emma leigh’s antarctic blog

on a safety note, we had a non-work related injury in our department recently that caused quite a ruckus all the way up to denver. it was an innocent injury, however it was this person’s second injury of the season. this is apparently a big deal. so big in fact that our rpsc station manager, dave pohlod, came to our safety meeting last week to give us a talking to about being safe outside of work. even the most innocent activities can result in an injury.

ironically that same night one of our cooks, nick, twisted his knee playing soccer. not only that my friends, that SAME evening, my boss angie got her fingers crushed between two bowling pins while she was pinsetting. i can tell you that angie was not looking forward to calling her boss the next morning to tell her that there were two injuries in our department just after his speech.

i feel like there was so much i wanted to say in this entry. why has it left my brain now? oh yes. its mid winter and i can’t remember anything. i space out in the middle of conversations, and everything is somewhat fuzzy.

ah! the firehouse ball. i have put pictures up of the firehouse ball that i attended last weekend. there isn’t a lot to say about this event. the ‘b’ shift firemen don’t get to attend mid-winter dinner because they will be working, so they had a party the weekend before at gallagher’s. it was open bar, and when all was said and done over $1300 was put down on the bar that evening i believe. everyone had a pretty good time. it was the first time i had been out in about 2 months, since my last time at southern. ugh, i didn’t think i’d ever drink again. all in all though, the firehouse ball was a blast. i promised jana that i would dress up with her so that she could wear her nice dress. she didn’t feel comfortable dressing up alone. we had a great time!

i had the weirdest end to a scrabble game ever this week. i played steve frazier for the league, and at the end, i had 4 tiles left that i couldn’t play, and he had 3 tiles left that he couldn’t play. when we looked at each other’s tiles we saw that we each had i’s left. that’s right, 7 i’s left and not one place to play them on the board. how bizarre!

this week i had a -great- GA day in crary with ben and jim. they’re two of the janitors here. i was assigned to work with them cleaning the labs. this was great fun. they’re quite the comedy team. we started off the day by seeing who could roll a AA battery the furthest down the ramp in crary. tad had the record until that day. ben shattered it later on, when we started doing weight classes. we had to roll them in weight order, starting with the AAA and working up to the D battery. i now hold the record for the shortest distance for the AA battery. i think i’ll go down there and practice on my day off next week. i’ll take pictures of the ramp for you all to see.

this week’s safety meeting was pretty awesome. we got presents! everyone got a new bandana and a “cooking at the bottom of the world” t-shirt. on top of that, sally (our big boss in denver) had a bunch of mid-winter stuff wrapped for us. we had a yankee swap where everyone gets a number. the first person picks a present, then the next person can either take the first person’s present or pick a new present, and so on and so on. it was great fun. its really cool that sally thought of us at mid-winter and had that all ready for us. we all appreciated it. i had some lindt chocolate and pesto sauce at first, but that got stolen, so i ended up with some black cherry jam. that’ll do just fine with some peanut butter.

speaking of pb & j, let me just take this opportunity to say that brad made me the most amazing pb & j sammich last night. this thing is so massive that the pb actually took over the plate that it was on and oozed all over. i took a picture of it. i also weighed it (and an empty plate too, to get an accurate reading). the weight of the sammich pre-consumption was 1.5lbs. i haven’t finished it yet. i’m working on trying to finish it soon.

today was the start of the real crunch for mid-winter dinner. tomorrow night is dinner, but the kitchen staff spent most of today prepping for it. i stayed late after work today and helped de-vein a ton of lobster tails for the stuffed lobster tails. it was cold, squishy, and overall gross. but i got used to it, and we had lots of help. i was working next to angie and across from dave the station manager. behind me was the doctor, the NSF station manager, the physical therapist, and the HR rep. it was amazing to see everyone coming together to help get this amazing dinner prepared.

i’ll hold off on telling you all what it is until after we eat. more after the big dinner tomorrow night!

