Antarctica? Seriously?

I just thought I'd check in since I hadn't done a blog post in quite a while. Nothing really new and interesting has happened lately here. There was a big "Christmas in July" party on the 25th, but I had to work that night and missed it. After seeing the shape everybody was in the next morning, I have to say I'm glad that I did! Wauwermans Islands The main group of winterover people have about ten weeks left here, and are starting to talk about going home. A lot of people are starting to get that ten thousand mile stare around the dinner table lately, myself included. Because of this, we've stepped up the amount and complexity of our glacier/ocean search and rescue and fire drills to keep people sharp and focused. The reason I say the main group of people are leaving is because they've asked me to stay an extra two weeks to help with the winter-summer turnover, and I've agreed to it. I'm going to miss going home on the ship with the folk...

I've talked about what work days are like, but I thought I'd explain how weekends work down here too. Most of the time we work 6 days a week, and have Sunday off. Every once in a while, about once a month or so, we'll have a 2 day weekend. On Saturday we'll work our normal jobs for half of the day. After lunch, we clean up our offices and work spaces and then head to the galley around 2pm for the weekly station meeting. At the station meeting there is a recap of the week, a look at what's up for the next week, news from around Antarctica, and "gentle reminders." Gentle reminders are where anybody can bring up anything that they think might need to get done or changed, things that are bugging them, etc. It's a good way to keep resentments from popping up in our small and isolated community. At the end of the station meeting, we all draw a slip of paper out of a bucket with our job for "house mouse", which is the weekly deep cleaning of the...

Just a quick one picture post, a panorama from my iPhone which was handy in my office this morning. I really should keep my camera there during the week... When we went to bed last night, the water around station was pretty free of ice. When we woke up, both Hero Inlet and Arthur Harbor were packed in with pancake ice and some mini icebergs. Pretty special, although it doesn't look like we'll get to go rec boating this weekend...