Weekly snapshot #14

These photos might be getting a little monotonous! Sorry! And next week I need to play around with the camera settings on my phone to get a better nighttime shot. But for now, it's kind of same-old-same-old with the days now dark dark dark and the temps still shockingly mild for wintertime in Antarctica. I'm getting super-spoiled, for sure....

Cross-country ski

As promised last week, here are some (not great; it was dark out!) pictures of the cross-country ski trip I got to take one evening recently. Most of my pictures just look like this. Dark. :)

But the wonderful Rec Coordinator friend who arranged the trip took a long exposure shot of the four of us who were skiing that is much better. (I'm in the purple coat.)



And of course, as always, the most fun pictures of any outdoor activity in Antarctica are those of the icicles that have accumulated on people's eyelashes while they've been outside...

I've actually gotten to do another fun outdoor adventure in the meantime, so stay tuned for those pictures soon, and in the meantime, I hope you're enjoying a sun-drenched summer where you are! 

Weekly snapshot #13

There seemed to be even some snow flurries going on when I stepped outside a couple hours ago to take today's noontime snapshot. I was surprised after to see that it's -4F. It still feels so oddly warm out here to me. Everyone keeps promising me this won't last and that it's weirdly nice out, but...

Lately, at McMurdo...

One really nice thing about the population here being so much larger than at Pole in the winter is that there are enough people to plan recreational events that there is always something fun and wacky going on. Friday night, a couple of creative souls decked out the big gym with amazing lighting, a smoke machine, and great music for a dodgeball/dance party. Some participants raided the impressive stores of strange costumes on base and came fully wigged- and discoed-out. The result was an eerily fantastic mood for fun night.

And then on Sunday night, a bunch of people performed a live-read of the screenplay of Jurassic Park. I failed to get a picture of my favorite part (the winter Research Associate playing a cute-looking dino who attacks and kills the fool who does not take her seriously) because I was laughing way too hard.

And then, and then! LAST night I went cross-country skiing...but I need to gather some pics from other people so that will have to be next week's post. 

Weekly snapshot #12

Nothing much to report this week, and you can consider no news to be good news. We're just cruising along through the first leg of winter, and things are calm and peaceful and so nice. Especially today, after we had 24+ hours of Condition 2 weather earlier this week. I shoveled off the delivery dock for the store this morning and found three bags of trash that had blown onto my dock and gotten buried into the snow in the melee. So this calm feels especially lovely.

Ladies' Soiree

Our very sweet physician's assistant for the winter organized a little evening get-together for all the ladies on station (plus the one woman among the Kiwis at Scott Base, out of their winter crew of 12), held in the store. We had a very fun, festive evening, and it's good to make sure to get connected with the other XX-chromosome people on station, since we number only 26 out of the total current station population of 133. About 3/4 of the women on station showed up, which was a great, silly, lovely time.

Weekly snapshot #11

The temps are finally dropping a bit! I know, I guess it's crazy that that is exciting to me, but really, the thermometer hovering around 0F was starting to freak me out a little. I like the variety. So here's this week's photo and weather snapshot, taken at noon today, and without anything else to add this week...

MOO

One of the easiest to grasp and most fun to watch scientific projects going on at McMurdo is MOO, the McMurdo Oceanographic Observatory. It's an underwater camera that lets us see what is happening beneath the sea ice right off the coast from the base. The best part is that they have the live feed streaming as one of our TV channels here (yes, McMurdo has TV--25 channels!--with news, movies, and other amazing things that would make you forget where we are). I've had to be careful with turning it on, though, because it's totally mesmerizing, like watching a campfire. More than once I've had it on the store and a growing crowd has gathered to just watch it with mouths hanging open, in an hypnotic stupor. You rarely see anything in the camera frame, but that's EXACTLY WHY YOU CAN'T LOOK AWAY. What if you take a break to pee and THAT'S the moment when a seal swims by?


This webpage lets you watch from wherever you are with an internet connection, but the image only updates every five minutes and is much granier than what we see on the TV feed here (plus now that it's pretty dark out you probably won't be able to see much), so you are less in danger of going into zombie mode like us, don't worry.


Also, here's an article with more info about the project.


Enjoy!

Weekly snapshot #10

It's downright gorgeous and balmy out, today. Temps in the positive! Wow!


And a beautiful moon standing guard this noontime....Enjoy!