happy mid-winter! er…mid-summer too…..

thursday jana and i worked in skua, that was great fun. we had an awesome day putting stuff away in skua and going through tons of stuff. i had, as usual, accumulated an entire duffle bag worth of crap to take back home. luckily for me james stopped by, scaring the shit out of me catching me literally laying down on the job. freaking jana was his alibi, she saw him coming and said in a very upset voice “oh no! someone’s coming!” just as he came into the door. i scrambled to make it look like i was working. he just laughed at me, and rightfully so. in any case, james was nice enough to carry (drag) my bag back for me, all the way up the stairs to my room as well! as soon as i got there though, i realized that somewhere along the way i had lost my winter hat. my good, columbia winter hat. i still haven’t found it, and i’m pretty annoyed about that. but i’ll live.

thursday night i played kb in scrabble (she was going to play the winner.) that was a blast as well. we played in the lounge of my building. while we were playing, jana came back from dinner at scott base and told us that they had seen auroras down there the night before, and there was a good chance of seeing them again that night. so kb, jana and i suited up and hopped into the shuttle van that was going down to scott base to bring people to and from the bar for american night. peter was our driver, and he was nice enough to stop so that we could see them auroras. they were faint, but so incredibly beautiful. i was very literally almost moved to tears. i hugged kb and jana and was so happy to have such great people to share that moment with. as soon as i got back to my room i called my parents to tell them what i’d seen. i was too excited to wait until i could email them, or wait until i woke up in the morning to talk to them, so i figured that it was 7am their time, and called them. it was great to talk to them and share with them as well.

friday night i had vowed to get myself a mattress from building 203, two buildings over from where i live. brad had been telling me that he’d help me, but he wasn’t around when i got out of work. (i realized later that it was a dodgeball night, but its all good.) so, i had the idea that it wouldn’t be so hard to move the mattress myself. holy crap was i wrong. first of all, i decided to go through the back of the buildings, so i wasn’t quite as out in the open as i could be. second of all, i decided not to wear big red, because i thought it would be bulky and would actually hinder me, even if it was keeping me warm. so here i am, dressed all in black sneaking around with my headlamp on trying to get this mattress switched. getting my old one out was not so hard. it was thin, light, and crappy, so i didn’t care if it fell on the ground. now, something i hadn’t considered was how windy it was going to be outside down the back of the buildings. now, i know that its windy coming down the road, and i guess it makes sense that it would be just as windy on the opposite corridor. i just wasn’t thinking about that i guess, i’ll never make that mistake again though, i promise you that. so i get the old mattress over to 203, and then i get the new mattress and realize that its much heavier and thicker than my old one. that’s why i want it though, right? of course right. however coming back to my building i don’t want to drop this one in the road, because its brand new! it was incredibly hard, and i will never do it again on my own, but i earned that mattress damnit.

now, the other week when i was at the bar, i made a drunken promise to caesar to listen to his radio show friday night from 10 to midnight. i was on the phone with brad for a bit until just after 10 with the radio on quietly in the background. just as i hung the phone up with brad, caesar came on to the radio and said “this next one goes out to emily, if you can name this song, you’ve won.” he played “bombs over baghad” and i called him right up to tell him that i love that song. timing *is* everything.

pretty uneventful weekend, as far as i can remember. no drinking, no parties. i did, however, get my butt kicked in scrabble. i don’t know what the hell happened to brad, but he progressed faster than i have ever seen any scrabble player progress. its great to watch, but i get really pissy when i lose. i guess i have a bit of a competitive streak in me. he’s totally using parallel words all the time now, and saving the s tiles to add on to other words at the end to make two words at once. fascinating and frustrating all at the same time.

sunday was low key, work was pretty average. same with monday. monday though i did take the time to squeeze some fresh orange juice. a whole case of oranges worth in fact. tuesday was karen’s birthday, so i told her that i would make her some orange juice. i ended up making close to 12 quarts of very pulpy but very good orange juice, and sharing it with a bunch of people, but she got most of it. she was very happy, even though i gave her the gift early. now on to the interestingness of tuesday.

