Seasonal Awesome Disorder

You can't do it all.  At least I went in the ob tube, if only for a few minutes.  That porthole to another world was stuck in the ice for weeks, but I only happened to luck into going down when some other people already had the key.  It was pretty neat to see divers in the water, though, fins undulating in the dim, silent world of jellyfish and ice crystals.



(Hi mom and dad -- here's my face, I'm still alive and well.)

Our access to the ice shelf also wrapped up a couple weeks ago -- significant melt pools are visible near the coastline, and the ice is slushy, weak, just plain unsafe.  The cross-country skis in my corner by the closet stare reproachfully every time I enter my room.  I know it's been awhile, gals, but there's just so much fun music.  Oh, and Christmas.

All I can say about Christmas is this town likes to party.  Varying combinations of booze-music-food-presents carried us from Friday afternoon straight through Sunday evening.  There was Uno and shots; there was Pink Floyd and lobster tail; there was a scarf and chocolate.  It snowed late Friday night, which was our Christmas Eve, and I knew I better go walk in it even though it was 1am.  When I woke up the next morning, it was all gone.

P.S. - We are starting to fill shipping containers with cargo in anticipation of the yearly supply ship arriving in a couple weeks.  What does this exciting new development hold for me?  Aaaaaaand it's...more data entry.

Down To Fun

What's that, the cover of a new Christian rock album?  No, just pregaming enjoying nature before band practice, out at Hut Point.  Julien makes a mean mojito, especially when you consider that the mint is a few weeks old and the lime is powdered.  Also, there is a guy here who's actual first name is Steel.  He's sitting on the right.

For a few days there I had a lot of spare time on my hands with only one band going...but thankfully, they're both fully operational again.  Our bass player suffered an unfortunate accident and flew home, but I scooped up a replacement so we can still play IceStock.  And another side project is brewing: I met a guy who was a professional jazz drummer for like thirty years, and who made and brought down -- to Antarctica -- his own set of vibes (as in vibraphone, not psychological energy).

Christmas week is upon us and the debauchery started right with the firefighters' dinner/party.  My friend and drummer cooked a feast: meatballs, pasta, latkes, crepes, asparagus, and more.  They're about as rowdy as you'd expect any such group to be, and it pleased me that the chief ended an otherwise congratulatory and sincere speech with a quote from the sage of our times, Jerry Springer.

Tonight beckons like a giant chocolate cake: planning our short film, followed by band practice, followed by maybe my favorite event of the year -- SOLSTICE SILENT DANCE PARTY.  We will enter into the transcendent quiet beauty of this landscape, moving to our own tunes on headphones, the sun as high as it ever is all the way to midnight in a strange southern land.

What time is it? Show time.

My gosh, I haven't talked about the first gig...ok: Down To Freeze was well received at the Crary Lab science social, achieving that perfect ambiance-music volume without turning into a spectacle.  Because, really, we were background music for what I assume were varied and erudite doctoral-type conversation.  I borrowed a little black dress from one friend and savagely high heels from another, and we swung through the jazz tunes and pounded the rockers without me toppling over.  It was a great night, though tinged blue as our guitarist departed a few days after.  The plan is to integrate a new guitarist, but most of the jazz is going away.

After many -- and I don't use this word frequently or lightly -- epic rehearsals, last night Midnight Rhythm graced the stage of Gallagher's bar.  Things really got amazing about two weeks ago when we tapped an as-yet-undiscovered drummer, Dave, the egg line cook.  That kid can hit some shit.  Most of our tempos increased, transforming what had been a remorseful post-break-up original into a fist-raiser of an I-will-remember-you, and our three 12-bar blueses(eses) into groovin' dance tunes.  For a second time, I abused my aging knees keeping time in four-inch sparkly purple velvet heels.  I think the bubbles in our champagne (one bottle each, frequent toasting) encouraged an effervescent mood.

And as if all this music weren't enough thrill, we got our first delivery of ice cores from the South Pole.  This is the for-reelz science down here, the most prized of the field samples, and there is a strict protocol we follow to ensure their integrity.  Usually they are flown in at the coldest time of day, about 2am, but we had had several days' weather delay, and eventually it was decided they would come during normal work hours.  So thankfully I didn't have to do this the first time confused and bleary-eyed.  My main job is to put bar code stickers on boxes and record temperature data logger numbers.  I also have to talk on the radio, which is scary and awkward, as I've never been a big rig driver or bus dispatcher, and fail to conjure the proper jargon.  My coworkers are the ones actually driving forklifts into shipping containers and carefully placing every pallet.

Picture Fun Time

It's a Thanksgiving miracle -- the internet doesn't totally suck!  And so I can finally show you some photos.  The gorgeous curling uplift of the pressure ridges with a back-drop of volcano Mt. Erebus:

And here's town with a fresh coat of powder from atop Observation Hill last week:

This stark little homestead is a dive shack on the ice at Turtle Rock, reportedly one of the most beautiful dive spots in the world according to those in the know:

The seals like it there, and so do I.  We listened to 70s rock while the divers strapped on their tanks and gear, then one by one they slipped beneath the slush and down into the cold quiet deep.  Eventually, air bubbles stopped escaping through the hole and a stillness took hold.  Other than fifty or so lazy seals, I was the only being on the surface of the ice for miles in every direction.  Thirty minutes passed like a single slow breath, and the small circle of open water roiled again to announce the divers' return.  It's always fun to get out of town and science.

