Happy New Years!!!

Well, it is now 2008. Happy New Year to everyone out there!

I had to work New Years Eve, and we rang in 2008 by trying to wake up 2 of the guys on shift, one by banging a pot and spoon in his face (he was already awake, since he had to cover mid-rats for the dispatcher), and the other guy we tried to wake up by dropping a mattress on him...but he was too light a sleeper and woke up.

Other than that, our New Years Eve was quiet. Yesterday, our New Years Day (your NYE), we celebrated several of the different time zones in the US with champagne and wine toasts. There was a party, but I was tired from going to bed late and getting up early for a couple days, so I stayed away, and hung out in the firehouse talking with the dispatcher. She wanted to snag some pictures from me anyway, so I had to drop off my hard drive. I ended up hanging out with A-shift in the kitchen, where they were deep-frying anything they could. Mini burritos, tortilla shells, an English muffin, even a cookie got deep-fried. By the time I got back to my room, I reeked of grease and oil.

However, I did also get packages yesterday. A Christmas card from Anna and Art, and a package with a T-shirt and hot chocolate from Mom, and one with some flannel pants and t-shirts and COOKIES from Nana and Papa. As one of the A-shift Lt's said, grandma cookies are best. And because they got here so fast, they are still pretty fresh. And yummy.

I'm about to send out a package of clothes I'm not wearing and some other stuff. It should be the largest load I'm sending home, and there will be another one shortly. I'm hoping that the second one will be the last, with the rest of the stuff I'm sending home. That'll be sent out later in January, probably sometime in the last week.

My roommate doesn't leave for the Pole until January 14th now, which means she won't be back till the second week of February. So basically, I'll have my own room until about a week before I leave. Not a bad deal, actually.

It's funny. Now that the holidays are over, EVERYONE is talking about when they're going to leave, and what they're going to do and where they're going once they get out of here. Even the people who come back year after year are doing it. My Lt (who's been down here on and off for the past 10 years) says that around now, all the conversation you hear will be people speculating about when they're leaving. In about a week or so they'll start redeployment meetings, where they tell us all we need to know about getting back to the real world and going home. We'll pick the hotels we want to stay at the first night back, and learn how to deal with the travel office to schedule our days home. Supposedly you can make Fiji a stop-over point, and stay up to a week for free. Maybe I'll stay a day...I don't know.....There's so many choices. I think a lot depends on what my actual date of departure here.

The more I think about leaving, the more excited I get. But I also feel sad. This place has truly taken a piece of me and held it here. It will be nice to see color and vegetation again. And to be able to smell things other than humans and diesel fumes. But I will miss the sheer expanses of nothing but white, and the blue and green ice, the snow, the white and purple striated mountains. The way the new snow is so light and fluffy and fills all the spaces in the rocks on the hills, accenting the black and brown rocks. Waking up in the morning and seeing snow falling. Walking down towards town, and seeing the Royal Society Mountains across the ice, and how the sun highlights the glaciers and the striations of rock and ice on the peaks. Walking out of Station 2 and seeing Mt Erebus and Mt Terra Nova and Mt Terror, looking like they are a days walk away, when it's really a several hour helicopter ride. The plumes coming out of Erebus, being changed by the upper level winds. I love standing near the runway at Williams Field and looking out, and all there is to see is flags, and then nothing but snow, all the way to the islands to the south. It's amazing to be able to walk up to a wild animal, and all it does it look at you, and then lay it's head down and go back to sleep. Or to have an completely wild animal walk right up to you and look you in the eye, and it has absolutely NO fear of humans.

It is beautiful here, in a cold and distant way. Whoever knew there were so many shades of white? You can look out across the Ross Ice Shelf and on a clear day, as far as your eye can see is nothing but sparkling ice. And I'll miss that beauty when I leave it.