Nowhere To Go But Up

Here is the play-by-play for my haircut. I had agreed to let Dainella & Liz cut my hair months ago, but we had to wait until it was long enough. The time came this week so we scheduled the deed for Sunday. I took a shower beforehand so that my hair would be nice and clean for the kiddies. Richard McHenry was the photographer for these photos and he wanted me to tell you that.





The whole thing only took a few minutes and the cleanup was easy since everything was banded together already. I'm pretty satisfied with the final product and it marked the end of a pretty good weekend all around.

I couldn't help it, I saw this quiz and it cracked me up. It's fitting because somehow I ended up with a nickname this year that would suggest that the results of this quiz are true. My favorite part of taking the quiz was when they asked my ideal partner and one of the choices was "Is cranky and has a head shaped like a penis". I took this quiz a few times and changed the answers to the things I wasn't certain on before and still came up with the same answer....

You Are the Very Gay Bert and Ernie!

Two grown puppets living together, sleeping in the same room? They've even got coordinating striped shirts!

....and then I took this test which sort of confirms things....

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

I'm the new new guy on station. Every time somebody shaves or gets a haircut the running joke is that there must have been a flight in with new people. Here's a picture of the end result, more photos to follow:


I'm a bit colder now, but I feel better. I was glad to get rid of the mop and I'm sure some little kid will be glad to have some hair. I'll just have to wait until October to mail it off so they can make a wig out of it. When it's all off the head and in a plastic bag, it doesn't seem like much, hopefully it will be plenty.

Michael organized a pool league this season, just as he did last year. There was pretty good turnout throughout the season. Recently, the post season was held and to make room for the massive influx of fans from around the entire south pole station, stadium seating was added to enhance the viewing experience in the gameroom. The matches were all close and well played, with the eventual champ being crowned on Thrusday night (though I hear he's still waiting for his actual crown). I'm not going to talk about that at all. Nope, this is another selfish post about me; the only person involved in the making of this blog and sole executer of all buisness matter contained within. During the pool tournament, it was decided to photograph the stadium seating, likely so other people could put those photos on their blog. As I browsed through the photos on the public drives here, it was obvious why nobody should really try taking pictures of me. See the series of photos below for why.

My team lost in the conference finals, so it was time to shave the beard. It was a good run for my team so my beard was looking pretty good. Take a look below:


As you can see, my hair is getting pretty ridiculous as well. Maybe it's time to chop it all off. Check out the length on this beast:

Anyway, here is the result of my shaving effort. I decided to keep a goatee. I haven't had one for quite some time so I thought I would give it a twirl.

My hair is long enough to cut and donate, barely. Maybe I'll let it go for a bit or maybe this is the end of the line. I'm a little tired of dealing with it, but then again it's always hard to say goodbye to something I've given a year and a half of my time to. That's more than most of my girlfriends ever got. Also, the idea of being bald at the south pole is a little chilling.

On a separate note, today I actually worked outside as did a majority of the station population. I go outside every day for the quarter mile walk to ARO, but I do relatively little physical labor when I'm outside. There are plenty of folks who spend a lot of time working outside all of the time and I don't envy their tasks. The difficulty of any job is compounded exponentially by dealing with -80F and lower temperatures. Today there was a need to move some food around in the old dome (it still seems odd to call it "old" but it is what it is). The move called into action some folks (such as me) that aren't accustomed to working out in the south pole environment. Basically, we needed to move the food from one side of the dome to the other so we formed a zipper-type chain across the dome and handed box after box to one another until everything was moved. This took the better part of the morning and afternoon. It was cold and standing in one place for hours doesn't help keep the blood from turning to ice. We took a few breaks to go into a warming shack that was set up with a little space heater. I would usually be in there long enough to have the ice drip off of my eyelashes before heading back out for more fun. It was actually fun, everybody kept chattering back & forth enough to keep our minds off of body parts that were slowly turning solid. When we were done, we were treated to a great aurora show outside of the dome just above the new station. I took the opportunity to walk out to ARO for my daily duties. Under the glow from above the walk was pretty easy, probably the first time in a couple of weeks that I could see sustrugi well enough to not trip over them. Once I was done with work the aurora had faded a bit, but as I approached the station on my return trip they perked up just a bit. A thin ribbon was hanging over the elevated station. The further I walked the more it evolved from a stringy strand of light into a thicker shimmer. Eventually the dancing lights settled into a broad smile complete with dimples before blowing away into a faint green cloud. I can't help but be in a good mood after something like that. Of course, I didn't have my camera and even if I did it wouldn't have captured the moment accurately.

