Alaska

I just wanted to let everyone know that this summer I will be returning to Alaska to work with Steller sea lions on Marmot island near Kodiak. It is unlikely I will be as good about keeping up with the blog there since there is much less going on with that project and my access to internet is even more restricted. That being said, I will see what I can do and maybe will come up with a few new insights that I haven't covered already. Or I will just ramble on as I once again slowly slip into insanity caused by isolating yourself from anyone and everyone.

As a side note, I will also be going back to Antarctica again in October. Whether the blog will continue there is yet to be determined.

Also, thank you to everyone who has kept up with this. I really didnt expect to have nearly 1000 page views when I returned. Its a little scary to think that at least a few of you actually paid attention here, but its nice to know the effort at least went somewhere. I have also fixed the comments problem (hopefully) so anyone can comment.

From Berkeley, over and out.

Some Lighter Notes

It has come to my attention that my posts are getting a little too deep and
I am obviously spending too much time alone with my thoughts. I dont think
the person meant it as an insult or questioning of my mental state, but
anyone who knows me knows that I dont like to get too serious with things.
So these will hopefully be some lighter, more fun notes.

We are in the final throws of science on the Cape. Just two more weeks of
seal and penguin work, then we stop all science and just focus on packing
things up for a week. Less than a month from now I will be sitting in a
cushy hotel room with running water, flush toilets, and a real door
separating me from anyone I damn well want. Should be pretty magical. Until
that time though, I am trying to really soak in where I am. I climb at
least 4 large hills everyday to look for seals, but sometimes I kind of
forget to look out at the view while I'm up there. Or more often than not
these days, its too foggy to see anything anyway, so you might as well look
where you are going and avoid tripping over a rock or bitey-end-up seal.

That being said, occasionally we get that freak gorgeous day with sun,
mostly blue skies, and ideal little to no wind. In truth, that almost never
happens (you can have sun or no wind, rarely both), but a couple days ago
we got about as close as we have come to it since December. It was sunny,
relatively non-windy, and visibility was good enough to see most of the
cape from my high perched vantage points. So I went right up to the edge
and look out, doing a full 360 to take it all in. After nearly losing my
balance and falling down the cliff, I really did take that deep breath and
just kind of feel myself relax. It was pretty nice I have to say. This is
one of those places most people will never ever get to visit and that makes
it very special.

So of course, my next move was what I assume comes naturally to every male
(and probably some females, though physical and safety restrictions might
come it play more). I unzipped and peed right off the cliff. As my mom can
(and readily will) attest, I have always enjoyed peeing outside. Its one of
those simple pleasures of being in nature and being free! If you have never
peed off a cliff especially, I highly recommend it. This is one where wind
can actually be beneficial, though you have to make sure you don't get
blown off as well. Nobody wants to end up bloody and broken at the bottom
of a cliff covered in their own pee. Guys- just do it. Girls- find a way,
because if peeing off cliffs is wrong, why does it feel so right? Its the
ultimate bout of freedom, that perfect combination of exposing yourself to
the world while simultaneously marking it as yours in a cascading stream of
human dominance over nature. Or something like that…

Thats my main story for tonight. In other news, we have our 4th and final
round of pup weights tomorrow, where we go out and catch/ weigh 100 pups.
100 doesn't seem like that much but the leopards have been hitting us hard
this year and finding all 100 is tough (at one point I suggested it might
be easier to just weigh the leopards at the start of the season and again
at the end and figure out the difference). Not to mention, the puppies are
officially getting kind of wise to us, especially when they see a crew of 6
people approaching with a small wave of other puppies running out in front.
That and their freakishly large size all of a sudden that gives them added
speed and maneuverability is going to make it quite the spectacle. I'm just
a little excited. Its like the rodeo with adorable baby seal. I will have
lots of banjo music playing in my head and don't be surprised if I end up
diving into a tide pool after one. Sometimes you just gotta do what you
gotta do.

Immediately following the puppy weights we have penguin chick banding (well
ok its the next day). This should be equally entertaining in that it
involves corralling piles of penguin chicks, who are, to be extremely
generous, "uncoordinated" and slapping some bands on them. One of the
highlights these days of heading out to the penguin colonies is just
watching parents come back from sea and having their chicks chase them
around the colonies trying to get food. Sometimes its not even their
chicks! You might get a whole herd of chicks chasing one adult. They're
also in the process of molting, so most are part downy softness, part real
bird. Often this results in very confused looking birds with a feathery boa
around their neck or mohawks on their heads. I also saw one trying to nap
on its belly the other day but it was so fat its wings and feet barely
touched the ground so it was mostly just superman-ing and dreaming it was
soaring through the air. Or whatever it is that penguins really dream
about…

Ok thats it. Not challenges, no big life questions, just what do you think
penguins dream about? Write it down. Maybe walk up to a complete stranger
and tell them your answer and then try to describe the confused look on
their face.

