Here I Stay!

The C-17s are flying 80-100 people off the continent each day. The town population is now under 500 for the first time since I arrived. The skua bins outside of dorms are overflowing with discarded clothes, toiletries, and other items. I have been checking the skua bins and skua central multiple times per day, collecting half-empty vitamin D bottles, beat-up merino wool leggings, and other junk I think I’ll need over the winter.

I’ve probably found at least $500 worth of winter clothing in skua in the last week. Other treasures I’ve found include a North Face down jacket and a little travel-sized guitar that my friend Sparky left me.

Life in McMurdo in the last several weeks has been a crazy whirl of saying good-bye to friends, filling my dorm room with skua’d junk I’m gonna need for the winter (and maybe back home!), winding down from my summer Comms Operator contract, and getting training for my winter season broadcast engineer contract.

I had my first full solo day yesterday. It involved solving a dead air issue in the radio studio, switching out a DVD player, troubleshooting two web-machine interfacing issues, and scheduling one DJ training. I guess asking for a quiet first day would have been too much.

I have a good feeling about my job. The work structure and tasking are similar to what I did at WMUU for two years. But with radio AND TV. And in Antarctica. A lot of my daily tasking will involve scheduling and loading DVDs and updating slides for the movie channels, but there will be some projects like updating the CD and vinyl inventory, digitizing 8 mm tapes from the National Science Foundation, and maybe some filming. I have also been given permission to do a weekly radio show.

I’m gonna get paid to do a radio show in Antarctica!!!!!!!