Once back in my room, I was able to photograph the implements of warmth that kept me toasty a little longer than I would have been without them. Chemical hand & toe warmers are not good for the environment I'm sure, but they sure make you feel better when you're working outside. The chemical reaction eventually succumbs to the cold just like humans do, but they buy you a little time.

Here's a shot of me in front of the pole during an aurora a few weeks ago. Photo taken by Emrys.

For the past couple of weeks I have been viewing Mr. Show with Bob & David. This comedy ran back in the 90's and I only ever caught a couple of episodes when it was on, mainly because I didn't have cable for very much of the 90's. Thanks to Nate I am catching up on everything I missed. The humor isn't mainstream and the show's structure jumps from one skit to another by some obscure/absurd little thread of a connection. There usually aren't many laughs from the crew watching each Monday night (except for me). I sort of relate it to Monty Python (though the humor has little in common with MP), you either love it or hate it.
Mr. Show isn't on the air anymore. David went on to make several other TV shows that you probably never heard of and Bob (and David for that matter) appeared in what I consider to be the best thing to ever air on television. Mr. Show is now on every Monday night at the south pole station. Grab a drink, pull up a couch, and enjoy the show.

I could dedicate this post to my mom, who celebrated Mother's Day yesterday by calling me as I was sitting down to call her (I will never be able to prove that I was about to call her, but I really, really was). I had the best poop talk with her. Thanks mom!

I could also talk about the wedding I missed this weekend between two of my best friends. Being here meant that I couldn't be there. I hope it went well guys, sorry I missed it, send pictures.

Nope, I'm not talking about that stuff. Something big happened here this weekend: The first run of the Hash House Harriers of the season. Last year I participated in half a dozen Hash runs as either a hare or a hound, but this year I got promoted* to Hashmaster. That means I was responsible for organizing the event. I was forced to push back the first run due to scheduling conflicts and actually chose the worst possible weekend for it. We had a good trail laid out, there was pretty good enthusiasm for the event, and I even came up with a new necklace for the last place finisher. All of this was thwarted by the unfortunate timing of it all. I happened to schedule the run to coincide with everyone's hangover. Instead of the baker's dozen of people I thought might show up, we had 5 (not counting the other 5 people involved in setting everything up, which is still almost 10% of the station population, so that's not bad). We will probably have a better turn out the next time, so no worries. Here are a couple of photos, courtesy of Jason.




*Nobody else wanted to do it, so it fell in my lap.

Last week I went to the SPRESSO vault. For the uninundated, SPRESSO is a seismic vault buried out in the snow a few miles away from the station in the Quiet Sector. It's called the Quiet Sector because of the sensitive seismic equipment that requires very little activity from the heavy machinery that operates here. Any visits to the Quiet Sector requires permission/direction from all sorts of acronyms (USGS, IRIS, GSN, CTBTO, ASL, etc.). From time to time it is required of the Aurora/USGS tech (me) to go out to the vault and physically relevel the seismometer due to the ever-shifting ice here. Normally we try to only visit the vault during the bright, warm summer months, but ice shifting doesn't stop for winter. I took a crew out in the darkness to try to find a hole in the ground buried under several feet (thirds of meters for those new-wave metric types) of snow, miles (many, many kilometers) away from the station. The day was chosen due to the aid of moonlight and light winds for good visibility, plus unusually high temperatures (around -40F...same in C oddly enough) for this time of year which allow our tracked vehicles to operate reliably. Below is photographic evidence.

I've never considered myself to be a very political creature by any stretch of the imagination. I've always known how I felt about certain issues and I've always voted, but I don't really like to get caught up in political arguments. Most of this stems from the fact that I feel like the American political system is broken, or at the very least needs some heavy modernization (how about a democracy where everyone's vote counts equally???). But after a few reasonable conversations about next year's US presidental elections and who the viable candidates are, I decided to go on a little (very little) fact finding. I wanted to see what the issues are, how I felt about them, and who matched my way of thinking the most. I found this little quiz to be somewhat enlightening. Sadly, the candidate who most matches what I would like to see, is only 40% in agreement with me. It's probably a bad idea to put any political views on my blog, but I think it's interesting enough to put the candidates who rose to the top (didn't sink to the bottom is a better way of looking at it) on here. I think it's worth noting that I find social concerns to be more important than economic, but then again I'm working outside the USA (but not by IRS standards...that's a different story). It's too bad that I can't find a candidate who agrees with me on both social and economic issues, but it's always been that way. Maybe I should run next time around, I'll finally be old enough......