Privacy

A major challenge of living in a remote field camp with 5 other people is
privacy and personal space. Its a little like being back in the college
dorms, except now I have 3 roommates instead of one. When you are forced
into a situation like this, you begin to lose any concepts of true privacy.
The curtain separating me from the world feels like a wall, even though
every cough, fart, toss, turn, or accidental bang of the head on the
ceiling is easily heard. This small box, the size of a twin bed is my only
escape.

Now thats not to say that I am never alone, or that there aren't places I
can go to be alone. When I am out working, I am generally alone. When I
shower, or go to the outhouse, or work in the lab, its usually (hopefully)
just me. But these places aren't "mine." My bunk is mine and I have grown
to appreciate it.

That being said, coming into this situation, I had no expectations of
privacy. Its amazing how accepting you can be when your initial
expectations change. It is routine to stand in your underwear in full
public view, or to be stepping around other people's things to get to your
own. You minimize the amount of stuff you have out at all times because
theres just nowhere to put it. In addition to the general clutter of this
many people living on top of each other (literally- the beds are bunked),
you have to remember that these 5 other people are literally the ONLY human
contact you have for upwards of 5 months. Trust me when I say you get to
know each other real well. You know when someone isn't feeling great, when
they had weird, expired boxed indian food for lunch, or when they have to
go pee twice in one night. Its very personal.

The nice thing about people who live the field camp life routinely, as
everyone here does, is that nobody cares about privacy. Usually you know
someone's stomach is upset not just by the extra stench in the outhouse but
because they come back and tell you all about it. We have frequent
discussions about whether or not dinner last night caused anyone to get the
"meat sweats." Arguably, some of this likely also has to do with biologists
generally having pretty strong stomachs- we also frequently discuss seal
scats (worms and all!), penguin puke, and dead animals around the dinner
table.

So likely none of this is really all that surprising to anyone. Most of us
have been to summer camp, or spend time in a college dorm, or some similar
social setting where you couldn't escape the people around you and you felt
like your privacy was at best compromised. What is sometimes a surprising
revelation is to say that this is actually THE MOST PRIVATE I have ever
been in my life. My phone has not been connected to the internet or any
kind of cell network in 3.5 months. The computer I am currently typing this
on has NEVER once been connected to the internet. In these days of NSA,
Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. it is rare that anyone can say
that you are completely unconnected. Our satellite phone can't track my
movements. I haven't seen an online ad since before Halloween!

Of course, I can connect to a certain extent (phone and email), and I
suppose is someone really were inclined they could read these emails, but
nobody is spying on me here. When I hike up my hills looking for seals, I
can look around and not see a single person. Whats more, even though I know
5 people are hiding somewhere, those are the ONLY people for nearly 100
miles in any direction. Its a little trippy.

So i would challenge anyone reading this to look at your life and ask
yourself, how much privacy do you really have. This isn't a comment on the
benefits or dangers of the Google empire, I don't mind a certain amount of
my information being known and apps like Google Now can actually be pretty
handy. But just look around and ask yourself when was the last time you
were truly alone. I would also challenge you to try disconnecting sometime.
Even if its just an hour, or an afternoon, or a day. Leave the phone and
computer at home and just go outside, as far away from anyone else as
possible (without too much work, and maybe tell someone where you are going
ahead of time just in case…). And when you are out there, remind yourself
that for that brief moment, you get to just be you.

Chicks, Mud, and Skeletor Pups

I apologize first off for being so slow at adding posts here. Days continue
to be long and I've generally just been tired at night and not felt up for
writing much. Plus, we have been losing daylight at an alarming rate (down
to only about 17.5 hours a day). With the earlier sunset, its actually
getting dark here for the first time, which is strange, but also makes me
more inclined to actually go to bed at a reasonable hour (that and the
constant work). We actually were able to see a planet the other night,
though still no stars really. We should be seeing stars by the time we
leave in March. Well, that is if its ever clear enough to see the sky,
which is rare.

