Happy New Year from Antarctica! and Icestock and welcome to Nights

12-31-11

Was able to sleep in until noonish, so still not quite transitioned yet.

Was feeling kind of tired and not feeling like doing much, so I watched dumb and dumber at the coffee house.

This got done just in time to get my costume ready for Icestock, the Antarctic version of woodstock, and the farthest south music fest in the world. To icestock I wore a a black fro wig with bandana, white sunglasses, and cool fancy hippy shirt and pants. I had a guitar hero guitar as my accessory in an attempt to look a bit like jimmy hendrix.

After getting dressed and doing a bit of pre-funking with friends in the dorms, we headed out to icestock to enjoy chili from the chili cook off and also some pig roast. As soon as we had eaten our fill, it was time for the dancing to begin! There were lots of acts that played and they played various music from bluegrass to 80's cover songs. The dancing and party was wild...probably the wildest new year's party I have ever been to. Special ted was definitely out with plenty of kisses to go around for all. As the clock struck midnight, the bubbly was passed around along with noisemakers. Of course the crazy thing was that it was still broad daylight when the year rolled around to 2012.

B/c I'm on nights, I couldn't just go to bed when the party ended around 2am, so we headed to MMI to watch a movie and then out to our 5am dinner.

1/1/12

My first "day" on nights.

1/2-3/12

The first week on nights has been a bit crazy. I'm feeling like I'm in a bit of a fog. I'm mostly getting enough sleep, but I think my body is just confused. When I'm working late into the morning, I get really tired, and I think my body thinks I'm just staying up late to get something done as opposed to realizing that this time is now my days. I've never had problems staying up all night to do homework or study for a test or to take multiple transportation options while sleeping, and so I think that my body just thinks that at 3 and 4am I am just staying up late and so it acts tired as opposed to realizing that 3 and 4am is the new 3 and 4pm. The hard part is that the rest of the station is still on "normal" time, so your brain still perceives everything in their "time" as opposed to what you should be thinking i.e. 6am = morning instead of night. The sun is up constantly, which helps, but when we wake up at 5pm for breakfast we still eat fried chicken and green beans with mashed potatoes and after work at 6am we eat omelletes and pancakes. When we wake up people will say good evening and when we're walking home from work, people will say good morning. Yesterday as we were walking in our fog back from work, a couple of people said different greetings to cargo Monica and she just started laughing hysterically, saying "I have no idea what the hell time it is or even what day it is"

The nice thing about nights so far at work is they are very relaxed and we have a fair amount of time to just hang out and chill together and b/c the whole base night shift is much smaller, it's a much closer and tight-knit group. I think once we get our bodies sorted, it will be a really awesome time. But right now we all just have to enjoy this period of feeling like we're sleep walking through a fog, like we're time travelling, or just that time purely doesn't exist.. It's kind of a psychedellic feeling and at least we all laugh through it.

Last night (or morning or whatever it is) we went to the midrats movie (Ghostbusters) in the coffee shop after work, but we all ended up just passing out. I ended up staying up pretty late to watch the Wisc/Oregon game b/c I have off today, but I think I slept through a lot of it, though I swear everytime I woke up someone was scoring again.

It's snowing today, but it's been warmer lately, so the transition is starting to get melty. There are a few ponds forming, one of which is Pate's Pond, named after Shuttle Matt Pate who has been stuck in it in a couple of occassions and when he has to get out of the van to see if he can get it unstuck he's fallen through the top layer of snow up to his waste in water.

Here's a cool video that shuttle Bill did a couple of years ago in the transition. The conditions aren't currently as bad as this video at the moment, but I imagine it will get there. It's pretty funny, especially the last bit of conversation with Bill and Walt the Plumber. Check it out. At this point they were only in Deltas b/c there was no chance for a van

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTK7ZovToMs