ice fishing, seal poop and christmas carols.

sorry I haven't posted in a while! I have no excuses -- not good ones, anyway.

hmmmm. update by the numbers:

1. I've somehow suckered myself into accompanying the christmas choir. every year, someone with directorial aspiration puts a choir together to sing carols at the town christmas party (held in the heavy-equipment shop at the vehicle maintenance facility, the only venue on station large enough to hold 1000+ people), as well as caroling outside scott base and singing over the radio to the south pole station and the ships at sea. I showed up at rehearsals last thursday hoping to merely lend my dulcet tones to the tenor section, ha ha ha. however, a few minutes into rehearsal, it became apparent that the accompanist, who could read chord progressions and riff on them beautifully, could not read a single note of sheet music....and therefore could not rehearse singing parts. the director then tried to direct and play parts at the same time, which was just too painful to watch, so...I offered to help out. and of course this turned into my somehow agreeing to be the accompanist for every rehearsal and performance between now and the 25th. boundaries, cindy, boundaries.

2. ran over my first victim last week. a co-worker and I were outside on the low line (the 'hitching post' area where the terra bus, the airporter buses, and the extra vans are plugged in to keep the engines warm overnight). we were scheduled to take two airporters to pick up several passengers and take them out to the runway, and we were checking their fluids, warming them up, and so forth. he forgot something in the office and ran back inside to get it, leaving his extreme-cold-weather gear and stainless-steel travel mug on the ground. my airporter was warmed up and ready to go, so I got in, threw it into reverse, and rolled backward. I felt a faint bump and thought, hmmm...that ain't right. I got out and looked. I had just rolled over the bag and the mug, leaving a big brown tire track on the orange bag and completely flattening the mug. there was hot peppermint tea steaming up from the cold ground and the bag looked really dejected. I apologized profusely to mike and bought him a new mug on my lunch break. luckily I hadn't broken anything in his ECW bag except a granola bar. mike now likes to say that his cup got runneth over.

3. last tuesday, I had the opportunity to accompany a grantee on an ice-fishing trip -- my first boondoggle! jill petzel and her sister ann are field assistants for their father, who is studying the antifreeze and sodium-regulating properties in the gills of a certain species of arctic fish (which I don't really know how to spell, but it sounded something like bernacii). they regularly take volunteers along with them to help them fish at their little fish hut (see photo above), which is located on the sea ice out near cape evans and ernest shackleton's historic (and much older) hut. (for those of you who don't know, shackleton was a heroic-age british explorer who was attempting to reach the south pole, but whose ship, the Endurance, got stuck in the sea ice; he and his men walked over 700 miles, and then some of them sailed much further than that, to reach civilization...none of the men died, which sent shackleton down in history as one of the greatest leaders in the age of exploration.) I was down in the galley getting hot water for my tea and ran into my friend tim, who had gone out with the petzels a week before and was recruiting people for their next trip. tim instructed me to show up at Crary Lab at 1150 with my extreme-weather gear and a sandwich.

jill met the five of us -- two shuttle drivers and three dining assistants, all quite excited at the prospect of getting out of town -- at the lab, and we piled into a piston-bully (a box vehicle on tracks) and chugged off. we followed a flagged snow-road along the coastline, going north past castle rock and toward mt. erebus. an hour and a half later, we pulled up at a little orange hut. a few hundred feet away was an enormous seal, slumbering on the ice (also in photo above). it was making little seal snoring sounds and occasionally waving its flippers. I think it was dreaming about fish. there was a pile of seal poop too, which ben, one of the dining assistants, bravely went over to inspect. he said it didn't smell like anything, which is probably a good thing since it was pretty huge.

the fish hut was a simple wooden affair, outfitted with a heater and a couple of folding chairs and a table. it was a beautiful sunny day with no wind, and the sun was pouring through the windows, making it so warm inside that I had to take off most of my outer layers of clothing. a square hole in the floor of the hut was situated directly over a round hole drilled through the sea ice, which looked to be about six feet thick. we looked down and could see all the way to the sea floor, about twenty feet down -- and, faintly, myriad little brown fish swimming around. these were the bernacii that the petzels had come to catch.

I had expected high-tech titanium fishing poles outfitted with rifle scopes or something equally impressive, but instead we had blocks of styrofoam with fishing line wrapped around them. jill baited the hooks with bits of bernacii tail and we unwound the fishing lines, letting the weights drift the hooks down to the bottom. the fish and the sea floor were the same dirt-brown color, so it was difficult to see the fish moving around -- but when the bait disappeared, that was the signal to jerk hard on the line, and more often than not your line would come up with a little slimy fish thrashing around on the hook. being squeamish about such things, I let jill unhook the fish I'd caught and throw it into the cooler for me. I caught four. within a half hour, we'd caught eight bernacii and one other type of fish, which we threw back.

the five of us helpers we were hoping to take the 'polar plunge,' which is sort of a rite of antarctic passage -- taking off all of one's clothes and jumping into the water (which, being salty, is actually 28F -- colder than ice). word on the street was that the petzels regularly let their helpers do the plunge, making for a great photo opportunity; I had even brought a towel. but jill seemed to be in a hurry, and didn't offer, so we didn't push it. oh well. there's a capital-P Polar Plunge on new year's day, but it's considerably more well-attended and official in tone (read: no nudity).

4. my life lately has been suffused with preparations for the annual Women's Soiree, a talent show featuring dancing, spoken-word performances, singing, and lots of door prizes that benefits a breast-cancer-research charity in new zealand. today I collected money for raffle tickets at the table during lunch, and I'll also be co-MCing the event itself on saturday night. according to the old-timers, it's usually a very well-attended thing, with lots of people (men and women alike) turning out to see their friends perform. there's also a pre-event social at which wine is served, where I hope to become completely oblivious to the fact that I am soon to co-MC the event itself.

5. I start a five-week jewelry-making class tomorrow. yay.

6. Thing I've Learned In Antarctica #572: Ten percent relative humidity doesn't necessarily mean you don't get zits.

bye for now! XO c.