we’ll start with my alarm clock sucking and me being late for my ga day on tuesday with sandy. i felt horrible when i threw my clothes on (just about 15 minutes late, thank god i woke up) and as i’m tearing down the hall i see sandy out there shoveling the emergency exit of southern. argh! after i helped her finish we headed up to the bfc to work for della. we had quite an eventful day, well, we got a lot done anyways. we rfi’d extension cords, camp chairs and tables, the new tvs and boom boxes that came in on the vessel, and the hand lenses. i got to paint “bfc” on the back of all the chairs and on all the bags that they came in as well, that was good fun. after we finished that up we started to help jen and kristen repairing the sleds downstairs. that was hilarious, since sandy and i kept breaking bolts off the runners instead of tightening them. it was good in a way though, or so we were told, because if we could break them, it was inevitable that they would have broken at some point during the summer season. better they get fixed now than waiting until they broke in the field.

while i was up at the bfc i got a phone call from lance, my boss on my ga days. he asked me if i wanted to get out of town on my day off and come out to castle rock with him and della to restock the apples and put up some new flags. as much as i wanted to just say yes right away because it was such a great opportunity, i asked him if it was okay if i decide that night and let him know. i had a lot planned for my one day off, and i had a sneaking suspicion that i wasn’t going to wake up early enough to get anything done at all before we went out to castle rock. not even a half hour later i had decided i was going and told della that’d i’d definately be there, because it would just be silly not to go. she agreed completely and told me that it would be a great, fun day. i figured that, but still needed that push i guess. i paged lance and told him that i would absolutely be there, and then thanked him profusely for thinking of asking me.

tuesday night was karen’s birthday, so we were all going to the coffeehouse for carrot cake that ty made for her. first though i had to stop at the store to get raped in buying laundry detergent. now, i made the mistake of going in there with kb. never again. i was looking at the hats, and kb convinced me not to spend $18 on a fleece hat, because she had so many extra hats that she wasn’t wearing, so i could borrow one from her. this was a sweet thought, at first. then, we started to look at the hand-made wool hats that cost $65 (but they come with mittens as well, right kb???) now, after trying on about 100 hats and being critiqued by kb and zoe, i ended up with one of the hand-made hats that is quite impractical in the field, but so cute to wear around town. plus, i got mittens as well. what a deal. kb actually said to me at one point “its okay to buy this, you’re saving money by not buying a hat!” she was serious. i looked at her like she had 7 heads, and we both cracked up laughing when she realized what she said. i’m serious, i’m not shopping with her anymore.

after that i headed over to the coffeehouse for karen’s birthday. it was great fun! ty’s carrot cake was amazing, and everyone had a really good time. brad an i ended up playing scrabble again, and he, again, smoked me. he had a 74 point word (bingo for using all his letters, i know you figured that out mom.) i was pissed off, of course, but stuck it out to the bitter end. we’re currently in the middle of a game that’s going much better. the scores are pretty close and we’re both making very high scoring moves every time. it’ll be interesting to see how this one turns out.

i was right about not waking up early on wednesday. i didn’t get laundry done, i didn’t get any passover cooking done. but i did make it out to castle rock. jen and i rode in the back of the piston bully while della and lance rode up front. we headed out of town, past arrival heights and then on to the first apple. i got a bunch of great pictures and we had a blast, all in all. until we were flagging, and della let me up front, and then the piston bully broke. i think it was me, but really it had been screwy since we left town. they had it in the shop before we went out, but it was supposed to be fixed. we did some doughnuts in the snow, and kept going for a bit until it was impossible to even move anymore. we actually had to radio in to town for help, and the mechanics came out to us in a truck and tried to fix it. however it took them a good 45 minutes to get out to us, since we were pretty far from town and none of the vehicles go quite that fast in the snow. we did have a great view of mt. erebus in the sunset though, so beautiful.