As for the chicks, they are starting to be everywhere. Thats penguin chicks
of course. Unfortunately, a lot of the penguin nests failed this year,
largely due to the increased amount of snow making actual nest building and
egg incubation tough. There were actually some hilarious (though somewhat
sad) penguins that ended up in a hole about 3 feet deep where their little
butts melted the snow down while they sat on their eggs. But that being
said, the ones that were successful now have chicks, and boy do those
chicks grow fast!

Gentoo and chinstrap penguins both typically have 1 to 2 chicks each year
(not like the emperors you always hear about with their one). Like other
penguin chicks, these chicks do look like fuzzy, grumpy little old men with
big bellies and their pants pulled up way too high. They are pretty cute
when they are clean, which is never. More often, they are covered in a
highly coordinated smattering of feces, mud, and feces soaked mud. Much
like their parents, gentoo chicks can projectile poo several feet, with
almost pinpoint accuracy often targeted at their nearest neighbor (in truth
they aren't really aiming, but when the colonies are as crowded as they
are, its almost inevitable that someone receives an unwelcome surprise).

In the next few days/ weeks the chicks will also begin to creche. If you
ever watched March of the Penguins, or Frozen Planet, or basically any
documentary on penguins, this is where suddenly all the chicks are huddling
together/ running around like the weirdos that they are while their parents
go off to forage. Its supposed to be a pretty entertaining time in the
penguin mines. Even more exciting is the penguin dash, when a parent comes
back and is subsequently chased halfway around the colonies by hungry
chicks. At first its often ALL the chicks, which then get whittled down to
just that bird's offspring. Its kind of like walking into a college party
holding half a pizza. Chaos.

As I mentioned, the chicks are usually covered in mud (among other things).
Thats because 1) penguins are filthy birds that live in their own waste and
2) because much of the Cape is now covered in it. We have gotten several
days of rain this week, which has left everything just kind of soggy. The
plus side is that a lot of the snow is gone now, making snow shoes and skis
unnecessary (finally!). But now you just kind of slurp around in a
different medium that leaves more of a mark on your clothes, hands, face,
whatever it can find its way onto.

Mud here is also true mud. Its not that "oh I was jogging in the park and
stepped in a puddle and some dirty water splashed on my perfectly white
running shoes" kind of mud. This is the "i'm gunna steal your boot and
maybe part of your leg if you don't move quick" kind of mud. Often times it
feels more like walking in quicksand than on dirt. A common strategy to
avoid the sinking feeling (get it?) of going nowhere is to jump from rock
to rock. The only problem is when you step onto a rock the size of your
head thinking, ah this will surely act as a good base of operations as I
plan my next step, only to find that now you AND the small boulder are
suddenly becoming part of the earth around you while those little puppies
are all somehow growing remarkably tall around you. Fortunately I have
managed to enhance my cat like reflexes, allowing me to scamper from rock
to rock without losing any limbs or major articles of clothing.

As for the puppies, they continue to grow. Unfortunately, so do the bellies
of the leopard seals and we have lost a LOT of pups. Its getting to the
point of being a little depressing actually. On the upside, the remaining
pups are hopefully a little wiser than their leopard lunch counterparts,
which gives them a better chance of making it back here someday. In
addition to getting big, some are starting to molt, meaning they are losing
their jet black coats in favor of the more grownup silver. I haven't fully
pet a molted pup yet, but apparently they get SUPER soft right after the
molt.

Unfortunately for the pups, as they go through the process, it makes them
look a little ridiculous and borderline creepy. If you dont know who
skeletor is, theres this new thing called Google (though I'm probably
spelling it wrong). No no, you dont actually have to go look, he looks
creepy anyway, but he was a villain that I think was originally part of the
legion of doom from the old super friends cartoons (EDITORS NOTE: I clearly didn't have google, Skeletor is actually from the He-Man cartoon series. Legion of doom leader was just bald...) . I am pretty sure the new Captain America also had a Skeletor looking villain as well. Basically
its a man with essentially a skeleton head. While the puppies do still have
fur, their molt tends to start on their heads and move backwards. The
result is an all black pup with a sleek, silver head that kind of makes
them look like Skeletor. They are still pretty cute though, at least the
few that are still around.

Thats it for now. Its late and I need to sleep. Its my birthday on
Saturday, so we are having a little celebration (I dont like making a big
deal of my birthday, but others insisted. Plus its just an excuse to have a
bbq and stay up late. Its also the last weekend that the Dutch science team
will be here so we can celebrate with them.)

Stay warm east coast, and stay cool west coast (seriously 70 degrees?!)

