November 27

My roommate gave a 'travelogue' presentation about his 6-week backpacking trip to Patagonia. The scenery was incredible. Four days of his trip was spent at a youth hostel aboard a cargo ship on a journey up the western coast.

When my night janitor co-worker went into the aquarium to sweep and mop, she found an octopus lying on the floor, presumably having escaped from one of the tanks. She used a fish net and a large pair of tweezers to safely return the octopus to water. The octopus is still alive. We think she is an octopus hero.

November 26

I went to Spanish lessons. We divided into to groups to work on asking questions and I ended up in a group that was well more advanced than myself. I spent most of the evening saying (in Spanish) I didn't understand what was going on.

My boss was singing "It's raining men" while she mopped in the heavy shop this evening.

November 25

I watched the movie "Encounter at the End of the World". It is a documentary centered around McMurdo Station, Antarctica. It was filmed here last season. The documentary interviews several people people from around campus and highlights the work of several scientist. By looking at some of the stereotypical people and science at McMurdo the movie gives the viewer a fairly accurate feeling of down here.

Miraculously, the Ipod is working again. All I had to do was reset the Ipod while it was connected to the computer and promise never to let it ever get too cold again. I love haveing computer guys around campus.

We had smoked salmon with our midnight meal.

My roommates mom sent homemade fudge.

November 24

Last night I joined a few others for a nighttime hike out to 'Castle Rock', the loop trail is ~7 miles. The weather was outstanding and made for an enjoyable hike. 'Castle Rock' itself is a huge rock outcropping. I think I froze my Ipod to death on the long walk.

At 10 am this morning, I ran in the McMurdo Station annual 5k 'Turkey Trot'. My time was ~31 minutes, which I was happy considering: the Antarctic weather, we were running on slick ice, I had already hiked 7 miles and that it was well past my bedtime.

My Thanksgiving meal was served at midnight. The food was fantastic and I enjoyed extra helpings of the pumpkin cheesecake.

November 23

I mailed off Christmas gifts to my parents, brother and pregnant sister-in-law. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing, but there are not many options when Christmas shopping in Antarctica.

November 20th

The only barber/hairdresser on campus sprained her wrist the other day. She's out for a few weeks.

I cleaned a lot of bathrooms this evening, 11 to be exact. I cleaned the dive shack and read an article about McMurdo Dive Operations. The water is said to be super clear and 28.5F. Two folks have died diving near here in recent years, one was operator error and the other was drowned by a seal.

I learned my roommate grew up in Wren, Ohio; roughly 20 minutes from where I was raised.

There is an now an Antarctic Octopus in the Aquarium. It's about the size of a large man's hand, all white and doesn't move much. Very cute.

November 19

During the Monday morning janitor meeting, we were told there are 90 turkeys on their way to Antarctica to help us celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday. I attended evening Spanish lessons. We learned about pronouns and their matching 'to be' verbs.

All is well in Antarctica. I get frustrated as I seem to spend much time unsuccessfully messing with my computer/cameras/Ipod. I think I am reminded why I have avoided such things in my life. Time is going by quickly.

November 18

I went for a walk around town on Sunday evening. Everything was muddy! Enough snow and ice melted while I was sleeping to turn all the town's dirt roads into mud. The streets of mud were frozen again by the time I started work at 10pm.

November 17

The weekend started Saturday evening started with Cha-cha ballroom dancing lessons in the big gym. Afterwards, the janitors had the monthly gathering/party at the house (designated for such purposes) on campus. We shared a lot of red wine and danced a little bit. I spent the rest of my night off messing with my computer and talking on the phone with Alex.

I've had a string of technological bad luck since my computer died. My computer will no longer recognize when I plug in other cameras or my Ipod. Which essentially means I can't change the music on my Ipod or download any pictures onto my computer.

November 15th

Washing laundry and purchasing some half-price Antarctic t-shirts for myself were my evening activities. Celebrated Fun Hat Friday by wearing a hat to work. It was a hat like a Genie would wear. The weather was again the warmest I've seen yet this morning.

The big talk on campus is the the truck that caught on fire. From what I understand, all of the transmission fluid leaked out and then the transmission became to hot and that's what started the fire. During dining hall conversations, it was suggested that the truck itself was worth nearly $50,000 and was carrying nearly $25,000 worth of equipment.

November 14th

I worked with the new staff person for the better part of the evening, I mostly mopped. I saw pictures of a truck that caught on fire and burnt to nothing-but-the-frame out on the sea ice. My roommate is quite proud of himself, having taken a picture of of the truck while it was still out on the sea ice.

