05 Monday Apr 2010
Posted in Antarctic Life
Tags
2010, Antarctica, crew, group, MacTown, McMurdo, supply, winter, winterover, work
This is the pre-crustified McMurdo Supply department for Winter 2010. It’d be cool if we could take another one circa August for comparison.
All of the McMurdo Supply Crew for Winter 2010.
A red-tinted black and white version.
19 Thursday Nov 2009
Posted in Antarctic Life
Tags
Antarctica, Cat loader, Etch-a-Sketch, Ice Runway, Jeckle, LC-130, MacTown, McMurdo, planes, snow, storms, Toilets, work
There’s nothing really to write about. I just didn’t want you, my devoted audience, to think I’d fallen off the end of the earth. Close. We were working outside in a pretty good windstorm, and I almost got blown away.
But I’m still here.
We’ve been doing outdoor/loader work the last couple of shifts, which makes me very happy. I’ve put more than 11 hours on the hour meter in Jeckle over the last three days.
Joe cleaning the windshield of my loader for me.
We got a pretty good storm last week/weekend – dumped a ton of snow on us. There’s been a fair amount of shoveling away snow drifts this week as a result.
Ob Hill disappearing in the storm, as seen from my dorm steps.
I’m signed up to go on a Delta trip this coming Saturday to go out to Cape Evans and into the ice caves. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather cooperates, and that we see penguins…
We went out to the Ice Runway on Monday, just to watch some planes take off and do something besides watch movies. We had a lot of fun playing in the snow.
And while we were out there, a couple plumbers were replacing toilets in the bathrooms or something, and they pulled the old toilets out by their truck to haul back to town. We couldn’t resist the photo op:
Ned and Sharon, multitasking.
Ian and Tyler.
Ian the Philosopher.
Random “As Seen Around MacTown” update, you ask? My pleasure. MAPCON, our inventory software, has these little “inspirational messages” or whatever on the home page when you log in. This one made me laugh:
The people in Central Supply have a series of three Etch-A-Sketches that they like to draw various pictures on (they change pretty frequently). I think this is Erubus erupting:
And I’m out. Seriously, NOTHING good to write about. Hope your lives are more exciting than mine right now. Peace. -Ceds
30 Friday Oct 2009
Posted in Antarctic Life
I always love spotting new signs, messages, labels, or what-have-you around town. There are a number of good ones. Most of them are necessary – crates labeled, signs put up around the galley, etc – to inform people what’s going on. But the people that are put in charge of making such signs know that they have to do something a little extra to get people to notice the signs and actually get the message.
Last night we were working in one of the buildings that’s VMF overflow supply, and of course there are no restrooms there. So when – midway through slogging through a giant shelf of gaskets that we’re relocating – I had to go to the restroom, I headed over to the VMF to use their facilities. As I was washing my hands, I glanced over to the right and saw a printout of this gem hanging on the wall:
Watch out for those poopoo germs!
If you have to remind people to wash their hands, you might as well have fun with it. Similarly, labels on various boxes can take humorous forms:
Funny, because when I saw the “fork other side” I immediately wondered if you were supposed to spoon this side… and then there it was! Somebody after my own heart had obviously worked on this crate.
I’ve also been finding some funny notes in random places during my “warehouse optimization” relocation tasks. I love this one, just because it was stuck to a box with 1/4″ of dust on it – probably a good decade of accumulation – but it still resonates today(Wednesday is “Cookie Day” [as well as "Mexican Day" - go figure] in the Galley):
I’ve been seeing some really pretty sunrises (or pseudo-sunrises, since I don’t think the sun is officially setting anymore; I think it’s just dipping behind Mt. Discovery) – definitely one of the perks of working the night shift. This reflection coming into Building 140 (my base of operations) was pretty cool, with the flag whipping around in the wind and changing what you could see of the sun:
Well, that’s it for now – need to get back to work. Send me some mail, would you people? I need something to anticipate.
Love, Ceds
