Well Fueled

"What if you put a thin line of lipstick over my eyebrows?"  This is not something I've ever suggested before, but it was fantastic.  Between the two of them, Carissa and Scout devised a vaguely Egyptian look to complement the gold sequin skirt and rainbow leggings I wore for Ice Stock.  There was a frigid wind, and I was lucky not to need dexterous fingers and could dance as hard as possible to perform.

Toby, you are a funk goddess.  Liz, you make the best faces.

This weekend was a two-for, as the annual art show was scheduled a bit earlier than usual in the season.  I spent my Monday volunteering with the Fuels department to get more familiar with their work.  Various pipelines snake around town, disappearing under roads and buildings, and congregate in Rube Goldberg-esque neetworks of crazy.  With my helpful instructor, I crawled around ditches and behind buildings to check that appropriate valves were open or closed, then we let fuel flow by way of gravity downhill to the tank we wanted to replenish.  It was a pretty nice day but I was tuckered out after lunch.  I managed to help a bit with cleaning the barn up for the art show that night, but I did have to evaporate away and sneak in a nap.

MAAG (McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery) is always a delight.  My dear kitchen friend re-purposed some of the 1000(?) pounds of erroneously ordered mint chips that have haunted station inventory for years into a replica of Machu Picchu and one of our most beloved childhood memories:

Everyone's anxiety on the Oregon Trail.

My roomie helped make a semi-mechanical bull-penguin that you could ride.  And there was a forest.  Well, about as good a real forest as we can get down here -- fake hanging plants and vines, a projected video of rain forest footage, and mist falling and dripping from the leaves.  Four of us sat in awe in the dim light of the canopy and just breathed quietly.

And after all that excitement, I found a nice new place today.  Not really found, and not really new, but I walked out to, technically, a glacier terminus just beyond station.  A creaking, slow-motion waterfall of packed ice flows to the edge of what will be the open sea later this year.  The sun has melted impressively long icicles that drip-drip-drip like a light rain, and occasional chunks calve off the face with a satisfying guunsshh into the snow below.

I'd estimate it's 30-40 feet high.