I sat with a weather lady at the midnight meal, she says the ice runway is scheduled to shut down in 17 days and the sea ice is already melted just 15 miles away. She had some good stories as she has predicted weather from several warzones.

November 13

I cleaned the heavy shop for the first time. The new cleaning assignment that came the same day as a new addition to our night crew. I learned that firefighters are referred to as 'fire kids' in the heavy shop and that the heavy shop night crew listens to heavy metal type music while they work.

In the morning janitor meeting I learned that this Friday will be "Fun Hat Friday", that the janitor bowling team is undefeated and that the janitors get to choose all of the movies that will be on one of the TV channels next week. My roommates don't seem to be as excited about Fun Hat Friday as I am.

November 12th

Any who have been following the blog may have noticed that I've been slacking the last several days. This isn't for any reason other than lack of time. As the season moves on, more opportunities for social activities are presenting themselves and my body continues to demand much sleep. I've stayed busy since my last blog entry.

I went to a ballroom dancing class, attended a science lecture on how glaciers move, made a craft in the craft room, watched a talent show, went on a 6-hour off-campus trip, attended a Spanish class, got a new co-worker, saw 2 seals and some more birds, broke a camera and spent hours upon hours mopping floors in Antarctica.

The 6-hour tour has been my highlight of the past few weeks. We were invited on the trip for 'morale building'. We loaded up in these huge vehicles, known locally as "Deltas" to drive to Cape Evans hut. The hut is about 15 miles away, but takes about an hour and a half to get there. The entire drive is on the sea ice. On the drive to the hut we saw at least two seals and numerous other black dots off in the distance that we were told were seals. One seal was quite close. Inside the hut, everything is frozen just the way it was when the men left the hut for an expedition to the South Pole (they made it to the south pole but everyone died on their way back to the hut). We saw some all-white birds, I was told it was a rare and special to see these birds and I believed.

My camera broke on the 6-hour tour, which is so sad. If anybody has an inside connection with Nikon and can hook me up, please let me know. The camera just blinks "Lens Error" whenever I try to turn it on. My plan is to send Nikon a e-mail and beg, and to get copies of photos from other folks around campus.

Alex sent me another CD of music and a podcast of 'This American Life' for my listening pleasure. The temperature reached 27F yesterday, the hottest we've seen yet.

All is well.

November 8th

Work was fairly uneventful. I cleaned the dive shack and did a little bit everything while working in the big lab building. I swept, mopped, vacuumed, cleaned toilets and dusted. Excellent life skills, really. My 60 year old boss left work early so she could get some sleep before the Search-and-Rescue tryouts tomorrow.

My Spanish word-of-the-day is 'cansada'.

November 7

Near 11pm this evening the weather went to "Condition 1", which means one is not permitted to leave the building they are in. Myself and a coworker were cleaning the building where all of the weather people work. Although there's a lot of expensive weather equipment in the building, the weather guy was standing in front of a window, looking out. When the visibility was poor enough that he could not see the next building over, he declared the weather was condition 1. He continued to stand in front of the window and declared the weather was no longer condition 1 when he could again see the building.

I saw a bird yesterday, it's the first wild living thing I've seen since arriving in Antarctica. The bird is known as a Skua and looks amazingly similar to a big seagull. I just saw it from a distance. Apparently the birds migrate here each summer to mate.

I called my coworker a penguin-killer for dumping a high volume of bleach down the drain. She didn't believe me.

November 6

I had two egg sandwiches and a tri tip steak for breakfast. I spent some time again tonight watching the filming of the Today Show. I stood directly behind somebody who had made a really big sign.

I learned that Ipod headphones can go through the washer and dryer and still work good as new.

And the most recent entry in the janitor haiku competition:

I finish my lunch
writing haiku on the can
life is beautiful.

November 5th

Because all waste is shipped back to America for disposal, Antarctica is fairly particular about recycling. All trash is separated. We have separate trash bins for plastics, aluminum, food waste, mixed paper, cardboard, non-recyclables, burnables, glass, fabric, re-usable goods, sanitary waste, wood, sharps, light bulbs, construction waste, heavy metals and lab waste. I'm sure there are more but those are the most common. As janitors, we always complain when folks fail to separate their waste and it always gets reported to the offending parties supervisor. Emptying office bins this evening, we found that someone had thrown away 3 dining hall plates, 2 bowls and an assortment of silverware, along with failing to separate anything.

We spent 3 of our working hours this evening watching the filming of the Today Show. The night janitor crew had their picture taken with Ann Curry, a Today Show news lady.

I saw a commercial on the Armed Forces Network that said join the military so you can learn how to kill people using hand-to-hand combat. They showed 30 seconds of people utilizing hand-to-hand combat skills to pretend kill each other.

