All Over the Place

How would you like to read about a five-week car ride through lots of sparse south-and/or-western states?  Cool!  Here we go!

First I'm stopping in New York, because some reasons and beloved people, and that's where my friend with the car is.  Julien the fireman/Frenchman/drummer/fellow-fan-of-gin and I will eat barbeque and think esoteric thoughts while gazing at endless wheat fields.  So stay tuned for VA, NC, GA, TN, OK, NM, CO, UT, and CA.

And I have to admit I'm not the most doting of aunts, but isn't this guy pretty cute?  It was fun smelling flowers with you, Lori.

Driving On the Left!

Whoa, hey -- I can do this from my phone...oh magic phone, is there anything you can't do these days?

Maybe I've had too much sunshine, or maybe the utter and complete silence of the deserted landscape around me is just a little too quiet; anyway, bear with the sleep-time thoughts and auto-correct typos.

So far New Zealand has delivered like a boy with a new paper route.  The weather is perfect late summer, and from the Christchurch Botanic Gardens to the sparkling coves of Diamond Harbor to the flawless views from majestically named Roy's Peak I am embarrassed by a wealth of natural beauty.  Throw in all the plums you can eat from a ripe tree, a host's kitten, and a friend with a functioning credit card, and you've got yourself a great vacation.

Hmm, yes, I didn't think I'd be driving on these narrow, sideless roads this time around, due to some lack of adulting resulting in me not having access to credit.  Luckily my roomie needed to tackle a certain mountain for the third time, and was happy to be dropped off at the trailhead, a mere 30km down a gravel road with several creek fords.

He reluctantly allowed this photo to be taken, wherein he displays his really long rope and cool solar charger:

PENGUIN PHOTOS

I know I've dangled the promise in front of you for months, and here they finally are!  These two showed up a few days ago to molt, which means they just stand in one place for a few weeks, not really flinching unless you get closer than eight feet.  FEAST YOUR EYES:

Words I Never Thought I'd Say

No, not like that. :)  For many years, I'd been hard-pressed to dream up circumstances in which I'd be willing to sing "My Heart Will Go On."  But then, against several odds, Corndog Addiction became a reality.  I've wanted to have a band that plays the Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia" for years, and McMurdo's underground punk scene needed a shot in the arm.  But it turns out punk music isn't always as easy as it sounds.  So we settled on some manageable tunes and punkified some others, including "Time After Time."

I decided not to go into a lengthy disclaimer about Jello Biafra's overblown paranoia concerning left-wing fascism, and just went for it -- instructing people to "come quietly to the camp," and describing how "you'd look nice as a drawstring lamp," then building to peak furor:

Now it is 1984
Knock knock on your front door
It's the suede-denim secret police
they have come for your uncool niece...
you will croak you little clown
when you mess with President Brown

*That's past and current California governor Jerry Brown.  Watch out for that guy, he might really mess things up one day.

Because we only had five songs under our belt, Corndog Addiction played a smaller venue, for a select audience (the band room; twenty friends.)  It was pretty great.

Last week, my former coworkers really outdid themselves.  The galley folks set up a little theater and presented an original play/series of monologues, and then turned around the next night to put on 80s prom.  There was teased hair; there was helmet hair; there was crimped hair; there was a pregnant cheerleader; and I hung out with a friend who was actually of an age to be at prom in the 80s and said the verisimilitude was uncanny.

Perhaps best of all, though, I finally got together with my coworker who's shy about playing guitar.  He played some pretty flamenco stuff, and then mentioned he had compiled a bunch of Beatles and pop charts.  Turns out the acoustics of the chapel are perfect for "Don't Stop Believin" as well as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

So, it was about forty minutes between "a-wheem-a-way" and "suede-denim secret police."

The Size of a Banana

There are lots of Post-Its on my desk, covered with tiny writing probably only I can read.  The contents change over time, and occasionally one is the victim of drips from my mug, but the cycle is unbroken and there are always new things about which to remind myself.  Instead of a memory palace of distinctive objects in notable locations, I have a mental wall of notes I refer to -- remarks of utmost importance in large-ish letters with permanent marker, nagging to-dos in smeared, thin blue ink.  In some way, physically writing the words conjures their spiritual existence in the ether of my brain.

