birdie dreams.

here's a photo of my cockatiel, boba fett, who lives with my friends christy and eli in a very brady bunch-esque yellow house with shag carpeting in bellingham, washington.

boba fett is almost ten years old. she was hatched in escondido, california in january 1997; I bought her eight weeks later. her favorite foods are cheese, boiled soybeans, scrambled eggs, millet spray, french fries, cherry tomatoes, organic kale, steamed broccoli, and a whole lot of other things. basically, she'll eat anything that she sees her mommy eating, whether it's good for her or not.

christy and eli have six birds of their own. all the birds, including boba, live in one room of their six-bedroom house. the room looks out onto the massive organic garden (pictured at left), the yard, the schoolbus that one of their tenants lives in, and the shed that's larger than their last house in seattle. when the weather is nice, the birds go outside (in their cages) for sunshine and fresh air. they eat organic produce all day and listen to eli play the piano and guitar. they fly around their room until it's time to go to bed at night, when christy covers their cages with cozy blankets and says soothing birdie things to them. when they're dusty, they go in the shower with eli.

in a future life, I would like to come back as one of christy and eli's birds.

moving back to the ice...
here's a photo of the 'chaladies,' which is what we girls who work in the Chalet like to call ourselves when we're feeling sassy.

the one on the left, who looks like she combed her hair with a rock, is me. then, L - R:

tami, who supports the NSF side of things. she works with the NSF personnel who deploy to the ice, baby-sits DVs (distinguished visitors), such as congressmen and -women and high-ranking military personnel, and is in charge of training volunteers to be historic hut guides. in her real life, she's a high-school social studies teacher. snacks almost as much as I do.

myrna, our pax coordinator. she makes sure that grantees have their post-ice travel plans all straightened out, which is no mean feat when you realize that many grantees are off like a shot to field camps as soon as they arrive at mcmurdo. myrna was a 'kennedy kid,' serving in the peace corps in chile way back in the early '60s. in fact, she was in chile when kennedy was shot. one of her many brilliant ideas involves developing and marketing a device that will prevent scorpions from crawling into beds. (she lives in arizona.)

christina, our admin assistant and first line of defense. among other things, she answers phones, greets visitors, keeps the chalet stocked and organized, and compiles the biweekly all-hands meeting presentation. christina works out more than any human being I've ever met. she also lived in japan for a while and taught english, so we have that in common. when I teach her how to do something particularly satisfying, such as importing something from Access into Excel, she likes to jump up and hug me.

dawn, the senior chalet admin from last summer season, who also wintered over. I arrived in late august and had five weeks of turnover with dawn, who then left on 10 october. for the past ten or so years, she has spent the austral summers here and worked as a tour guide in denali national park in alaska during the off-season. knits like a fiend.

I'm too tired to have an actual plot to my blog entry tonight, so here's another random photo. this one is of me and my friend amber, halfway up ob hill. as the days get longer and longer, night isn't really so dark because the sun sits just below the horizon. when it's clear out, the sunsets are spectacular. on this particular evening, mt. erebus was looking especially fabu-rous.

I've been spending too much time at work. last night I dreamt I was describing my job at the chalet to a FNG.

the night before that, I dreamed about the station org chart, which I've been working on every day for weeks.

when you've spent a whole week staring at org charts, conducting arrival briefs, updating phone lists, laying down pre-season expectations for your team, and doling out office spaces to visiting denver personnel, you sometimes need an opportunity to get out, blow off some steam, and shake shake shake your booty. if a venue is presented to you in the form of a party at the station's non-smoking bar, fantastic. if the music to which you plan to shake your booty in this venue happens to be from the 1970s (think The O'Jays, Average White Band, Isaac Hayes, and the Village People), even better. and if you happen to procure a really loud muumuu, platform sandals, and a wig made from orange feathers in which to make your appearance at said party, well...it just doesn't get any better than that.

disco love,
XO cindy