This Week in Music

Greetings from the McMurdo band room, where your heart and voice will soar, break, and soar again.  Overall, I’m pretty drama-averse.  When my pals brought in a new guitarist,  I tried to be welcoming, open to his suggestions, and not roll my eyes too openly when he couldn’t consistently alternate between the three chords in a blues…but when he incorrectly identified a song’s progression as Rhythm changes, he had to be put in his place.  I swear, it wasn’t just me; apparently he got the vibe and bowed out, and we’ve returned to a tighter, funner little group.  Likewise, with the jazz group, we were finally all there – guitar, drums, bass, me – and sailing along; then, at a performance, the tune I most looked forward to went completely off the rails.  At least we didn’t stop; I kept smiling dopily, and eventually we stuttered back to the head for one last time through.  Luckily, that was the first tune, so I hope everyone forgot about that by the end.  And then comes the moment you pick just the right song where everybody clicks in and it seems to play itself.  Anyway, all this jazz stuff is leading up to a week from now, at the Crary Lab Science Social, where beakers (scientists) will swirl glasses of wine and regale each other with witty anecdotes as we noodle in the background.

A perfectly clear understanding of the parameters of my job remains elusive, but at least I make fewer data entry errors.  Mystified people ring me several times a day, and I take a stab at answering their questions, often thickening the fog.  My boss is like an all-knowing oracle, but with sass: he purses his lips, sharply inhales, and says, “Let me speak with them, please,” and sets us all straight.

It finally snowed a good few inches, and we took advantage of the relative humidity to have a snowball fight.  My aim is terrible, but a sort of drive-by shooting technique helps me score direct hits at close range.  I hope it sticks around long enough to ski on Thanksgiving, which we’ll celebrate on Saturday in order to have a two-day weekend.  Now, I want everyone to go out and eat a nice pastry for me, and eat lots of butter, as it’s difficult to come by down here. 

Orange but Not Evil

Oh office job, how you warp a human being…  I broke a personal vow to never create a PowerPoint presentation today.  All I did was copy some cat images from the internet and make a slideshow (well, I didn’t actually use the slideshow function, I just put the pictures onto subsequent slides) for my upcoming safety lecture on sunburn prevention.  (In the interest of “safety first,” every work center conducts a weekly safety meeting in which very important topics are discussed.  I thought some visual aids in the form of a kitten wearing a sombrero would energize the otherwise blandly informative content.

We all kept an eye on election results throughout our Wednesday afternoon.  Things were not looking good when I took a break for dinner and band practice.  I was at the Coffee House when the blow struck; I kept looking beseechingly at the messenger for ten minutes, waiting for the  “Just kidding!”  And then the thought that all this life, work, and play here might shudder to a halt due to lack of interest and funding threatened to swamp us all in grief, which we fought back with more wine.  It still feels far off, but the distance back home shrank quite a bit.

Tonight is the long-awaited, one-time-only performance by Cold As Ice - Antarctica’s Premier Foreigner Cover Band.  Things are shaping up for a rager of a Saturday night, but as I have a pressure ridge tour to lead tomorrow morning, I’m shooting for 2am bedtime.  As always, safety first, and remember to cover up in the sun.

SKIIIIII

Something fairly magical happened: after two years of meaning to cross country ski the ice shelf in Antarctica, I finally DID.  A six-mile chunk of it, at least.  Everything was just right, from the perfect weather to the energetic pal that skis up to 20 miles a day.  When we stopped, just a few minutes short of catching a ride home on a shuttle van, we barely waited until a delta (big ol’ industrial truck) came trundling up at 8mph and gave us a lift.   Being out in the sun was refreshing, and I felt better about the slab of melted brie I had eaten at brunch.

So, work – that’s right, I work here.  The data entry is rote but not so bad; it’s the tiny bullshit like accidentally sending the Northbound Priority List instead of the Northbound Packing List that gets me flustered.  (Such incredibly different things, maybe we should differentiate their names a bit?)  I get an odd satisfaction from printing labels and stickers (always been a sticker fan), and while filing itself is a blah activity, I like the facility of referencing a physical record.  And then there’s afternoon hot dog break.  One of my coworkers gets pretty snacky near the end of the day, and has developed a rotating menu of hot pockets, empanadas, chicken nuggets (microwaved), and hot dogs on the Foreman grill.  It’s pretty entertaining to see it sizzling away in front of our window framing remote snowy mountains across the sea.

The near-eternal South Pole winter finally came to an end, and a few pale friends stopped over in town for a day or two before being released back into the greater world.  I thought a year of two-minute showers, spotty 3am internet access, and nowhere near enough marshmallows would have them looking hollow-eyed and shell-shocked, but relief at leaving put huge smiles on their faces.  I hope they continue to come back to life in New Zealand, back home, and beyond.