Mainbody

Well.

There are a lot of people here.

They are coming in by the hundreds, plane after plane after plane, and are very very cool.

But there are a lot of people here.

We're about halfway through the big push of mainbody now. We're twice as big as we were population wise, and will be 4x as big by the end of next week. I have this social pathology where I feel like I want to introduce myself to, and be friends with, every person who is arriving, but it is wiping my ass out! I need to take a break, I think. I'm just very very tired.

Good news -- a new roommate arrived and she is amazingly cool. Her name is Liz, and she's a Kiwi firefighter -- the first female Kiwi firefighter at McMurdo. Very chill girl, and I'm very lucky to have her.

I am spending more and more time retreating to my fort, now known as the Zen Palace (I have a few rock waterfalls in there) just to have a little private time. I am also assembling what looks like a fairly competitive volleyball team. McMurdo volleyball rules are pretty forgiving, which means I can do not-quite-textbook sets and not get in trouble. So that's good news too.

Every Sunday night, one of the beakers (scientists) gives the Sunday Night Science Lecture, to let us grunts know about the actual science that goes on down here. Tonight -- the work at the Penguin Ranch, where they actually leave town and set up a penguin corral, strap cameras and computer data recorders up to them, and let them swim around and record information about what they are up to. It was pretty interesting, and they're finding that these guys operate with unbelievably low oxygen levels during dives. Heart rates fall to as low as 6 beats per minute when they are at their most active. Crazy stuff, and you can check out some of their underwater footage during some of the dive portions in March of the Penguins.

That's it for tonight. Wish me sweet dreams! Tomorrow, I get to suit up and become an Antarctica Firefighter for the day!