A Better Day with Things to Do

Today I'm sick. Deathly sick. Sometime within the past 48 hours I contracted food poisoning (for the second time this year) and I've been paying for ever since I woke up this morning (I have been literally paying for it as well...$500 for an ER visit...). I called out from work sick today, went to the hospital, got some anti-biotics and here I sit in front of my computer. I feel I've been pretty hard on myself the past couple of weeks and its been seriously affecting my performance as a firefighter (both wildland and structural as I found) as well as my normal ability to think decisively, quickly, and clearly. I decided to take my mind off my mental and current social problems and focus on things that I need to worry about as well as the things that usually bring joy to me.

Being in Salt Lake really got me excited for the up-coming main body season at McMurdo Station as it did last year. It was cool meeting up with those I spent 5 months with last season as well as meeting the new folks coming down in September and October. The one thing that sucked about SLC was the fact that I may have failed my IFSAC test for Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting but I'll deal with that when I find out for sure.

Now that I'm back home I have other things to keep me busy when I'm not at work. My landlord is (at least I think so) trying to screw me out of my room so he can move 7 girls into the house. He tried getting me to move out by tomorrow without even looking at my lease. His assistant came over to tell me that I had to leave until I told her that my lease was not up. Considering I had asked my landlord over 5 times for a copy of my lease, she went to their office to get it only to find out that my lease is up on the 30th and he still has 7 girls he promised to house in this house. So now they're trying to move me across the street into a room I have to be out of by the 25th. They're solution for the other 5 days? Pay me $100 for "my troubles". I don't know what I'm going to do yet but at least I still have more time.

Asides from that, not much else is going on. I took a small trip to Brian Head, UT to get a pair of bindings installed on my skiis. Now I'm back at the house and resting.

I'm trying to get ready for McMurdo the best I can without being at home (DC-home). I'm planning (or at least trying) to go to Morocco shortly after my redeployment in Late February/Early March which means I may need to get a visa and a few other things to facilitate a climbing trip be it alpine/mountaineering or rock climbing. There have been a lot of changes for the United States Antarctic Program this year...one of them being the Hold-In-Christchurch option for people deploying to the ice. It use to be that you could mail something from the states directly to the CDC so that it could be held there throughout your deployment awaiting you when you arrived. Now that they've done away with that, you have to have things shipped directly to McMurdo and then you can ship it to Christchurch to be held...crazy, I know.

All in all, I'm glad to be back and I can't wait to get down to the ice. Hopefully we'll see some more fire before I drive back to the East Coast...