Stormy Days

Quick update on this since I wrote it a couple days ago: I did shower and
it was phenomenal! It was also continued to snow, but the wind has died
down for the moment...
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The past few days have been slow. Work is limited by the lack of animals on
beaches and the wind has restricted even what we can do around camp. For
several hours today we had sustained winds of 30-40 mph with a few gusts in
the 50s. If you don't know what that feels like, lets just say it can knock
you off your feet.

Of course, the wind is just intensified by the snow already on the ground.
In its perennial attempts to rearrange the snow on the cape, the wind has
been making it essentially snow from the ground up, constantly spitting a
cold wet sneeze right in your face. In the time it took me to open one
door, close it behind me, then open another directly adjacent, then return
through both doors, I got essentially soaked with snow. Of course it's nice
to have a nice (relatively) warm cabin to return to, but this just makes
the snow melt and soak you even deeper.

All this is not exactly being said to gain any kind of sympathy. I
understand that growing up in coastal California I never had the joys of
shoveling a driveway or shoveling out my car (or snow days for that
matter!). And while I got a taste of that joy in college near Philadelphia,
I still was living on campus where someone else plowed the paths to class
and a dining hard was just a few slippery steps away. HOWEVER (and I'm sure
I talked about this last year, but here it is again) I seriously doubt any
of you snow dwellers had to get up every morning and shovel out your
bathroom! How about your pantry or refrigerator? Basically if I want to go
pee in the morning, I have to don a bulky jacket, gloves, hat, warm pants,
real shoes, and often glasses or goggles and go shovel out the back door,
followed by the outhouse. That or you just brave the cold in minimal
clothing, run through the night's drifts, and just pee in the snow behind
the buildings. Of course this not only is a shock to the system, but runs
the risk of the snow behind the buildings actually being a 3 foot snow berm
that you and your sandals are now knee deep in. Trust me there has been
many a morning where I've woken up early and just laid away holding it and
suffering because it just wasn't worth it yet.

In other news, since we had a lot of time on our hands, I made a pretty
awesome dinner for everyone tonight. We had chicken cordon bleu (with blue
cheese instead of swiss and Serrano ham), roasted asparagus with a homemade
hollandaise sauce, and quinoa with sautéed vegetables and balsamic vinegar.
Oh I also- surprisingly for the first time despite my love for it- made ice
cream. Cookies n cream to be exact. And Whitney, my awesome new pinniped
assistant made brownies and fresh bread because she was bored…

Next few days should bring more elephant seal weaner wrangling, setting up
some final things as the wind dies down, range testing our vhf tag
receivers, and beginning our fur seal censuses. Ooo I also plan on
showering on Thursday (so hopefully its already happened by the time this
goes up). My last shower was Monday. Of last week… We've been here about 16
days so far. I have taken 1 shower, worn 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of
underwear, 2 sleeping shirts and 2 work shirts, deodorant once, and have
shaved zero times. Actually fun anecdote, Whitney showered yesterday and
today she was standing next to me and I asked her what that smell was. Not
in a mean way but just in a strange way. She said it was cleanliness and
deodorant. I was clearly thrown for a loop by it all. I put on deodorant
after that and just felt weird. Sure my armpits maybe smelled slightly
better, but the shirt I was wearing still smells bad, along with my socks
and the rest of my clothes. Just a reminder that deodorant and baby wipes
only go so far I guess.