back into town, and just in time for dinner. wednesday night was a big night for the galley folk! we had reserved the bowling alley and were having a bumble bowling party! angie (our head chef) was amazing and paid for us all to bowl and for our shoe rentals. she also provided snacks, and we all brought beverages. there was a nice tray of jello shots to partake in as well, mmmmm! the bowling alley is amazing. its so old that we manually set the pins. there were two people from the community (justin and peter) that came in to pinset for us. they also have to send our bowling balls back to the front of the lanes to us. its amazing. now, bumble bowling is quite different than regular bowling. you have to do all sorts of crazy things, like hop on one foot, bowl with the opposite hand, reverse granny style, use a push broom, wear your bear paw mittens, spin around 10 times and then throw the ball. the list is insane. i took a picture of it, as well as many pictures of the galley folk being insane. we had a blast! i can’t wait to do it again. i’m hoping that we can get together for midwinter and hit it up.

after bowling we headed back to the galley to bring our dishes back and the extra food as well. after that we went over to southern (that’s always where everyone goes after doing anything i think.) i just had one drink, and we chitchatted with the people in southern before being conned into going to christina’s room in 155. troy was very adamant that we go there. rachael and i decided that we would go, but i said that i was leaving by midnight because i had to be at work at 7:30 the next morning. she told me to make sure that she left, so i did. i was good, i didn’t drink at all, especially off that bottle of tequila that was being passed around.

i was very worried about making it to work on time thursday morning because i was supposed to be shoveling with lance. as i haven’t had a good track record recently i was sure that i’d be late on the day that my boss was going to help me shovel. lucky for me he didn’t show up at all. i waited around for about 5 minutes after work started, and when he wasn’t there i went out and shoveled alone. it wasn’t all that bad since it hasn’t really been windy or snowy at all lately.

after shoveling i headed on over to rec to report for duty. i helped brad out all day, alphabetizing the liquor in the cabinets at the bars. sounds slightly anal, i know, but his list for stocking is alphabetical, so it makes a lot of sense. this way he can just go to the cabinet and go down the row and check off what he needs. all in all a great day. bar stocking may just be my favorite thing to do as a ga. i can tell you that its way better than sweeping and scrubbing things like i do in other departments.

thursday evening i had a nice passover dinner with ralph and carol. rachael tagged along as well. we had a nice low-key dinner in the back dining room. we didn’t really have everything that we needed for a seder but it was still very nice to chill out and have a very nice conversation over some matzah.

after dinner i went over to brad’s to watch the battlestar galactica miniseries. that was quite addicting quite quickly. we didn’t get to finish it because he had to bowl, but i did go back after bowling in an attempt to finish watching it. cora came over and shared some chocolate with me that she couldn’t have (she gave it up for lent), and then decided that she wasn’t into the show. pretty soon after she left we stopped the dvd and decided to try and finish it up the next night. i was too tired to keep my eyes open, and i’m sure brad was tired too.

friday, nothing exciting at work, other than my dry erase marker dying at the very end of me writing the menu and me having to erase the entire thing and start over because i had two different color blue markers up there. i’ve got issues, in a nutshell.

finished up battlestar galactica after work at brad’s. we only had about a half hour left or so, so that was a good thing. now for the interesting stuff.

i came home from brad’s, and got ready for bed. i had a headache, so i took my imitrex and laid down for bed. i literally took off my clothes and went to bed totally nude. now, i have my own room, i don’t feel that this should really be an issue. however, when my alarm went off in the morning at 5:37 and after i had stumbled to the bathroom, gone to the bathroom (without turning on the light) and then headed back out into my room, someone popped out of my spare bed that is right next to the door. that’s right. someone had apparently decided that it would be a good idea to sleep in my spare bed. rachael popped up and said something to the effect of “waaahhhh” and i promptly screamed in response as i tried to cover up as much of myself as possible. we both started laughing and i asked her “what did you do? lock yourself out of your room??” she had indeed done that, and tried my door and it was unlocked. i don’t know why that is, because i actually thought to myself “i should lock my door before i go to bed…” it obviously didn’t get done though. she scared the living crap out of me. i’m so glad i had already gone to the bathroom before this all happened!

