54 hrs/6days a week

What do I do for 54 hrs a week, you might ask?  Well...let me see if I can paint you a picture. This season I have a job within a department called Supply.  I TRIED to come back as a shuttle driver again but due to major personnel cuts this year, I was unable to secure a position for myself.  There was an opening within Supply so I took it!  Supply is a department that handles/manages all the materials that come onto the station and organizes them into warehouses.  It is also in charge of the distribution and reordering of materials.  This department also had some pretty major personnel cuts happen so I was fortunate to get a position this year.

When I arrived in Antarctica, I was put in the hub office of supply, called the MET (mapcon editing team), that deals with all the paperwork tracking all the materials coming in, being divied out, and shipped off from the station. Usually this position I was hired for is given to someone with previous experience in Supply because they are familiar with the data bases, the paperwork, and the whole process and systems in place.  I spent the first couple of weeks feeling very overwhelmed with the learning curve and slightly nervous that I was not going to be happy in this office poition with the majority of my time spent doing data entry and catching paperwork mistakes. I found myself wishing to be in another position working in a warehouse or something but I was trying to be happy with what got me here.  By some stroke of luck, my boss pulled me in her office one day and asked me if I would prefer to be put into a new position as a floater who would help out in various supply centers when and where needed the most.  I jumped on this and felt so happy that I was offered just what I would have wanted without even knowing it was an option!

I have been spending the majority of my time in Crary Lab where all the science groups base their research out of.  It has been interesting to meet the scientists and get a picture into what really this whole operation is all about...the science.  In Crary Supply we basically have a bunch of science equipment and supplies that we check out and issue out to these groups that come to study anything from volcanoes to sea life to human environmental impacts in the Antarctic.  We help get them what they need to conduct their experiments and hopefully make their time here successful, it is after all, the whole reason people are even down here!  Most of the time I have no idea what I am giving them and what this piece of equipment does, ha ha!  It is sort of interesting though!  By the end of this summer season there will have been close to 850 scientists that have come to work on various research projects. 

Though most of my time has been in Crary Lab, I have spent a few days here and there and a week here and there in other supply centers.  I spent a day in electrical supply, then a few days in utilities supply, a day in the carpentry supply, and a few weeks in the vehicle maintenance supply.  It has been interesting for me to work in and see these various areas and it is highly valuable, if I ever want to return, to have a bit of experience and worked with people in all these various areas. 

One reason I am really liking the position I am in is that it is much more diversified than the job I started out doing. Instead of being in an office 9 hrs a day, I get to do a whole variety of tasks: sometimes working with people, sometimes working alone, outside, inside, computer tasks, physical labor, operating heavy machinery, inventory, receiving cargo, delivering and retrieving supplies, and much more. No day has been the same as any other so far, which I like!

It has been a good season so far and I am enjoying my time here. I am about 3 months in and have about 2 months to go. If it is anything like last year, these last few months go by so fast and then it is travel time!

Happy New Year!!!

Part of my job is checking in science equipment and putting it back in the inventory in MapCon (our DOS data base we use here, so old school:) and back on the shelves after the science groups are done with it.  What is all this stuff?  Good question!

Moving some boxes with the loader...watch out everyone!

Me and Kathy doing our thing.

Opening cargo boxes is part of this gig.  It is like Christmas...you never know what is going to be in them It could be anything from toilet seats, to car parts, to toxic chemicals.

Most afternoons in Crary lab, Zach and I take the truck to run up to the milvan storage area to get all the material goods that the science groups need for their research. Test tubes, microscope slides, water containers, ice packs, syringes, zip lock bags, tin foil, you name it!

This is the cargo bay in crary lab where I spend most of my time.

This is one of the warehouses of the VMF (vehicle maintenance facility). Aisles and aisles of parts. Millions of dollars worth, I'm sure!

Another aisle of VMF parts.  Tiny parts in the bins on the left and larger on the right.

