11/25/03

I'm in a horrible mood today. You know how we were going to go to Fort Famine today? Well, last night Andy and I were talking about it and we couldn't take
the Raytheon truck and he hates buses so I just slept in. I thought it would help but it didn't.

grumpy.
DIZ

11/23/03

We are off the ship today. YIPPEE!!! Tomorrow we're going to Fort Bulnes for the day. It's not that far away and a good day trip. We had to cancel our trip to Torres del Paine and I'm pretty bummed out. It was going to be 200.00 bucks each to change our plane tickets at all and then a cruise ship came into town and those bastards rented ALL the cars. The gods conspired against us going. Hopefully I'll get back down here some day. We'll have fun tomorrow though and it should be pretty relaxing which will be nice. Then we leave and go to KY. It's going to suck getting there. We fly from PA to Santiago, 5 hours, then wait for 3 hours, then Santiago to Dallas, 9 hours, wait 2 hours, fly Dallas to Detroit, 2 hours, wait 2 hours, Detroit to Lexington, an hour and a half, then we get to get in a car with the family and drive for an hour and a half after finding them in the airport. I'll be like the living dead for at least a day. Why do they have to make it so difficult? Where are the teleports? I'm sick of having to travel 24 hours to get home. Luckily our flight on the 25th is at 4:30 so we can sleep in and then re-pack all our shit. You know the worst thing about Chile? They don't have Will and Grace or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Well, I have seen Buffy, once, but I wasn't able to find her last night. It's important to watch as much mind-numbing TV as possible and Andy always wants to watch CNN. Boring.

DIZ

11/16/03

We got to go to another base today. It was the Polish base
Arctowski. Pretty cool. Really nice people. Their main building was
really nice. Well the outside looks like a trailer but then you go inside
and there is wood everywhere and a nice dining area/lounge. We got to sit
and talk with a couple of the guys and some of them could speak like 4 and
5 languages. The weather was gorgeous and we got to walk around the beach
which was very rocky, a little sandy and there were big chunks of ice
floating on the water. Very cool. We saw a small group of Adelie penguins
strolling along the beach and then they all decided to take a dip. They
are such funny creatures. They really do look like little old men walking
to the pool.

11/14/03

Ok, things that suck. I went out on deck the other night to check out the
ocean and on the way back inside I banged my knee on this piece of steel
used for securing the doors. It's U shaped and I don't know why, but it
had it out for my knee. It hurt so much that I thought I was going to
throw up. Fortunately, I stayed conscious and quickly made it back to my
room, tying to hop while the boat was moving around. Then I called Andy
and asked him to get me some ice for it which he did because he's all nice
and stuff. Of course he asks me what I did and then stands there. So I
look at him and say, now what do you do EMT? I never thought I'd see a
blank expression on that face. Fortunately he remembered after a little
scolding. Anyway, enough about him. Let's talk about me some more. So my
knee. It's pretty bruised and still a little swollen plus it hurts when I
stand for too long. Fun. At least now it doesn't hurt so much going up
and down the stairs.

Ok things that don't suck. Yesterday we took a few folks to Peterman
Island. This is a kick-ass place. These crazy people are going live in
tents and count penguins for a couple of months. So, we helped set them up
and schleped stuff to the camp from the Zodiacs. We had to carry it up
over some rocks and then put the stuff in these plastic sleds which we then
pulled to the site. That part was hard. I'm just not meant for hard
physical labor. The fun part was getting in the sled and being pulled down
the hill. I almost got dumped a couple of times but it was worth it. One
time though I came very close to landing in a huge pile of penguin
guano. Yuck! That's the one drawback about penguins. They stink! I was
talking with a friend yesterday and I asked him what he thought they talked
about. He thought they were probably fighting about who was going to clean
up all the poop. After watching these guys for a while, I realized that we
were seeing courtship in action. We even saw them mating. They have no
shame. We had a great time though. It was a perfect day. No wind, clear
skies, snow covered mountains the whole works. We got to Zodiac over from
the ship through the ice which was like going through a maze. The only bad
part about the island is the smell but I think they'll be ok. They took a
lot of wine with them.

All for now,
DIZ

11/11/03

I stayed up really late last night to help Andy finish up XBT's. XBT probably means nothing to you but don't worry about it. It's a science thing involving probes. They detect temperature in the water, sicko. Anyway, we got to this island called Cape Sherriff really early and Andy and I thought we would get up around 8 and head to shore. Well, they lied to us. They didn't start boat ops at 8, they started at 6. 6am! No one told us! Bastards. We should have just stayed up. It was 3am before I could go to sleep and if I'd just stayed up I could've gone to shore. I may have another chance for a shore landing though. We're dropping some more people off at another island to count penguins.

Now we're heading back out to sea. Maybe I can get sea sick again and not
get any of my work done. Sounds fun except for the backlash from the boss
man. I know, it's only temporary. It's only temporary. It's only temporary. No beer, no TV make Homer go crazy.

DIZ

11/10/03

Here's what's been going on here. We were in the Straights of Magellan last night and we had huge waves, big wind and it was snowing. That made me sea sick and we're in the middle of the Drake now. It's a little better but I'm still sea sick. I think I was fighting it. The motion of the ship. You can't fight it, you have to just go with it and get used to the feeling of your brain smashing against the inside of your skull when a big wave hits the ship.

Oh, I just remembered something. We had a fire alarm today, don't worry it was a false one from someone smoking too near the smoke detector, and the mate who was checking things had his fly open. I was sitting and he walked right by me. I wish I hadn't noticed, but it was at eye level. I'm so relieved that nothing was hanging out. I think I would have lost it if there had been. I wonder if anyone else noticed.

something to think about.

DIZ