VoteMatch Results

Scores & Analysis	Candidate		More Information
Total 40% Social 50% Economic 33%		Joe Biden Democratic Sr Senator (DE)	Biographical Profile Joe Biden's answers Joe Biden's stances
Total 38% Social 75% Economic 13%		Rudy Giuliani Former Mayor of New York City; Republican Candidate for 2000 Senate (NY)	Biographical Profile Rudy Giuliani's answers Rudy Giuliani's stances
Total 38% Social 38% Economic 38%		Dennis Kucinich Democratic Representative (OH-10)	Biographical Profile Dennis Kucinich's answers Dennis Kucinich's stances
Total 35% Social 50% Economic 25%		Hillary Clinton Democratic Jr Senator (NY); former First Lady	Biographical Profile Hillary Clinton's answers Hillary Clinton's stances
Total 35% Social 50% Economic 25%		Bill Richardson Democratic NM Governor	Biographical Profile Bill Richardson's answers Bill Richardson's stances
Total 33% Social 44% Economic 25%		Barack Obama Democratic Jr Senator (IL); previously State Senator	Biographical Profile Barack Obama's answers Barack Obama's stances
Total 33% Social 44% Economic 25%		John Edwards 2004 Nominee for Vice President; Former NC Senator	Biographical Profile John Edwards's answers John Edwards's stances
Total 33% Social 31% Economic 33%		Al Sharpton Reverend; Civil Rights Activist; Democratic Candidate for President	Biographical Profile Al Sharpton's answers Al Sharpton's stances
Total 30% Social 44% Economic 21%		Sam Brownback Republican Sr Senator (KS)	Biographical Profile Sam Brownback's answers Sam Brownback's stances
Total 28% Social 38% Economic 21%		John McCain Republican Sr Senator (AZ); 2000 Primary Candidate for President	Biographical Profile John McCain's answers John McCain's stances
Total 28% Social 31% Economic 25%		Chris Dodd Democratic Sr Senator (CT)	Biographical Profile Chris Dodd's answers Chris Dodd's stances
Total 28% Social 44% Economic 17%		Tommy Thompson Former Secretary of H.H.S.; former Republican Governor (WI)	Biographical Profile Tommy Thompson's answers Tommy Thompson's stances
Total 25% Social 38% Economic 17%		Mike Huckabee Republican AR Governor	Biographical Profile Mike Huckabee's answers Mike Huckabee's stances
Total 25% Social 44% Economic 13%		Jim Gilmore Former Republican VA Governor	Biographical Profile Jim Gilmore's answers Jim Gilmore's stances
Total 18% Social 25% Economic 13%		Mitt Romney Retiring Republican MA Governor	Biographical Profile Mitt Romney's answers Mitt Romney's stances
Total 15% Social 25% Economic 8%		Duncan Hunter Republican Representative (CA-52)	Biographical Profile Duncan Hunter's answers Duncan Hunter's stances
Total 10% Social 13% Economic 8%		Tom Tancredo Republican Representative (CO-6)	Biographical Profile Tom Tancredo's answers Tom Tancredo's stances
Total 10% Social 6% Economic 13%		Ron Paul Republican Representative (TX-14); Libertarian nominee for President in 1988	Biographical Profile Ron Paul's answers Ron Paul's stances
.		.

Your political philosophy is Moderate Liberal Populist.

As I have mentioned in some previous posts, there are several ways to get to the south pole...ski, van, tractor, para-sail, motorcycle, ski machine, fly, and walk. There's a treaty saying that you can no longer use a dog sled (well, not with dogs attached anyway). If you get a job here they will use the big slingshot to toss you here. This post isn't about any of that. I'm going to focus on what you can expect as a lifestyle if you find yourself here for an extended duration...say, from February to November during the mostly dark months of winter.

First off, you'll probably go a little wacky. Polies refer to it as toast. Gregarious people lock themselves in their rooms, the quiet types will hang out in the community areas and blather on about that time they had a Camero in high school and it might have possibly been the best feeling in the world to drive that thing until they wrapped it around the entertainment center in their neighbor's living room because they thought it was a parking space due to having a drink or two too many over the course of 17 hours...of course, nobody like that would actually end up down here, the psych eval would weed them out. There's also the 10 000 mile stare. I've seen it already this season. People will be in the middle of a conversation, but when the talk comes back around to them you realize that they are either A) Riding a motorcycle through the hills of South Dakota B) Working on their tan in southern California C) Fishing on their favorite lake D) Absolutely nowhere, their mind is a total blank. When they come back from wherever they were, it's usually like watching a dog wake up from a good dream and act a little miffed that there's really no rabbit to chase. People go toast by losing their cool. The longest tempers can get short down here. That's always fun. Everyone usually kisses and makes up, or they just spend the rest of the winter hoping that they don't have to ask for help from the other person for work purposes, which eventually they will.

