9/24
Another couple of flights arrived in this week, carrying our first 7 grantees. It's still been quite cold. Mostly in the -20 to -30F ambient and down to -50F when the wind blows.
I hiked up ob hill a couple of times this week to watch the sunset, which was rather beautiful. It's still so cold that my eyelashes get covered in icicles when I'm out for an extended time and everything gets a layer of frost from your breath. Going up obhill I work up quite a sweat b/c it's steep. So I take off my big mittens and am just in my glove liners. As the sweat evaporates out of the liners it freezes on the outside so that the liners turn from brown to frosty white.
It's still dark when I leave my office at night after working on my paper, but the night is definitely getting shorter. Crazy to think that in a few days, even before Elisha gets here, there will be no more night!
There were some fairly large budget cuts this year due to the president's cuts to the NSF. A lot of people lost their jobs, there will be less flights (so less fresh food and shortened seasons for scientists), and the utility and carpenter crews will be much smaller meaning that there will be little to no maintenance, only fixing the problems when they happen, which can eventually just lead to bigger issues. For example crary lab got down to 38F the other day (which would be bad if there were experiments going on) b/c the heater loop broke since they hadn't been able to do maintenance on it. Same with some of the vehicles. But the biggest talked about things is that they are cutting the hot food for midrats. Midrats is the lunch meal that happens when you are on night shift at midnight. When you are on midrats, the food situation is a bit wonky b/c your dinner is everyone's breakfast and vice versa, so those meals tend to not be as good unless you want to eat dinner for breakfast or breakfast for dinner. But the midrats meal was always really good and something the midrats could rally around. Well now they are cutting the hot food (well except for hot dogs and crappy pizza which are available 24 hrs). So they've been having meetings about it and trying to figure out how to deal with it, including having the big wigs eat a midrats diet for 2 weeks. But of course the big wigs who do the budget rarely come down here. They're also going to make some buttons which are pretty funny
"I stand with midrats" "All lunches matter" and "make midrats great again"
So I guess we'll have to see how it all pans out. It won't really affect Elisha and I much since we don't do night shift in crary and we only used midrats as a midnight snack after a weekend party or something.
10/2/17
Had another very chill Sunday b/c Todd still hasn't returned my manuscript back to me yet. Today I got the keys to Elisha and my room in dorm 211, so I started moving stuff in and will spend my first night there. We're up on the 2nd floor. The building has some heating issues b/c our room is quite hot but other rooms are chilly. The boys bathroom, which is downstairs, is quite cold. So cold, in fact, that when I got into the shower today I almost slipped b/c there was ice on the shower floor!
It's definitely been very cold lately. We had a pretty big windstorm go through today. It's a really quick walk from the gym to the galley, but it's been so cold that by the time I get to the galley, my sweat has frozen into little icicles in my hair!
Another couple of flights arrived in this week, carrying our first 7 grantees. It's still been quite cold. Mostly in the -20 to -30F ambient and down to -50F when the wind blows.
I hiked up ob hill a couple of times this week to watch the sunset, which was rather beautiful. It's still so cold that my eyelashes get covered in icicles when I'm out for an extended time and everything gets a layer of frost from your breath. Going up obhill I work up quite a sweat b/c it's steep. So I take off my big mittens and am just in my glove liners. As the sweat evaporates out of the liners it freezes on the outside so that the liners turn from brown to frosty white.
It's still dark when I leave my office at night after working on my paper, but the night is definitely getting shorter. Crazy to think that in a few days, even before Elisha gets here, there will be no more night!
There were some fairly large budget cuts this year due to the president's cuts to the NSF. A lot of people lost their jobs, there will be less flights (so less fresh food and shortened seasons for scientists), and the utility and carpenter crews will be much smaller meaning that there will be little to no maintenance, only fixing the problems when they happen, which can eventually just lead to bigger issues. For example crary lab got down to 38F the other day (which would be bad if there were experiments going on) b/c the heater loop broke since they hadn't been able to do maintenance on it. Same with some of the vehicles. But the biggest talked about things is that they are cutting the hot food for midrats. Midrats is the lunch meal that happens when you are on night shift at midnight. When you are on midrats, the food situation is a bit wonky b/c your dinner is everyone's breakfast and vice versa, so those meals tend to not be as good unless you want to eat dinner for breakfast or breakfast for dinner. But the midrats meal was always really good and something the midrats could rally around. Well now they are cutting the hot food (well except for hot dogs and crappy pizza which are available 24 hrs). So they've been having meetings about it and trying to figure out how to deal with it, including having the big wigs eat a midrats diet for 2 weeks. But of course the big wigs who do the budget rarely come down here. They're also going to make some buttons which are pretty funny
"I stand with midrats" "All lunches matter" and "make midrats great again"
So I guess we'll have to see how it all pans out. It won't really affect Elisha and I much since we don't do night shift in crary and we only used midrats as a midnight snack after a weekend party or something.
10/2/17
Had another very chill Sunday b/c Todd still hasn't returned my manuscript back to me yet. Today I got the keys to Elisha and my room in dorm 211, so I started moving stuff in and will spend my first night there. We're up on the 2nd floor. The building has some heating issues b/c our room is quite hot but other rooms are chilly. The boys bathroom, which is downstairs, is quite cold. So cold, in fact, that when I got into the shower today I almost slipped b/c there was ice on the shower floor!
It's definitely been very cold lately. We had a pretty big windstorm go through today. It's a really quick walk from the gym to the galley, but it's been so cold that by the time I get to the galley, my sweat has frozen into little icicles in my hair!
3 comments:
I don't think I will be applying for a job there anytime soon!
Elisha's bags are packed. It won't be long now! Stay warm!
haha, I know it's a struggle for Elisha to pack, so glad she got it done!
Mom, you'd be happy in the PT office. They keep it warm!
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