polar happiness

Greetings from the south pole of the world!
we made it in on a herc on monday the 2nd, it was fun to spend halloween in mc murdo! we were given tuesday off because there have been a large number of medivacs due to altitude sickness. it was -86 the other day and the altitude was up to 11,000 ft- quite difficult to acclimate to after being at sea-level in mc murdo for a month! my computer also had a difficult time acclimating and the hard drive died the other day- i mailed myself an external hard drive here and i hope that the IT folks can retrieve my info and back it up so that one day i can have a working machine again! there have been many hard drive failures this season so far... it's a harsh continent! i will be unable to post photos until i can get my machine up and running, but you can certainly reference the photos of last years blogs! our satellite uplink is only active from 7:30 am to 2:30 pm, which makes things difficult more me because that's when i'm working! so, i will endeavor to write here every sunday! i am so happy to be back, there's an 80% return rate due to the crappy economy, it's like summer camp all over again!! i love my new position, i am driving loaders and moving materials all over the station, lots of food so far, but this will change as the season progresses. one of the major missions this season is to empty and dismantle the dome, which is the symbol of the south pole, but it's been up for over 50 years and it's becoming dangerous, it will be sad to see it go, but it's progress i suppose. today is my 1st shift at the post office, i am beyond excited about it, i am going to take all the stamps from the philatelic (stamp collectors) mail and make a collage for the post office, a perfect summer project to keep me out of trouble! well, i'm off to eat brunch and enjoy this 1 day off! hope you are all enjoying a lovely autumn day wherever you may be! take care, karengrace*