we have to stop to catch our breath. You breathe, but you don't feel any better. It's strange. I just can't wait until next week, once I'm fully acclimatized and can really start running. After soccer, I was feeling pretty dead, so I went to bed.

Woke up this morning and had a big breakfast of steak and eggs and headed back out to the lab to do more data analysis. I also wrote a schedule for our telescope to run which should give us some useful information. I'm currently working on another, longer schedule to be run later in the week.

I think there's volleyball tonight, which will be totally awesome and then I'll probably have a few birthday beers with some friends and go to bed.

It's hard to determine when to celebrate my birthday... Back in the US, it's tomorrow, but our timezone is across the international date line so it's a day later here. I figure, if I moved to Australia, I would be celebrating my birthday on their 13th, not the US' 13th so I'm going to celebrate today. Of course, maybe I'll just have a 2 day long party...

Violent Femmes in Antarctica

So, sure enough yesterday about after lunch I was feeling much better. After lunch we went back to the lab to work. A new group member got in yesterday, so now we're up to 5. It was actually a pretty awful afternoon. A lot of sitting around. Wasn't much for me to do. I hate sitting on my hands, especially down here. After a while, Jamie (the new one) went back to rest and Rashmi and Phil went back because they were assigned the day's house mouse (cleaning the station), so it was just me and Walt. We were working on the computer systems. We spent a lot of time modifying and mounting the monitors to the computer rack and at the end of it all both of them didn't work. A lot of work for nothing. After a while, we decided to head back and get some dinner. All day we had been waiting for a call from cargo to get these 2 crates. First they said after 2pm. Then they said that the swing shift (the late shift) might be able to do it, but maybe not today. Well, when do they call and say it's ready? The second I start to climb the stairs into the main base. So I have to turn right around and walk aaaaaaaallll the way back to the lab. Very demoralizing. And of course, once I got there, there were 2 planes that flew in, so the skiway (the area you have to cross to get from the main building to the lab) was closed for about 40 minutes. So I just sat there in the lab for nearly an hour with nothing to do. Finally, the cargo arrived. Believe it or not, this is when my day started to get really good. Rashmi brought his iPod and we were blasting some pink floyd which always puts me in a good mood. I suited up in my ECW gear and then strapped on the body harness and we hauled these crates up. For the 2nd crate, I literally operated the crane, opened the gates, and moved the crate myself. I did the work of 3 people. The group got a kick out of it. I was just really pumped up and wanted to get the hell out of there.

We had already missed dinner at this point, and we were none too happy about it. When we got back to the galley, I asked about leftovers, and to my surprise, there were some leftover steaks. Jackpot. Although the adrenaline rush from moving the crates already put me in a good mood, this definitely pushed it over. After dinner, some people from the Ice Cube project came up and played Simpsons Clue with some of my group. I declined because I wanted to go into the music room and jam.

When I got down there, Danny and Eli (mandolin) were working out some violent femmes songs. I immediately picked up a guitar and started playing along. After a little while, a drummer joined us as well and we had ourselves our own violent femmes cover band. We must have played like a dozen of their songs. They're so easy and so much fun to sing at the top of your lungs. We were all having a blast. A little later, Mark joined and we started jamming on some blues and bluegrass stuff. Mark printed out the lyrics to Iko Iko after really liking the arrangement of it that I played. We all played it and sang and had like 3 part harmonies going. It sounded really good. We all had a blast. We're definitely playing tomorrow night after soccer, but I'll probably end up playing again with them tonight.

After jamming, I met back up with my group and played a little foosball before going to bed.

I'm still having trouble sleeping, and I'm waking up feeling just awful, but it fades as the day goes on. I think today or tomorrow I'm going to take a break from work and just rest.