The VMF cargo bay.  I spent a whole week in here all alone opening boxes.  A week was fine but any more it would have been too lonely.  But for a week it was nice.  It was me and my box cutter, sharpie, and music for 54 hrs:)  We have to write numbers on everything that comes in to be able to put it in the data base and onto a shelf somewhere.

This is the parts counter in the VMF where I spent another week finding and handing out parts to the mechanics.  The mechanics were good about helping me find these parts because I had absolutely no idea what some things were!

This is one side of the VMF shop.  They can get some BIG equipment in here to work on.  Also, this is the place where they had the Christmas party.  The mechanics had to do a lot of moving and cleaning to get it ready!

There are a couple girls that work in the VMF amongst all the men.  This girl is an excellent mechanic but also a very young and pretty girl.  She isn't the the stereotypical mechanic, that's for sure!  I think she is pretty cool for it:)

This machine is called a pickle.  It's name is Elvis. It is a very rough, old school, navy, fork lift.  I was moving a bundle of flags in this pic.

Make sure you always wear your hearing protection!  These machines are loud!

Me in the pickle moving some more stuff.  I operate the pickle quite often, at least a few times a week I would say.

There are a few of these popcorn makers in the various work centers around station. It is like movie- popcorn but instead of $10 a bag, it's free!  It's one of my favorite snacks!  Sadly, crary lab does not have a popcorn machine:(  But,..maybe that is a good thing:)

Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream!

"What is liquid nitrogen ice cream," you say?  Let me explain yet another of the strange McMurdo experiences....

Since I have been working most of my time in the Crary Lab, the main hub of all things scientific here at Mcmurdo, I was invited to attend an ice cream social to intermingle with the scientists and staff of the lab.  The social event of this evening consisted of "Condition Fun," a local Antarctic band that rewrites/McMurdo-fies popular songs and ICE CREAM! This evening was by "invite only" so it was cool that I got to go, rubbing shoulders with the special, the elite,....the scientists.

Before going to this event, I really had no idea of how liquid nitrogen ice cream was made, although I had heard about the "beakers" (ie the science-folk) making it.  I thought that, probably, liquid nitrogen was used as the cooling agent, as ice would be used in making homemade ice cream.  Well, I was partially right, it was used as the cooling agent for the liquid ice cream mixture, but instead of it just chilling the outside container as the inside ingredients went through the process of freezing (as in an ice cream maker), the liquid nitrogen was poured directly into the ice cream mixture! It was so cool (literally, ha ha) to watch. Immediately vaporizing and leaving its utra-cold essence , the liquid nitrogen was poured into the ice cream mixture resulting in this cold, thick, steam-like vapor pouring up and out of the bowl and even onto the table as someone stirred with a whisk.  The nitrogen was slowly poured into the bowl until the ice cream froze and thickened into the desired consistency and then "WA-LA," ice cream is served! I even took my turn as a stirrer making sure to wear my appropriate PPE (personal protective equipment), including a face shield and glove.  I wouldn't want any of this freezing liquid nitrogen giving me a freeze-burn if splashed onto my skin.  Safety first, even in making ice cream:)

Now, it has been quite a few years since high school chemistry and I have forgotten the properties and behaviors of most of the elements and compounds, so I must admit, I was a little nervous about actually eating this stuff, like "hey lets pour this strange laboratory liquid into some milk/cream/sugar mixture and then eat it!"  But, in my trust of the science staff, their knowledge of these things, and the fact that we are connected to the National Science Foundation in what happens here, I determined that it was probably low-risk and I happily indulged.  I was told that the nitrogen basically evaportates or vaporizes on contact and you aren't really consuming it because it has released itself as a gas.  Travis, the science guy reminded me that 70% of our atmosphere is made up of nitrogen.  So, its purely organic, right?  ha ha!  Anyway, it turned out to be delicious ice cream and such a uniquly interesting process to make it, all with no ill side effects besides, of course, eating too much of it!  We made all kinds of flavors including, berry, peanut butter, coffee, baileys, kalua, and chocolate and with all the toppings you could want to add on!  I would like to make this at home with  friends, but where would one procure this liquid nitrogen?  Oh the fun time and strange goings-on here in the Antarctic!