New Years

It's pretty cool to be able to say that you celebrated New Year's in Antarctica. Luckily, the evening of the 31st, I managed to get off work around 1830 to start celebrating the ringing in of the New Year. The night started off with a pretty large hallway party (about 20 to 30 people). After a few hours of that, I went to meet up with someone at the Coffeehouse only to spend the rest of the evening at Gallagher's Pub to bring in the New Year. Despite what you might have guessed, I actually grabbed something to eat from the galley at 0030 and went to bed. Now even though I went to bed so early, I didn't wake up until about 1230 that afternoon. The rest of the 1st was spent celbrating about 7 other time zone's New Years and going to a going away party for a few people I knew.

Going to the going away party hit me in the sense that the season is almost over. People are getting ready to wrap it up before the end of the summer hits. When you think about it, as fast as this summer has gone for me, I have only 6 to 7 weeks left down here. Life and the normal pace of things are starting to change down here as well. Soon the icebreakers will come and we'll start seeing a lot of cargo ships and fueling tankers down here. Employee evals are being prepared by supervisors, talks about contracts for next year are being held, times are definlitey changing down here.

As for afterwards, I'm planning on hanging out in Queenstown and Christchurch, NZ for a little bit only to head to the West Coast of the South Island to do a little climbing with some friends from down here. Hopefully, I'll be back stateside in mid-march.

On a sad and final note, Lieutenant Alex John Keepers of Loudoun County Fire & Rescue Services (the county in which I volunteer) was killed in an auto accident Monday morning while on his way to work. Please keep him and his family in your hearts and prayers as well as all of us firefighters. We're not as invincible as people perceive...