Snow!!!

Well, it has finally stopped snowing. It snowed for about 3 days, on and off, with the heaviest snow coming yesterday. I'd say that all told yesterday we got about a foot, but it's hard to tell, what with all the wind blowing the snow and making drifts and such. I can say that at times yesterday when we were doing inspections, I was climbing through drifts that were up to my knees. The snow was a heavy wet snow too, which is unusual for down here, where it's usually a lot drier. However, the deep heavy snow did allow me to do something I've been wanting to do since I landed here...make a snow angel. Which I did at about 1am this morning after coming back from watching a herd of penguins by the Ice Pier and a skua try to eat someone's boot.



Here's some of the penguins. There were about 30 of them below the road to the sea ice, near the Ice Pier.

The skua decided that a group of humans must mean that there is food around, so he stuck around us. Then he decided that one of the humans was wearing food, and started eyeing up a boot. He munched on the shoelaces a bit, then decided that the upper body looked more appetizing, which is when the human moved, rather quickly. (For the record, it wasn't me who was being chewed on by a giant seagull bird.) And for those of you wondering how big a skua really is, I took a picture of him next to a traffic cone.



It was snowing pretty good when we were out, but it was also really windy. I almost got blown over a couple of times. Here is Hut Point in snow.

We went back and I uploaded pictures to the computer, and then went to bed. I slept on the couch last night cause the bunkroom was about 80F, and it was cooler downstairs. Still didn't sleep great, but at least I wasn't baking.

I went to a meeting this morning to learn about being a line handler for the ships coming in. Unfortunately, the first 3 projected arrival dates happen on days I'm working. There is talk of allowing on-duty firefighters to be line handlers, but the ice breaker is supposed to be here Monday, and I'm at Station 2 on Monday. So much for getting nifty video of the ship coming in, huh? Though, they were supposed to be here today, and the captain wants to stay out breaking up ice longer, so I guess he could postpone it another day. I'm kind of hoping he does. I've noticed that around here, whenever there is extra duty to be done, and there aren't enough volunteers, they come to the fire dept. We're like the jack-of-all-trades backstop for anything that needs doing. Need something shoveled, and Fleet Ops is busy? Call the FD. Need help unloaded cargo for the galley? Call the fire dept. Not enough people to do line handling? The fire dept will help out. I'm not complaining though. It's fun, and you do get to meet different people and do different things.

Other than that, not much going on. A lot of people are starting to hit the 'wall' as it were, and are ready to go home. I'm finding myself occasionally in the same position, but in general I'm still having a good time. I might get to do some fun things, and I'm trading a FD shirt for a AF shirt and patches, so things aren't that bad. I have some vague hope that I might get out earlier than planned (like the 10th or so), and that mom can meet me in NZ, but the chances of that are very slim, so I'm just chilling.