Sunday, December 1, 2019

Thanksgiving at Palmer

We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner here on the actual day of Thanksgiving. A really impressive spread of food...


...nice table set-up...


...SUCH a beautiful day (like 40 degrees, sunny, no wind) that people were able to eat out on the deck...


...and some people getting REALLY into the fancy holiday spirit...


...it was definitely an evening that made me feel glad and lucky to be here.


Friday, November 29, 2019

Walking is hard

When there was still a lot of snow and I bypassed the snow shoes, it was for me, anyway!


Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Recent landscapes

Can't stop (won't stop) taking pictures of the amazing scenery here. A batch from recently....








Saturday, November 23, 2019

Me and shipping containers

Six months ago if you would have told me that I would now be working in marine cargo operations/logistics, I would have laughed in your face.

And yet, here is a picture of me from a couple weeks ago, walking on a shipping container in the shadow of a nearly 300-foot cargo vessel. (I'm about to start hooking the ship's crane to the container so it can be swung on board.)


Here's our crew with a container in the air between the ship and boat. I am supposedly overseeing this operation, making sure it's done safely and determining the order of the movements. Which surprises no one more than it does me!


We've also used the SkyTrak to move an (empty) container from one part of the station to another. Thankfully I wasn't in charge of that movement. I'm learning that I do not enjoy being in charge when I simultaneously have the feeling that I don't really know what I'm doing. And realizing that there are a lot of people in the world who either don't care about that feeling or have far grander ideas than I as to what they "know" how to do.


Or maybe it's just a matter of time and comfort level. I have only been down here for six weeks. And I'm already pretty cozy in a shipping container.


And on one. (That's me again either attaching or removing the hooks of the crane's lifting straps. I can't remember which. It's only been six weeks, but it's been a lot of containers.)


Yep, folks. This is really happening. They say seeing is believing...


Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Happy 70th birthday, NSF

The National Science Foundation--which ultimately oversees and administers the three US Antarctic research bases I've now worked at--is turning 70 right about now. And was not bashful about asking for birthday gifts. But it was a simple gift--they just wanted a video from the station of us wishing them a happy birthday. We did this at the end of yet another long, busy week, so that it was hilariously difficult for even this smallish group of people to manage to say the same thing at the same time. But we had fun trying. Here's the majority of our crew at Palmer this summer: