Christmas and Crazyness

Christmas is around the corner. 8 days to be exact. Which means I'm in a good mood. Next Tuesday is Jesus Christ' birthday which means more to me than presents or shitty music. The 25th is about celebrating his life and everything he's done for those who believe in him. Part of me, however, isn't all that thrilled about the time period between Thanksgiving and the 25th. In America (and probably pre-dominantly Christian countries across the globe) those 30-some days are jammed packed with commercialism as far as you can hear or see and I absolutely hate that about our country. The great thing about being down here is that you're so cut off from the outside world that you get a much needed break from the commercialism of an American Christmas. Nothing but a lot of red and green, Christmas lights, fake reeves and trees (actual ones would be a violation of the Antarctic Treaty my friends), and some good ol fashion holiday cheer. Another thing that slightly annoys me about the holidays is the political correctness with a lot of people. A neighbor of mine wanted to put up a Merry Christmas sign above her door. Her roommate wanted her to put up a Happy Holiday sign up instead because she was afriad that she would offend someone who didn't celebrate Christmas. Maybe that's just a pet peeve of mine. I celebrate Christmas. People will know it. Anyways, I deviated from the mood of this post. Christmas is near. 2007 years ago, Christ was born to save us all. I'm happy, I'm enlighted. All I want to hear is music celebrating his life. Christmas music...not holiday music.

Today was probably one of the busiest days I've had to deal with here within the AFD. With Monday comes weekly truck checks which are incredibly thorough and usually take a couple hours. On top of checking out several vehicles, checking out a hydrant and driving around for a bit. We managed to stay pretty busy. Lunch went by fast and before we knew it, we were outside testing 1'000 feet of 3" hose, something that I thought I'd be able to skip out of by coming down here. I can't complain too much though. Ashburn had almost 8 miles of hose to test versus the less than 2 here at the Antarctic Fire Department. Our hose testing was interrupted by an in-flight emergency involving a C-130 with stuck flaps landing at Pegasus runways. After mobilizing people for that we went back to hose testing only to run into problems with our water supply. Finally we finished testing the hose we wanted to even thought we were 10 minutes late for our blasting/demolition stand-by. 1630 came around and told everyone to chillax before dinner. As we're walking out the door for dinner, Station 2 gets a call for a man with a severe emergency medical issue. Because of the condition of the road going from Willy Field to McMurdo (the road is closed to light vehicles), our ambulance here had to rendezvous with the ambulance from station 2 on the transition. Shortly after the patient transfer between the two ambulances, ambulance 1's tranny crapped out on the crew only to have the other ambulance switch the equipment and patient back into their original ambulance where they managed to make it through the treacherous melt pools of the transition. I'm tired....but I'm happy. I love my job and the people I work with. I love this unique environment. I love it all. Hopefully I'll love where ever I work in the summer as much as I do down here...