A note of order...The link I put up for my picture albums is not exactly right. The album I put the link up for won't let me add any more pictures to it (evidently 500 is the limit). I started another album, plus the black and white album. You can see all my albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/gnomishcat
Some random thoughts, since nothing much has been going on.
I shipped out another package today. Thus is the start of getting rid of some of the clothes I am finding myself not wearing. The rest of the purge will continue through January, since the last date to ship packages is February 1st. I am trying to find someone who lives near me who can access an APO address, since APO to APO is free, and that will seriously cut down on shipping costs.
The captain sent out an email yesterday, detailing as much as possible the redeployment process. As far as things stand now, the earliest date for firefighters leaving is February 19th. This pretty much squashes any and all hopes for meeting Mom in New Zealand. Bummer. And whatever date we are given is also largely dependent on weather. So in other words, we still don't know anything. I do have plans, which are pretty fluid, since nothing is set in stone. Currently, my grand plan is to ship home any and all clothes and other things I want to keep but don't want to drag around NZ (before Feb 1st). This means that all but one or 2 sweatshirts, a long sleeve T-shirt, and about 4 short sleeve T-shirts will go, along with all pants but one pair of flannel PJ pants, my jeans, shorts, and climbing pants. When I get back to NZ (and here's where the APO to APO becomes crucial), I am going to try to get a second-hand backpacking backpack (my red suitcase duffel is on it's last legs), and then send home everything else I don't need for a few days traveling. This means the red bag, the gray duffel (which is currently in Christchurch), my uniform pants and boots, my turnout boots, gloves, and other firefighter stuff I brought with me, and anything else I decide I won't need in Christchurch (black sneakers, slippers, etc). Because this is likely to be several heavy boxes, it will be very expensive if I can't find someone with an APO address to ship to. Then the plan is to see how long it will take me to get a flight home, and stay for either however long that is, or for 4 or 5 days, whichever is less. I plan to find a beach to bake myself on, with an ocean to swim in, do some shopping, and some site-seeing, but not to much to save money. Then head home. I hear that Raytheon will allow us to stay up to a week in any of the cities on the way home (ie, Aukland, LA, etc) without increasing the price of our tickets, so perhaps a week in LA is in order, depending on how much it would cost. That part is up in the air.
Today is my cleaning day. Laundry is finishing, I cleaned out my water bottles (the water bottle smelled funky, and the one I used for Gatorade was actually moldy!) and my hot cocoa mug, and organized under my bed, again.
It seems that regardless of how much I sleep, I'm always tired. Today seems to be a day of random facial muscle ticks and twitches. I don't think they are noticeable to anyone but me, but it is annoying. Maybe I just need more water.
On Thursday they were talking about off-continent communication outages, and yet the internet was blazing fast, and the phone conversations I had were clear as a bell, with no breaking up or dropping the call. Yesterday and today, the internet is crawling slow (again, back to normal), and the phone is back to dropping calls (what is this, a cell phone service?), and yesterday the internet was so slow, it was dropping IM, which can usually handle pretty slow service. Oh well, at least I got to download a bunch of my back-logged podcasts (usually it takes about a week to download one podcast that is around 5-7MB, counting stoppage time for when the bandwidth is too slow to support downloading, or when I have to shut down the computer.). It's a harsh continent, eh?
It was supposed to snow all weekend, and it hasn't been doing much. A bit yesterday, a lot Thursday night, and a few random flakes today. I was hoping for a white Christmas....I still am, but the prospect seems to be disappearing.
Only in Antarctica will you see a person sit down at a rather public computer kiosk with a can of beer.
Supposedly we are getting more mail tonight, probably in the LC-130 Northern rotator. I think they are trying to get everyone their mail before Christmas. We'll see if it happens....no bad weather yet, but the skies look pretty heavy.
As far as I know the next 2 shift I am in town. Tuesday should be a light day, since the whole town has off, and they are having shift change for Monday and Tuesday at 11am, since it's the holiday. I say "should be" a light day, but there are those LT's who feel that we get enough time off working a 24 on/24 off schedule, so every day is a work and drill day. We'll see what happens. With the dept Christmas party on Tuesday, I'm thinking the whole work/drill thing might go out the window, but you never know. Thursday and I think Saturday I am down at Station 2. The schedule isn't worked out farther than that.
Today I have been here 11 weeks. With the schedule listed for redeployment, I have another 8.5 (or so) weeks here. Not bad when you think about it. It seems like just last week I had only been here 8 weeks. I am going to be sad to leave, but happy as well. And I will definately come back at some point in time. Probably not in the near future, but at some point.
It is below freezing today for the first time in about 2 weeks. Weather is supposed to get better tomorrow, with temps up near 40F. Things look so different than they did when I first got here...I look back at pictures I took in my first days and the cliffs above town are covered in snow. Now they are mostly bare rock, with a few mini-glaciers clinging on in the shadowed areas. The rapids of water in the trenches by the roads have mostly calmed down to mere trickles, and the roads themselves are more dust bowl than water bowl at this point. Very soon some of the trucks will be converted to water tankers and will be sprinkling water on the roads to tame the dust. I have no idea what the weather in February will be like, but I think it will be back down in the 20's or lower by then, with more snow storms. One good thing about staying later is that I will be able to see the sunset for the first time before I leave. The next sunset is on February 20th. How neat that will be.
I am reading books on the early Antarctic explorers like Scott and Shackelton, and continue to be amazed at their toughness and ingenuity. Here we are in modern fabric windpants and huge down-filled parkas and rubber insulated boots, and they did so much more than we do on a daily basis with so much less. They wore wool and fur, ate cold food in tents that leaked snow and froze on the inside from condensation inside, slept in puddles as their clothes melted and re-froze, and woke up in the morning to put on clothes that were frozen solid and stiff as boards just to haul 200 lb sledges across land and snow, where they had no idea if they were over a crevass or solid ground. I look around and know my way around because I can see the cliffs and hills and landmarks, but once they got beyond the mountains, there was nothing but a white flat plain, with nothing to tell them which direction they were heading in. They spent days in the same tent, snowed in by blizzards where walking more than a few feet from the tent meant you were lost. It's just totally amazing to me.
The fire dept chili was the best, and I'm not being biased here either. The public kept coming around, and we ran out, with just enough to give to the judges. The chili was very meaty, and had a good mix of onions and peppers, with a nice spice that snuck up on you as you continued to eat it. I think we had the best mill van decorations too.
The Heavy Shop's chili was pretty good too, nice and meaty, but not as subtle on the spices as the firehouse chili. 
I didn't hang around for a lot of the bands, but one of the dispatcher's husband is in a bluegrass band down here, called Phat-ass Bluegrass. They were really good. 
The band that was up when I first got there was pretty bad. I heard some of the other ones later on, and they seemed a bit better, but I wasn't interested in staying out in the cold to watch.
At 3pm, I went over to one of the Air National Guard dorms. They have 2 dorms to themselves, that they have every year. You can't get in there without an invitation, and they even have locks on their lounge doors (though after seeing the entertainment system they've set up in there, I don't blame them). They had the fire dept over for burgers and dogs, flown in fresh from NZ the day before and cooked on real charcoal. Oh my was it good. There was also cheese and crackers, fresh onions, tomatos and pickles for the burgers, mini quiches, shrimp cocktail, and hot wings with real blue cheese dressing. So tasty. I hung out with them and watched the football game, and then headed over to my room, where I realized that the chili and hot wings were making me quite uncomfortable. 