Also! I highly recommend checking out a singer named Old Man Ludacate (or
Ludacit?). He has a few good songs, but when much of your world revolves
around food and cooking as it does here, his song Joy of Cooking can really
hit home…

Language

Language. Language is one of those crazy aspects of life that we often take
for granted as part of being human. Many people might even say its part of
what makes us human. Personally I would have to disagree with that though.
If you work around animals, you know they have a language. If you've ever
owned a dog, you know it has its own language, both for communicating with
other dogs and for communicating with you. Most animals don't use words
like we do, or nearly as many sounds, but its usually pretty easy to read
them if you know the signs. Female fur seals growl or snarl or snort when
aggravated and often their eyes are all huge and buggy. Male fur seals
whimper or growl. They all do this BEFORE they try to attack or bite or run
away or whatever. They give you warning signs that are pretty universal to
understand.

However, I have recently learned there is one language in the animal
kingdom I may never fully understand. Dutch.

As I may have mentioned previously, Jan 7th brought an influx of people to
the Cape. A helicopter arrived that day carrying a crew of Chilean
researchers. However, they weren't all Chilean. One sector of the group is
actually a dutch girl and her assistant. She is technically half Chilean,
but is pretty much full on dutch for all practical purposes. Luckily she,
and her assistant Pete, speak english quite well because otherwise our
communication would be better off with Pete whimpering and Elisa just
snarling while staring at me with big buggy eyes (this is not to imply they
are constantly aggravated by me or threatening to attack me, we actually
have gotten along quite well thank you). Sure you might understand a few
words here and there, like listening to REM's Its the End of the World as
we know it (ya, go listen and prove to me you know any line other than the
one), but overall part of you will always feel like they are just making up
sounds on the spot with no real meaning at all just to confuse you. Even
words they repeat for you, slowly at that, you cannot pronounce. And don't
even think about trying to read it because whatever rules you thought
existed about consonants and vowels are just tossed right out the window.

Also, fun fact, it turns out they do not actually call it a Dutch Oven in
the Netherlands. Nope. Its a stovenpot. Or some other word that starts with
a 'B' but is near impossible to say let alone remember. And yes, I realize
that stovenpot (probably spelled way wackier) actually kind of makes sense
for a big pot you can put on the stove. My next mission is to discover why
the Dutch live in the Netherlands, which is the same as Holland.

Language also brings up other issues for me, namely how spoiled/ terrible
the US is about them. I was lucky that taking a foreign language was a
requirement at my high school, and our teachers were actually pretty
decent, so i speak a little spanish. But when you compare Americans to
people from other countries, it just sad. The Dutch girl here speaks dutch
and english fluently, spanish decently, can understand german and french,
and probably by combining all those would do ok with italian and who knows
what else. Her argument is that nobody speaks Dutch but the Dutch so you
have to learn other languages if you ever want to communicate. That is
true, but it just speaks to how spoiled we all are to speak english. Most
of the world has been pressured to conform to our standards.

I'm not saying that every person must speak multiple languages to be a good
person or anything, but I do think understanding another language gives you
greater insight into another culture. With more insight into culture comes
more understanding, respect, and cooperation which would make the world an
overall better place.

People also need to learn languages earlier. Its no secret that children
learn things, especially language better than adults or even adolescents.
When we are born, we have the ability to understand and hear any language
in the world. ANY LANGUAGE. We wont necessarily comprend it, but we hear
it. As we get older, we lose the ability to hear certain sounds that are in
languages outside of our own. There is a reason its much easier for an
english speaker to pick up spanish or french or german than to learn
Swahili (or Dutch…). Many african languages use over 100 different sounds.
English uses forty something (look it up). By learning different languages
earlier, even if they use the same sounds as our native language, we mold
our brain to hear that language better and set ourselves up to learning it
a lot easier. If you have the opportunity and ability to raise a kid
bilingual, and I mean from early early on, I say do it. Ya its a lot of
work, but they will be lucky in the end. If nothing else, teach them
Spanish or Chinese because spanish is becoming the dominant language in
many parts of the US and the Chinese are going to take over the world
sooner or later.

This concludes my random thoughts on language. I have had a lot of fun
recently talking to the Dutch crew and making a fool of myself trying to
learn a few worlds, or even just city names outside of Amsterdam. I do like
how they say "no" (like in english). Its a very deep, almost scottish
sounding "oh" where it like you are trying to open your jaw as wide as
possible while still keeping your lips pursed together. There are a few
other good ones too.

Oh and in case anyone is wondering, they also don't have a term in Dutch
for when you are in bed with someone, fart, and pull the covers over their
head to make them smell it, which is also commonly referred to in America
as… you guessed it, a Dutch Oven.

