100th Post: Happy New Year

New Year’s Antarctic style…my third one, and I suppose there’s nothing quite like it (we missed you Kish!). Live music, warm-up shacks, giant hula hoops, Sawbucks, wigs, dust, cold, and partying until the sun goes around.

It was pretty different from the last couple, mostly because we had to work New Year’s Eve, which meant Icestock had to take place at night. Traditionally, Icestock (our annual outdoor music festival) is first thing in the morning on New Year’s Eve (or the Raytheon decided equivalent) and jump starts the day of counting down with a chili cook-off and then proceeds with band after band until six o’clock at night when everyone heads out to the various New Year’s parties. This year Icestock was the evening party and started after work ended for the day…which made for a bit of a long one but enjoyable all the same. No real chili cook-off to speak of, the cooks did a little mini one in the galley but it hardly had the same spirit to it, nor did anyone outside the kitchen really care who won. Icestock being the main party also mean that we were counting down to midnight in the great outdoors, and at this time of year in Antarctica that means broad daylight, seriously freakish bright blinding sunlight…which really feels surreal and isn’t to my liking but it was a good time so I can’t complain.

It’s also kind of tradition for the Wasties to make some sort of spectacular

entrance…one year it was a marching band, another year it was a Chinese dragon style Oscar the Grouch, this year we went with giant puppets. Out of the 9 of us in solid waste 4 of us built them. James built a skua, Quinn built a butterfly, Karen made a really cool alien creature, and I made a bluebird. They were all kind of based around old backpack frames so they could actually be worn by the person piloting them. I didn’t pilot my own because I was wearing the silver jumpsuit with demi cape that Nandi had sent Ben Morin from the South Pole. The crowd really enjoyed our mini parade and it was cool to see the puppets towering over all the people and how happy it made everyone.

I didn’t hang out too long in the jumpsuit because it was so cold I was freezing my butt off…quite literally…so after a while I changed into my real clothes and hung out on High Roller (the old Navy truck that belongs to Waste) and lounged on the couches while watching the bands. Pornspill (my boss and Katie Leum’s funk cover band) played us through zero hour and surprisingly I made it all the way until midnight, but not much beyond.

<-----Here's everyone at midnight. Can you spot me? It's very "Where's Waldo".

Much thanks are owed to the I Drive (our communal network drive) for a couple of the photos and the video.

And so concludes the holiday season, now it’s time for redeployment meetings, travel plans, and another 4-8 weeks of work…depending on who you are and how much Raytheon wants to keep you chained to the continent. Me? I'm scheduled to skip this popscicle stand February 11th.