work was okay, and we were all supposed to be going to castle rock tonight, all the galley folk. however, the piston bully was still broken from when i went out in it the other day with della, lance and jen. at the last minute i guess that it got fixed, but we all decided to postpone the trip before it got cancelled.

now i’m out at the coffeehouse, about to start a scrabble game with mariah and alex. we’ll see how that works out for me. i’m sure that i’ll get whooped, but it’ll be well worth it for the practice.

more coming up a lot sooner than the last update, i promise. i hate updating for this long of a time, it ends up being so long!

oh silly me, how could i forget? friday night was the night before april fool’s day! on my way home from work i met up with rachael at the computers, and we made up some fake postings for the rec board the next day. she and mandi and jana had made one that said “topless pot room” and was a sign up sheet. i made a sign up sheet for a cross country ski trip to the south pole. a mere 900ish miles away, i can’t see why more people didn’t sign up. we put them up before we left for the night.

the next morning i checked out the rec board and a few people had signed up for the ski trip, including robert scott, how great! (pics are up in the gallery of most of the day’s hijinx) the rec board was all done up as well, snowmobile racing on the ice runway, condition one dodgeball, delta ride to the dry valleys, $5000 jackpot bingo. it was great. people actually fell for the snowmobile races. james was so angry that he had been sitting around with nothing to do all day (it was a 2-day weekend for the community), and here there were snowmobile races that no one told him about.

now, mandi and rachael had gotten glenn and sandy the night before. mandi tried to convince the good ol’ doc that she was pregnant. then they ganged up on sandy, that was great. well, she kept the pregnancy test, and had a urine sample jar that she put some apple juice in and then put it in the bathroom in the kitchen just under the soap dish. so, when i saw our boss, angie, at the deli (on her day off, of course), i went up to her and told her that i thought there was something she needed to see in the bathroom. i told her how sorry i was because it was her day off, but i really felt she should come see this. she sighed, and looked at me and said “does it require a plunger?” i said “oh no, of course not, i wouldn’t get you for that…i can take care of that myself!” so she comes back, looks in the bathroom, and is completely disgusted, i think. she finally stammers “is that…is that a…pregnancy test??” i say “i think so, i don’t know who left it in here, i just came in and was washing my hands and saw it…i didn’t know what to do exactly….” she starts to get a bit more flustered, and finally i tap her on the shoulder and say “uh, angie, april fools.” she totally fell for it, it was awesome!

the last trick we played was at the end of the night. troy and i left simone a stack of sheet pans in the pot room with a note partway down the stack that said “these were all clean, happy april fool’s from emily and troy!” that didn’t go over so well, because by the time she got in the next morning the cooks had put other dirty pots around and on top of the sheet pans, so they really were a bit dirty. but she said finally that she saw the humor in it.

saturday night was going to be a low-key night for me again. after work, rachael, jana and i put some olive oil in our hair and then sat in the sauna for a bit to relax and let the oil soak in. then i went upstairs to take a shower and wash it out, and somewhere along the line decided to go see troy at the coffeehouse. i figured that would be low key, and i wouldn’t be drinking much there. boy was i wrong.

troy was LIT by the time i got to the coffeehouse. he was playing darts with james and nick, and then playing chess with nick at the same time. kelly gave me a glass of white wine to finish a bottle that they had, and then i ended up with a half a glass of red wine that i finished as well from another bottle. that was good enough for me. then troy made a bet with nick on the odds of some casino games. he lost, and so had to buy a round for him and nick and james. however, troy was out of money, so i ended up buying the round of jameson’s. one for me of course. let me just say, i will never drink that crapola again. SO nasty! anyways, we did our round, and then headed over to southern.