Non-Animals

Almost all of these posts refer back to animals. Theres a few obvious
reasons for that- 1) I really like animals (duh). Its why I'm here, well
that and a decent paycheck. 2) Because everyday revolves around the
animals. They become part of your life, your family, you job, and your
surroundings. When I get up, I hear moms and pups calling, terns yelling at
me, skuas screeching about nothing. When I go to sleep, its the black
bellied or wilsons storm petrels, or terns continuing to yell at me, or
often the same moms and pups calling to each other. I've learned to check
when I go out to pee to make sure there isn't a fur seal or elephant seal
hiding around the corner where I am about to draw smiley faces in the snow
and when a giant petrel swoops just above my head in its search for dead
stuff to eat, it hardly phases me anymore. Needless to say, animals are a
big part of life here…

But animals are not the only part of life here. The psychologist in me (one
of my minors in college) wants to know what its like living in a small,
isolated group for an extended period of time. And to that I say its
surprisingly easy, if you have the right people. Now I'm a pretty easy
going guy and I think I get along with people really well, but I have also
been very lucky with who I have lived with both here and in Alaska. In
truth, these jobs are fairly self selecting. If you don't deal with other
people well, you rarely make it more than one season in a remote field
camp. However, people often do not get along with campmates and its
something that just has to be dealt with.

All that being said, I've found that in the "normal" world, things aren't
all that different. Whether in high school, college, grad school, or just
at home, I tended to hang out with the same 3-10 people on a routine basis.
While bars and social events provide the opportunity to talk to new people,
I think most groups of friends end up just talking amongst themselves
anyway. So really the only difference is I didn't get to pick this group of
friends (which, again, can be a big deal, but often works out). You also
build a sense of camaraderie very quickly in places like this. Not only are
you all in it together, but you really do depend on each other. It would be
tremendously difficult for us to get all our fur seal work done without the
help of the penguin biologists, and vice versa, they often get our help on
bigger projects. You also rely on everyone for other things, like support,
friendship, and daily frustrations. The truth is, when you are missing
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and your own birthday, the people you
are with become your family, for better or for worse. There are definitely
things I would change about the people I live with, but there are also many
things I've learned to love about them. I probably laugh more here than
anywhere else I have ever worked or lived.

…

Other non-animal aspects of living in Antarctica: Icebergs, dirt, daily
life.

Icebergs. We get them passing by occasionally. Some are small, only a few
feet across. Some are huge, maybe a mile or more across. We are far enough
north that we dont get pack ice here and the icebergs come and go fairly
infrequently, but its still pretty cool to see them out your back door. I
think people often think of icebergs as big, but not huge. Something that
at least might sneak up on your boat in the middle of the night, and there
are plenty of those around. But many of the ones we see are actually HUGE.
They can be miles across and hundreds of feet high. Sailing into one of
them would be like skillfully navigating an Ikea parking lot in your car
only to slam into the side of the store itself. It doesn't exactly come out
of nowhere. There are stories (if you read some of Shackleton's journey) of
sailors not knowing if something is land or just a giant iceberg. Its
pretty impressive. Then you realize that used to be part of a glacier and
get a little sad inside…

Dirt. Like snow, it becomes part of your daily life. Its funny to think
how, at home, I work hard at keeping (most) my pairs of shoes out of the
mud to keep them relatively clean. Here, you just walk through it. I'm
typically wearing boots made for that sort of things, but still. Its really
nice to just know you're going to get dirty, be dressed appropriately, and
not have to give it a second thought. If your boots are dirty, drag your
heals in the snow (or sand). If you smell, you smell. Maybe grab a few baby
wipes and treat yourself to a luxurious wipe down. If your work bibs are
dirty, you better just get used to it because thats going to keep
happening. Its just nice to not have to care about how I am dressed or the
condition of my clothing (or myself for that matter). My hair is usually
messed up. My beard is long and orange and I dont care. Everyone should try
it someday. Just wake up, grab some random clothes you don't care about and
just walk wherever life takes you. If the opportunity arises to get dirty,
just get dirty. At least YOU can come home and shower…

