Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year!!! A day ahead of you all.

Well the new year has arrived and I have finally remembered that I have a blog to run. So I will not try to catch you all up to date in one post, but instead I will start with this weekend. New Years is celebrated on Sunday and Monday Dec. 30 and 31. The town will be back to work on Tuesday the 1st. So Paula will be working while you are celebrating New Years at the strike of midnight. I am working a 24 hour shift on New Years Eve and I will get off at 8AM on the first, or about 10 hours before midnight on the east coast.

So on Sunday we had the annual Icestock and Chili Cookoff. This year the weather held out fine again and we had an overcast day with some wind and snow showers. Would Icestock be an Icestock without snow?




Icestock "The Party at the Bottom of the World"





The Chili Cookoff was a great success as always. This is the Heavy Shop Container this year.



The Fire House had an entry into the cookoff, however I was not one of the chefs. Here we have some of the cooks hard at work. If you are wondering about the outfit on one of them, the PPE is being worn by our token Kiwi on B-shift.





Lizzie was wearing her mask while cutting onions. However she wasn't on air from a cylinder, so I am not sure of the benefits, but she is a Kiwi. We are normally not sure what she is doing.

So now that we are on shift, it is a down day at work since the town is on Holiday we did our normal vehicle checks and then took the afternoon off. However, as usual some people can't sit around so we went out to do some pump practice and some hose testing. Today we were our working with Tanker 3.





As you can see it is a beautiful day in McMurdo. We had some big snow flakes just like lake effect snow.





Since I now have the ability to add video I will give you a panoramic view of McMurdo. Or at least part of it. The snow is a nice touch.


And BTW the Dancing Cati made an apearance again this year.

Happy New Year.
R.J.