We all (mostly) carry around a "green brain" here, a small notebook (titled in classy cursive "Memoranda").  This is another repository for important random facts, instructions, and date ideas corresponding to boys I have crushes on Department of Defense project code numbers.  The page I most frequently consult is my cheat-sheet for how to run the Weekly Numbers report,* which you think I'd remember after doing it twenty times.

*The Weekly Numbers report consists of me pulling data to show how much cargo we processed and shipped to various destinations...by weight.  For some reason.  I guess logistically that's a significant parameter; unfortunately for me, the amount of paperwork for a five-pound box of potato chips is the same as a 500-pound pallet of seismographic equipment.  And these scientists not only eat lots of potato chips but enjoy packaging them in many separate boxes, each with its own subsequent documentation, labels, and tracking.

That mention of twenty might sound flippant or exaggerated, but in fact, next week -- my last week -- will be twenty-one.  After all this staring at tiny numbers, staying up way too late in the band room, seal close encounters, eating meat of questionable provenance, and so very many artfully-dodged unanswerable phone inquiries, I will float around New Zealand for several weeks.  Just me and my rucksack full of cheese.

Odd Ends

There were these adorable, dense, and chocolately little frosted bundt cakes for dessert at lunch today.  That's about all I got.

Here's a part of one of my favorite poems:

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.


It's by Pablo Neruda, he was pretty cool.  Here's another literary tidbit:

It had snowed softly and thickly all through the hours of darkness and the beautiful whiteness, glittering in the frosty sunshine, looked like a mantle of charity cast over all the mistakes and humiliations of the past.

Gotcha, that's from Anne of Avonlea.

Winter Quarters Bay

They started as a trickle, but we are now inundated with a couple hundred people in completely irrelevant camouflage.  The arrival of US and NZ navy folks means long lines in the cafeteria and the introduction of exotic new germs.  Last night's intermittent, clammy 13 hours of sleep didn't quite kill whatever culture I clashed with, but I think I'm over the hump just in time for 12-hour shifts to start.

A friend lucky enough to have been coming back to town in a helicopter as the ice breaker made its way in took this:

The drama of several large ships making their way to the world's southern-most port occupied much of my boss's attention over the last week, but other than being privy to related news and gossip it didn't matter to me.  It's pretty neat to see a big red boat out in the endless stretch of white ice.  It was also pretty funny to see it plow a path, pushing ice against the pier, and then pushing the ice pier itself (this is bad).  Apparently, someone didn't have a basic understanding of physics -- that, like, the ice you're breaking up and pushing through needs to go somewhere.  Anyway, stuff is fine, the boats arrived and departed mostly on schedule, and containers of food, paperclips, engine oil, and everything else are being unloaded.

Who does this unloading?  A pleasant group of Kiwi truck drivers.  Tater Time is my favorite truck name.

Logistics coordination is done primarily by radio.  This is where another tedious admin-y part of me being an admin comes in: monitoring TWO radio channels (that's two radios on, full of chatter and static), in addition to extra phone calls, and mix in Kiwi accents and people unconsciously adopting that big rig dispatcher "Breaker, Breaker" way of speaking.

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Sidebar: I will never cease to be amazed by the fact that there are no deadlines, ever, as an adult.  Extensions can be obtained for taxes, foreclosures, court dates -- pretty much everything.  January 17?  What a fucking joke. If we can manage to throw a last-minute box onto the vessel as it pulls away from the pier, we will.  
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There was a small folk/country acoustic show, the McMurdo Grand Ol' Opry, with Heehaw-like comedy interludes between bands.  And Saturday night's main attraction was a 90s dance-music show at the Waste Barn, featuring covers of "Another Night," "Be My Lover," "Mr. Vain," "Blue," and all those other songs that played on an endless loop on the bus home from junior high.  Anthony Bourdain's cameraman captured amazing footage of raving Antarcticans that our official minders will ensure never sees the light of day, but believe me, it was quite the rager.