Then of course, there's privacy. Privacy is an illusion here. You have to use the USAP network to access the internet, so nothing to racy there. You live in dorm rooms where you can hear your neighbor crack their knuckles. If you hate public toilets, you would not be able to handle the bathroom situation here. It's not unheard of to carry on a conversation with somebody in the stall next to you, come out wash hands together, then head up to dinner (that would be weird, but it has happened to me). Want to watch a movie? You'll probably end up watching it either cooped up in your room or on the big screen TV with a half dozen of your station mates. Good luck eating a meal alone, without picking up and leaving the galley. About the only thing you're likely to do alone is sleep....and that's very likely if you're a guy. I'm not going to even go any further on the relationship topic other than to say that it will be a community wide endeavor whether you like it or not.

Another aspect of being at the south pole for the winter is how you spend your free time. Like to hike? Enjoy swimming? Really into shopping? Is the sunny beach your thing? Forget it. The only thing you can do outside is get cold. Of course, just about anything you want to do inside is game. We have a gym, sauna, game room, a couple of movie rooms, a craft room, basketball/volleyball/badminton court, a couple of long hallways to walk up and down, and some very creative people who come up with all sorts of ways to pass the time. That's the key, it's as exciting as you make it here. Even that will wear thin after awhile and invariably everyone starts to crave a break. A break from the darkness, the cold, the isolation. A break that is months in the making and months in coming.

Then there's the reality of the communal life here. Nobody here is above the most menial tasks, such as cleaning dishes for a day or scrubbing out the urinal in the busy men's bathroom. Everyone takes a turn at it. Likewise, nobody is unaffected by having to deal with other people's definition of "clean enough". Everyone gets stuck in the toilet with no TP. Everyone gets to eat off the plates that are cleaned, used by, cleaned again, used by...all of your fellow residents. Hope they did a good job. There's little fresh food after about a month of no flights from the outside world. Somebody is always awake when you're trying to sleep, somebody is always asleep to hear that door you didn't shut quite slowly enough. You get to have dinner with your doctor after you go in for a visit. The power & water situation is always a little bit of a concern, even if you don't work in the power plant. Like to shower after your workout? Better only work out twice a week. If a fire alarm goes off, it's everyone's problem. Nobody here can do it all alone and what everyone does down here in some way affects everyone else.

Ultimately you are confronted with the fact that you are the south pole. It's cold here. The station is heated, but most people aren't wandering around in T-shirts and shorts, working out aside. Being ok with cold is a prerequisite. You can't go outside for any amount of time without lots and lots of gear and not be totally aware of exactly every shred of skin that isn't proper covered. Putting on the cold weather gear is an effort, as is anything that involves being outside. Every task is harder with bulky boots, frozen goggles and mittens. It also happens to be incredibly dry here. Most people have skin that will dry up to the point of bleeding if they don't moisturize quite a bit. The incessant darkness of winter, in addition to making people batty as I mentioned above, also makes sleep a real challenge. Pick your poision, because most folks here can't get to sleep or sleep all of the time. If you're truely cursed, then you vacillate between the two.

Wonder why anyone does it? Why come to such a place? Well, I personally like my job. The food is good, free, and I usually don't have to make it. Auroras are cool. The people here are amazing, truely phenomenal really. You get a patch and a free T-shirt when you leave. It confirms what your friends always thought about you being crazy. You find out what the CMB is. At some point, you get to drive a ski machine and maybe in one of the bigger tracked vehicles. What it really comes down to though, I just do it so that I have something to write in my blog.

Those of you following along remember that I gave up desserts and drink for the month of April. I've been saying it's my month of starvation, sobriety, and celebacy (guess which one I'm doing again this month). Last night I sat and stared at the delicious looking pudding dessert that was made for dinner. People would go get a helping of the yummy wholesome goodness, the galley music would change to something sensual and I would imagine that it was me going up to dive in and swim through the waves of chocolate wonder. Yeah, it's been like that every night for a month. I've stuck with it though. No desserts, period. I cheated on the booze one night, but I had planned that ahead of time so I will have to go until Cinco de Mayo for my alcohol fix. So last night, after watching another dessert pass me by, I went to my room and it was to bed early. I woke up on my own at 12:10am and went to the galley, found the dirty pan that used to contain the pudding, and scraped it clean with a fork. Yeah!
I've felt pretty good for the last month, so I'm going to try not to eat desserts as much as I used to, but I'll enjoy the occaisional treat. I usually don't drink very often, but I have to admit I'm looking forward to having a beer now and again. I'm not having blood work done again right away. After consulting my medical expert, it was suggested that I wait until mid winter. I'll have to watch my sugar & alcohol intake until then. Maybe I'll give up something for the month of May....caffeine perhaps.