brad was at southern, so i told him that when he left to grab me because i was going to leave as well, i didn’t want to be out late. long story short, i drank too much, couldn’t figure out how to get my coat on when we were leaving (the red part goes out, thank you brad, i know.) and apparently i wanted to take a nap in the middle of the road. i vaguely remember having to count out the buildings to find mine (209….208…..207….third one in from the bay)

i was almost home when i saw tony leaving the 208 building. i yelled over to him “where are you going??” he said “southern! for last call!” well, don’t you know, i turned myself around and went BACK to the bar for last call. stupid, stupid, stupid idea.

i showed up, had another drink, vaguely remember telling brodie deep dark secrets, almost fell in the bathroom (there are STAIRS to get to the stalls in the bar, how cruel is that?), and then left again. i proceeded to get sick right outside the bar, then again halfway home (how far away do i live from the bar? its like being right next door to it.). then i drunk-dialed home, off the ice. i have problems doing that when i’m sober, for the record. then i was sick again, at least i made it into the toilet though. then i called brad to tell him i went back to the bar. i talked to him for a bit, was sick when i was on the phone, broke the toilet, and had to fix it while i was wasted, and then curled up on the floor to sleep next to the bathroom door. it was a very rough night. i don’t think i will EVER drink again.

sunday i had the day off, thankfully. so i slept until about 2ish. well, first i woke up wicked early, and couldn’t fall back asleep, so i went to the galley to get something that would be light on my stomach for when i was sick again that morning. i hate that whole dry heaving thing. the trip to the galley was rough though. i had a hat on and sunglasses and refused to take them off inside, it was entirely too bright. i went right home and went right back to bed.

sunday night james, chad and i watched “lord of war” before the movie club showing of “office space.” it was a nice movie evening.

monday started my new schedule, i started work at 6am. i was late, oh yes. just 10 minutes, but i was so annoyed. my alarm never went off. argh. it was nice getting out at 4pm though. it gave me time to play scrabble before i went to bed.

ahhh scrabble. brad and i played monday night, after we returned our dirty dishes to the galley. we were playing in my room, and at one point i challenged one of his words. well, neither of us had a scrabble dictionary handy (the word was io), so we bundled up and ran across the way to the coffeehouse to get the dictionary from there. the wind was WHIPPING. we checked the weather when we were at the coffeehouse, the temperature was -47 with windchill. 30mph winds, it was insanity. however it was worth it, since io is not a word in the scrabble dictionary. he had like 45 points or so riding on that setup. i ended up winning that match, but only because brad made the mistake of setting me up for a triple word score AFTER he knew what letters i had and thinking that there wasn’t a word i could make with it. the winning word was jib.

tuesday i had an enlightening day of sweeping and mopping the MEC. good times. i felt useless as hell, but i’m getting paid the same no matter what i do. later i was patching some stuff, thicker than tent material, i don’t really know how to describe it. in any case, i ended up scrubbing that for a while. way to stop the repetitive motion injury!

brad and i had a scrabble rematch, even though i knew he was home reading the dictionary all day looking for 2 letter words. we haven’t finished that game yet, its on hold. however i’m screwed so far, i have a low score AND my letters suck. i have W Q Z R R Y P. great.

we watched “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” last night with alia. what a great movie. very screwed up, but i loved it. i really want to watch the 25th hour soon, they have it in the store, thankfully.

i haven’t done much today on my day off, and that’s a wonderful thing. tonight i have german class, and then we’re having a special showing of “waiting” in the galley, sponsored by us galley folks. it should be good, we’ve been talking about it for weeks, and we feel that everyone should know not to screw with the people that handle your food.

i think that’s pretty much all i have, i have to go spend some time reading the scrabble dictionary.