Nightshift

It is official: I have become a boring person. All I do with my life is watch movies on the TV in the middle of the night. Sometimes I do Rosetta Stone Spanish too. Either way it is not an interesting thing to tell stories about. Someday I will stop being a nightshift worker and see other people again. That time is not now.

Millions of condoms

They ship millions of condoms to Antarctica. I am discovering why very slowly, but as the season drags on I learn more and more little secrets about people sneaking off and doing it. I think half the firehouse has mated with the other half. I hope this ends up producing a firehouse baby, which will be large, boisterous, and hopefully not slapping anybody in the nuts.

Now that no one reads this anymore

I am thinking about staying here for the winter. Is that crazy? It's a little crazy. Perhaps I will change my mind. Perhaps no one will hire me for the winter. But! This Antarctic lifestyle is growing on me. It's growing so familiar. I chain smoke. I drink vodka. I see the same people in the dining hall. Other people cook all my meals.  I hang out with Kirk the Destroyer and he tells me about the stripper he dated when he was 15.

There's something appealing about staying here for the 24 hours a day of darkness. There are only 200 people on the base, stuck in a building in the coldest winter in the world. Why don't they kill each other? Do they start to run around naked in the snow? Do the men steal the women from each other, and does the community scratch out someone's eyes ritually every month? I want to feel what it's like to be insane.

Then again, this may be the worst idea I have ever had and I may not go through with it. In which case, backpacking New Zealand here I come!..in March.

There is something wrong with my body

Hopefully it's not serious. But I went to bed last night at 7 PM and I got up today at 11 AM for lunch. And then I went back to bed. Until 4 PM. When I had to get up for tour guide training. I tried to drink a lot of coffee at dinner but I went home and started watching a movie with Jennifer Aniston in it and I couldn't summon enough strength to find something else that didn't suck. 

Bed again soon. 

gah

When you don't sleep are you always plagued by the sensation that you are acting really strange? Like, I'm not sure if I actually act strange, but I keep feeling like everyone must be saying to themselves, what's up with Alisa? She's all standoffish and weird. Her eyes are all puffy. I think she hates me. I hate her. Something like that.

I need to sleep more I think.

Very well, thanks, and you?

Things are well in Antarctica! I have started studying for the LSATs and have already been called a weenie once! This is great. I have learned to play cribbage (poorly) and am proud. Soon I will have a radio show! No one will listen to it. It will be much like this blog.

Penguins

are adorable.

Things I do

This is the story of how I accidentally took a sleeping pill at work.

So, here I am at work yesterday, as emergency dispatch. I am tired and have a sore throat. I think to myself, self, there is some aspirin and such in the drawer there, maybe there is some kind of cough drop. So I am rooting around looking for a cough drop, and find a bottle of chewable peppermint pills. This sounds good, I think to myself, chewable, perhaps soothing, I like peppermint. I have eaten a pill and am examining the bottle when two things happen at once. One, I realize that the bottle says to take these as a sleep aid, only at bedtime. Two, the phone rings with an emergency call. I then take two emergency calls at once.

I love my life sometimes.

Election day

Yesterday, a run down

I'm not really allowed to watch TV at work, so I turned it on silent and watched the map. And then Obama won and then I cried. I was crying for half an hour. And these firefighters kept stomping in and out of dispatch with their redstate unhappy and I was just crying because I could see all the people in Grant Park on CNN and they were ecstatic. People were ecstatic over this man--and it's not really about Obama, he's a symbol (what can it be like to be a symbol rather than a person?) but for so many its a symbol of something so sweet and powerful, people coming together, the United States as a citizen of the world, hands grasping of different colors.

Afterwards I sat around with a couple Obamanerds and drank vodka from a Nalgene. Because I am classy.

Time off

Antarctica: day off number two of three for the week. Here in Antarctica, everyone is supposed to work a 60 hour work week. This is because Raytheon is bitches (see: bombs). Also, they pay a lot of money to ship us to this continent and feed us and all. Also, I am pretty sure they want us to be working at much as possible so that we won't drink ourselves to death.

However, among everyone at this entire station I think that I have literally the most time off. Well, myself and the three other ladies who work dispatch in the firehouse. I have three days off per week. You are probably thinking to yourself, Sweet! Three day weekends! I could use that at my thankless 9-5! No, except I live on a base in Antarctica. There is nothing to do.

Catalog of a day off in Antarctica
1. Breakfast. This can take half an hour if you drink tea.
2. Wander around some buildings
3. Sit in smoker's lounge with grizzled 60 year old mechanics. Chain smoke and watch Fox News.
4. Laundry. If you are lucky this can take half an hour too.
5. Wish I had some scissors so I could cut up some construction paper.
6. Buy a bottle of wine
7. Lunch. Today I spent two hours at lunch.
8. Wander around some buildings
9. Teach myself the guitar. I have learned all the major chords. Soon I can play California Dreaming.
10. Read
11. Fall asleep reading
12. Wake up and read
13. Yoga
14. Wish the bars were open on Mondays

I need to take up exercise or something. Something really time consuming. Am considering finding a mate.

I am going to write in this more for all my readers

So, I spend a lot of time on the computer at work, and I used to have a lot of email, but now that the election is almost over I don't have that much email so I can write stupid stuff in this blog! Though, this is a public venue so if you want all the juicy drama drama you'll have to write me an email. Haha, I have no juicy drama.