November 4th

I attended the Sunday evening science lecture. The lecturer was a biologist that studies seals. He drills a hole in the ice out in the middle of nowhere Antarctica, where there aren't any holes at all. Then he captures some seals and relocates them to his hole. Because it's the only hole around, and the seals only access to and from the ocean (where they do all of their hunting/eating), they have to stay near the hole all season. This way he can study the same seals the whole season without any of them leaving. He showed us video clips from when they glued little video cameras to the seals heads and recorded them swimming around underwater. He also attaches all sorts of monitors to the seals and measures physiological changes when they go for the deep dives. Their heart rate gets down to like two beats a minute when they are super deep.

I spent the better part of the night sweeping.

During our morning janitor meeting we talked about early signs of depression and preventative measures.

All is well.

November 3rd

Two of my cluster-mates are forest firefighters when they are not in Antarctica. This evening we watched a documentary about forest firefighting and I listened to a conversation about inter-departmental politics of western forest firefighting. I told them I thought it was stupid that they made the forest firefighters do push-ups (saw it in the video), it's really all I could add to the conversation.

There was a '70s vs. '80s dance party at one of the bars on campus. There is little to no hairspray on campus, so it was challenging for many trying to dress 80s style.

With the nasty weather here again on my day off, I spent the night writing letters, emails, postcards and a long phone call with Alex.

Ann Curry from the Today Show is still here. They plan to broadcast live from here (on the Today Show) on November 5th and 6th. And then again on the NBC Nightly news on November 6th.

November 2nd

This evening was the most extreme weather we've seen yet. The low reached -51F with the windchill.

The boss scheduled a moral builder for the nightcrew. At 6am, we walked nearly a mile to Hut Point to take a tour of the historic hut. The windchill was -45F and it was super windy. We had to lean all the way into the wind and were repeatedly blown a few steps sideways by the wind. Everything inside the hut has been preserved for nearly 100 years. There were lots of wooden boxes, slabs of meat, metal tins, pants hanging on a line and old shoes and such.

November 1st

The most exciting news on campus is the NBC news show. A newslady named Ann Curry is spending all weekend on campus and is doing a live morning show from McMurdo next week. We were given the link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032633/ to check out. You have to look around a bit, but you can find some info about 'Ends of the Earth'. They will be broadcasting live from here on November 5th.

Work last evening was fairly mundane. I cleaned multiple different buildings including the dive shack. They have down liners they wear underneath their drysuits, while on the walls they have pictures from decades ago when folks were just diving in wetsuits. There are several fancy looking underwater cameras in the shop.

October 31st

Attended the Wednesday night science lecture, it was a geologist speaking about glaciers. He seems to believe that in the next 200 hundred years, the climate will change as much as it has changed in the last 18 million years. If everyone started living ultra-green tomorrow, the changes would take 500 years instead of 200 years. He also talked about being able to date rocks based on what they found inside the rocks. He had these pictures of little microscopic things that were only around during certain time periods, so if he finds one in a rock, he knows what era the rock is from. He talked a lot about the ANdrill project. (ANdrill stands for Antarctic drilling, they are drilling out big cores to study and learn about climate history, etc.)

We have this big blue zamboni looking machine that we sometimes use to sweep the floor of hallways, it doesn't work any better than a broom, but they have us use it sometimes nonetheless. A drunken woman jumped onto and rode the machine for a good 30 seconds while I was cleaning the floor this evening. I smiled back.

My boss told the story of how her ex-husband married her brother's ex-wife, which means that her children are step-siblings with their cousins.

And my biggest excitement of the day was seeing a puddle - a puddle of water, melted snow - it was outside, in the sun. Summer is on it's way.

October 30th

I received to CDs in the mail. They were both mix CDs from Alex. The first was titled "Madness Mopping Mix" and the second "Mellow Mopping Mix". I love listening to JT while I mop. I bet God listens to JT during mopping time.

My newest and final roommate arrived. Sadly, he will be working nights as well and I won't get the whole room to myself anymore. Among other things, he has spent time teaching English in Japan and was a Buddhist priest for a wee bit.

I went on the walking tour of campus today that most folks get when they first arrive. The tour guide gave us insight as to the function of all the buildings around campus and told us some of the history and such as well. The hut with the dead seal was abandoned in like 1915, so the dead seal is much older than I originally gave it credit. There is a volcano we can see from campus, rumored to be the most active campus in the souther hemisphere. The guide talked about how there used to be a nuclear power plant on sight and now the just use a whole load of diesel. I learned its super expensive to make our fresh drinking water out of the ocean. We learned which buildings are about to be torn down and all sorts of similar info.