Routine: I think that routines can be really good for people. Structure
helps people accomplish goals, plan their lives, workout, etc. However, it
also just gets boring really quickly. We have structure here. We usually
get up between 8 and 9am (I realize some people would say that wide a
window is not very structured already). I do my tag resights everyday, but
after that you never know. It varies by day, weather, time of year, how you
feel, how the boss is feeling. My day a couple fridays ago was one of the
busiest I have had this season, but it was awesome.
8:30am- Get up, eat breakfast, maybe entered some data, waste time, suit up
10:30am- Leave camp to hike to Punta San Telmo, the southwestern most point
on the cape that we monitor, to conduct weekly phoned census there. The
hike is about 2.5-3 hours roundtrip and you usually encounter fur seals,
lots of weddell seals, leopard seals, penguins, and a whole mess of birds.
2pm- Resights
3pm-Lunch
3:30pm- Hexacopter ground station operator training- basically while the
pilot flies the hexacopter (like a quadcopter but with 6 rotors), I monitor
a video feed from the camera and some of the flight data. We are going to
attempt to map the entire coastline of the cape with aerial photos taken
from the hexacopter. I help direct the pilot where to go.
4pm- Seal captures to remove summer intruments
5:30pm- Head over to penguin colonies to help put out VHF telemetry tags on
penguins
8:30pm- Dinner
11pm- Bed

I love the variety and while the work is hard, it makes the time go by
quickly. It feels like it has been a long time since I was home, but it
does not feel like I have been here for going on 2.5 months now. And the 2
months I have left I know will blow by because of all the different
projects we have going.

I am going to cut this off here because it is getting long, but since it
has been a while since I've written anything, I will likely post something
very soon in addition to this. Possibly even at the same time. In the
meantime, check out our Sit Reps (link should be at the bottom of the page)
to see some photos from christmas time!

Resupply

This comes a few days late, but we had our first, and really only, resupply
the other day. It came on New Years Day to be more specific. There was lots
of good news to come with it as well, the first being that the ship would
in fact show up around 5pm, not 5am like originally planned. Considering I
didn't go to be until just before 4am, this was a plus (though I kind of
liked the prospect of just staying up all night). We did still have to do a
full regular days work ahead of time though. Other good news was the
arrival of fresh produce. I actually had not been missing it too badly yet,
since we've only really been out for a couple weeks, except for things like
potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. We eat so well here that its easy to forget
about little things like fresh tomatoes sometimes. I also got a new pair of
boots, some awesome gloves with the flip cover fingers, oh and my new
computer which I am currently writing this on.

The resupply also brought a somewhat alarming influx of people ot the Cape.
When you've spent the entirety of the last 2 months with 5 other people a
bunch of snarling, cackling, calling, whimpering animals, having about 20
new faces show up is a bit of a shock. It threw me off that there were so
many footprints in the snow and that I could not tell who they belonged to.
The other slightly strange aspect of this land assault on my precious
homeland was it was almost entirely young women.

Now I dont find krill and plankton science to be particularly attractive, and when everyone is dressed in fairly heavy duty snow gear, its hard to get particularly excited by a few new people. But when you've only seen one (human) female for 2 months, your standards can become shifted. There was
actually some worry that, as one of the only single members of our party, I
might start whimpering like a bull fur seal to establish dominance over the
harem. Luckily for everyone involved, I kept my cool and just whimpered
quietly to myself. Plus, as quickly as the came, they fled the cape for the
safety and leisure of the boat/ Palmer Station with its gym, hot tub, and
bar…

The onslaught also brought a new member to our camp, and yes he was
actually intentionally left behind. David is our NOAA Corp engineer/
logistics person. NOAA corp is a uniformed service that typically runs all
the NOAA boating and logistics operations around the world. David is here
to help fix things, improve things, inventory our piles of crap, and add
some variety to a fairly stagnant workcrew.

David is a good guy, but I have to admit, its weird adding a new person to
the tribe. We had our routine pretty well down- where people sit, which mug
everyone uses, which pee hole in the snow we are currently working on
excavating. With his addition, it throws those things off. He is quickly
figuring it out, but it still just feels like a little bit of an invasion
and makes the space feel a little more cramped (he actually shares a room
with my boss, so he isn't in the main hut all that much). That being said,
he brought all our goodies, so all is forgiven.

I hope everyone had a good New Years Eve. Ours was lowkey, but fun. We took
a group photo at midnight outside without even needing the flash. We have
also just crossed our halfway point, which is a little scary that we still
have just over 2 months to go, but also means its all downhill from here.
We keep busy as always and the days go by quickly. I am definitely looking
forward to being home again, but its not too shabby here either.

Final thought: Men, try whimpering at a pretty girl and see if it gets her
more interested in you. Women: if you see a man whimpering at you from
across the bar, give him a shot, he might just be smart enough to know a
little something.