Changes

Tonight, for the first time this season, I noticed that the sun sorta "set" tonight. It never went below the horizon however. No. It actually stayed well above the horizon...a good 20 or 30 degrees above the horizon. What I mean by set is that the sun sank low enough to cast different hues of light across the canvas of the norther sky. The Royal Society Mountains, Observation Hill, and Mt. Erebus all have an alpine-glow like yellow tint to them. As I stood outside marveling at this sight, I couldn't help but wonder how much my life has changed over the year much like the seasons down here do. I went from working in Fauquier County, to wondering what I was going to do next, to moving out to Idaho, to working in the bottom of the world. I love this life. Sure, parts of it suck, but I making the best of it with simple pursuits of my dreams. I tell this to people I meet since I left DC. If you have an idea or a dream try it out. You never know how your plans will pan out.

For those of us already down here, Raytheon opened up internal job announcements for the 2008-2009 summer positions for here and the South Pole which means we'll get first picks of jobs for next year that won't open up externally till April or May. Needless to say, the second I got word of this, I applied for one of the Lieutenant's positions. God has a funny way of making things fall into place. If all goes right (and that is a pretty big "if") the next year should look like this:

- Leave here and vacation for 2 weeks
- Go on unemployment and work on an on-call basis for Virginia Deparment of Forestry till April
- Travel to Yosemite for Wilderness EMT
- Travel to wherever in May to start working the wildland fire season
- Go off employment and rack in the overtime when the fire season gets in full swing
- Come back home for a week or two before heading back to Antarctica
- Start cycle all over again

Life is what you make it. You can say your life sucks and wallow in self-pity thiking that you can't do anything about it, or you can get off your ass and try to change the way things are going. If you try hard enough, if you set your mind to it, life will find a way. Your dreams will find a way. If my plans don't work out, there will always be something else to guide me along to keep my head up...