Tags
Antarctica, birthday, Carp Shop, Christmas, Coffee House, holidays, MAAG, MacTown, McMurdo, parties, presents, Wino Thursday
Again. It’s come and gone again. It’s amazing how fast time flies. It doesn’t seem that long ago that Eli and I were just arriving for our second season on the Ice and joking about how fast it had come back around, and he made the comment, “And before you know it, we’ll be sitting around saying, ‘Wow, the third season’s already over?!’” How right he was. Not that the third season is over yet, but there are only two days of 2009 left (the first decade of the new millenium already over; man, when I was 10 I didn’t even have a concept of that kind of distant future) and redeployment meetings start next week. That’s right. In one week’s time, we are going to be handed pieces of paper asking us the date we’re shceduled to leave the Ice, what hotel we want to stay at in Christchurch, how we want our return plane tickets handled, how much time we need to travel. People are busy making plans to whisk away to Australia, Papa New Guinea, Thailand… tropical places where frostbite is completely unknown and a fresh avocado won’t start a stampede. Of course, I’m still holding out hopes that I’ll be able to stay the winter here; but as of yet I do not have a primary contract, so I will be attending the redeployment meetings with the rest of them and filling out those same forms in the semi-pretense that I too will be lying on those tropical beaches.
What a state of limbo if I’ve ever been in one.
But at least there are the Holidays to distract me! And what a holiday season it’s been… and it’s not over yet! We still have Ice Stock coming up this weekend in celebration of the New Year. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll talk about Ice Stock once it’s happened. Right now I’d like to focus on the wonderful Birthday and Christmas I celebrated here in MacTown.
The Holidays are pretty funny in MacTown. The place still looks like a muddy mining station, but a few decorations pop up around town. I think there’s a Grinch somewhere and some various other wood cut-out figures. Inside the buildings it’s even funnier. A lot of the decorations have been around for a while – it’s not like we can run to the nearest Target and refresh the stock – and are a little run down. We WOPRs took over the responsibility of decorating Central Supply… and it sort of looks like Rudolph puked on it. I mean it’s not terrible, but there’s an awful lot of old tinsely things hanging from the ceiling. Jim, our team lead, put out these two figurine things that sing poor-quality Christmas carols, and he delights in playing them at the same time. What a cacophony. At least we don’t spend much time in the office as we’re out playing with propane torches on heavy-duty shrink wrap (on a side note, I singed the ends of my braids; I really need to get my hair trimmed).
Every department (or at least most) does their own little holiday celebration, usually reserving some big space that it can be held in. Supply reserved Hut 10 for the Wednesday night before Christmas, and they went all out. There was all kinds of food made from ingredients sent down especially for the event. There were lemon tartlets (I baked the shells for them!), california rolls, summer sausage… delicious. I went down to help them cook, which means I only managed about 3.5 hours of sleep that day. Our boss donated three days off as “door prizes,” so we had some games to determine the three lucky winners. Alas, I was not one of them…
The next day, Thursday, was of course Wino Thursday – as it is every week. But it wasn’t just any Wino Thursday. It was MY BIRTHDAY!!! It was pretty freaking awesome. Marty was tending the Coffee House that day, and he decorated the whole place with streamers and balloons. Sharon and Will made me a Wino Thursday t-shirt: they turned a “Race for the Cure” shirt inside out and stenciled “Wino Thursday” on with something that strongly resembles spilt wine, and then drew Olympic rings on it. It’s pretty much totally BAMF. PMFTA. There were an assortment of other wonderful gifts: Will gave me a chocolate chip glitter cookie (literally, a cookie in an envelope full of glitter); Cameron gave me a beer-goggle straw, a tube of glow sticks, a glow sword, and mardi gras beads; Nancy gave me a handmade snowflake; Zak gave me a wine glass, organic chocolate, and a bowl of fresh strawberries; Bama gave me a fresh avocado; and Ned – who came strutting into the Coffee House wearing a santa hat tilted cockily into his eyes and a red, velour zip-up sweater, zipped down to about his belly button and “I <3 Cedar" written on his chest in permament red marker – gave me multi-vitamins, a log of dry-as-sawdust Copenhagen chew, Listerine, a packet of Pop Rocks, and a condom. It was AMAZING. There were also leis and birthday hats for everyone to wear. Best birthday I've had in ages.
This was the outfit Ned wore to Wino Thursday to deliver my birthday presents. Priceless.
After I got a little sleep (3 whole hours), it was time to wake up, get all dressed up, and roll to the station holiday party at the VMF. There was real egg nog (yum!), caroling, pictures with Santa, swing dancing, and all sorts of merriment. Good times.
Sharon & I all dressed up for the station holiday party at the VMF.
The next morning (the end of my night), Rebecca invited no less than 22 people over to her tiny dorm room to open presents. She gave me a beautiful purple scarf. One can never have too many scarves…
My pretty new scarf, even if it's not the prettiest picture of me.
I managed to get a little more sleep (5 hours) and then I got all dressed up again to go to the 7:00 p.m. Christmas dinner in order to share in some holiday festing with my day shift friends. After that first dinner, it was the annual MAAG up at the Carp Shop. (MAAG = McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery.) It seemed like there were altogether fewer exhibits than last year, but there was a lot of interactive stuff which made it really fun. There was a camera obscura upstairs, and you could see little light people walking around on the ceiling. There was a giant see-saw and a Newton's cradle made out of bowling balls outside.
Boys will be boys.
I was having such a good time at MAAG that once I finally looked at a clock it was 5 minutes to midnight and the MidRat holiday meal! I had to run down the hill, strip off the warm clothes I'd put on for MAAG, throw my pretty dress and heels back on, and run over to dinner. I was doing really good crossing the gravel in my heels until somebody yelled at me and I looked to see who it was. Fell on my very next step. A little scraping and bruising, nothing I'm not used to. Dinner was wonderful: lobster tail, prime rib, french onion soup, eggplant "caviar"… le delicious.
We had a relaxing night of movie watching afterward – I'll admit I passed out for "The Graduate," but I caught "Wrist Cutters." It's dark and funny; I recommend it. I meant to get a good "night's" sleep (during the day, of course, as I'm a Day Sleeper), but there was so much merriment… my roommate and I ended up having an "after party" in our room until late in the afternoon. So I only got 3 hours of sleep, giving me a grand total of 14 hours over the course of 4 days. Ouch. Needless to say, I've spent the past few post-Christmas days trying to recover my sleep schedule. I think I'll be back to normal just in time for New Years and Ice Stock…
Here’s a small gallery of pictures in an attempt to highlight some of the special moments of the Hurricane of Holiday-ness I have just described. More pictures can always be found on my Flickr page.
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- This was the outfit Ned wore to Wino Thursday to deliver my birthday presents. Priceless.
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- Rebecca modeling the beer-goggle straw that Cameron gave me.
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- The envelope my glitter cookie came in, addressed to Cypress.
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- The array of gifts from Santa-Ned.
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- Rainbow decorations, birthday hats, and leis!
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- My fresh avocado from Bama, and my glow sword from Cameron.
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- Sharon wasn’t happy about what Ned had written on his chest…
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- Sharon & I all dressed up for the station holiday party at the VMF.
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- Squeezing into Rebecca’s room to open presents Christmas morning.
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- My pretty new scarf, even if it’s not the prettiest picture of me.
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- Boys will be boys.
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- Mine & Sharon’s blue latex-paint conceptual watches from MAAG.
That's it for now. Check back next week for updates on Ice Stock!
Happy New Year, all my wonderful people.
Ceds