If you've been reading this regularly, which you haven't, but whatever, it may sound like all I do here is go to parties. No. I also go to bars. Tonight is a Halloween party though, which according to Antarctic mythology is one's LAST CHANCE to find a mate for the season. This may be true, since everyone I know has already made out with everyone I know several times. However, I think it is not true, because I am a lady, and I am pretty sure that if you are a lady in Antarctica you can find a mate any time that you choose, should any person come up that one would want to start this kind of relationship with, which seems a little bit unlikely.

Hmm. I feel like I ought to have more Antarctican things to talk about, but all I really do all day these days is read NYT/FiveThirtyEight/Wonkette and even HuffPo (I have a guilty love for HuffPo). CAN WE JUST HAVE AN ELECTION ALREADY? please?

Halloween at McMurdo

It is Halloween in Antarctica, in all technicality, since it is Oct. 31. However, in Antarctica, all holidays fall on Saturday. It does not matter if the holiday actually took place on Tuesday. We do not celebrate until Saturday. This is because we have only one day off per week and it is Sunday. Therefore, everyone today is plotting about their tomorrow costumes (and maybe going to the haunted house that the waste barn people built). I am coughing a lot because yesterday I decided it was a good idea to smoke a billion cigarettes. This was mistaken. Unfortunately, my mind seems to think that every time I have a drink. I cough a lot.

This is fun you know this is fun

You can reach me at work any of the following days between 11 AM-11 PM California time: Nov. 4-6, 10-12, 16-18, 22-24, 28-30. I am usually at lunch from 3-4 PM your time and dinner from 9-10 PM. If there is something important happening at work I may have to hang up on you/put you on hold. This happens rarely.

Also, if you want to send me a text message to my pager (always keeping in mind that I am on New Zealand time) you can send an email to 642@pg.mcmurdo.usap.gov.

So much fun!

I suck at updates

I really suck. Well, I spend two hours a day almost on the computer answering my email, so then I want to go do something rather than write in a blog. Like right now. I'm off to go dancing, later kids.

in new news

Coming soon: call Alisa at work! I am dispatch, so I receive all the incoming calls from the states, and they have some number you can call that is a Denver area code that rings in my office. This number I will give to you, and you can call me in Antarctica for the price of Denver.

Off to yoga in the chapel! Antarctica is surprisingly like Burning Man sometimes.

Strange sociological experiment

I wish some sociologist would come down here and study the communities of people living and working on the bases in Antarctica. It would be hilarious.

Anyway, I went to a big party last night? The bars in Antarctica are exactly like the bars anywhere else, except they're open all hours, you always have to come outside to blinding light, and people will hit on you even if you're wearing no makeup and a flannel shirt. This is the pickup line I got from a guy on kitchen staff last night: "Hey, my friend over there wants to know: what is your favorite flavor of jello? Because we'll make it."  This is day two. I imagine these lines only get better.

In other news, I went to Scott's hut today, which was build by Capt. Scott's expedition crew in 1902. You can still see the cans of cocoa sitting on the shelves in there, and there is a carved up sea lion that looks like its been petrified just outside the hut. 

I also went to the scientific lecture today--they spoke about one of the research projects going on here. They are doing seismic research on Antarctica's sediment, trying to look at the last time the earth's temperature rose dramatically. Did you know Antarctica used to have forests? Yes sir, and it could happen again at this rate.

Also today I was hazed by the firehouse--they tied several of us newbies up with rope and wouldn't let us leave until we untied ourselves. Got to love the firehouse. Day two of training tomorrow.

love from the south,

alisa

Antarctica

I am in Antarctica. I have slept very little. Tonight we have a big party at the bar with a DJ? WTF?

New Zealand

My room in New Zealand has five different light settings. I can live in a "Passionate Red" room or a "Cool Green" room or right now I have opted for purple. This is literally the coolest thing that has happened since I last wrote a blog post. 

Spent the last 36 hours in transit--all of our flights were delayed. We were delayed long enough in Sydney that we got to take pictures of ourselves in front of the opera house, so now I can brag about how I've been to Australia. Clearly.

Today we are issued our gear for heading down there, and I think I am buying some duty-free whiskey.

Forward! Flight to Antarctica possibly tomorrow

Training

Today we had an all day training that started at the unnecessarily ungodly hour of 7 AM. 

We watched videos from the 80s about how harassment is bad and I giggled/slept. Everyone had bad haircuts, and gossiped all the time at work. I hope our real workplace is like that.

Our first Raytheon presenter was an old Navy man who spent the first ten minutes reading his resume in detail. Seriously who does that.

On our lunch break everyone was clearly sizing each other up, in that new crowd of people way. I have already figured out that in Antarctican circles, the more badass you are, the more popular. I sat down next to a guy and the first thing he asked me was, "Do you have any tatoos?" I am trying to hide how lame I actually am from these people for as long as possible. I may need to covertly get a tattoo in New Zealand. Which p.s. leaving for there tomorrow!

Leaving in two days

My flight to New Zealand is in two days, and I am suddenly nervous. Nervous nervous nervous. Hi kids! I'm going to Antarctica! For real! Real soon! 

Ok. This might turn into a very stupid blog.