Merry Christmas

Greetings my friends. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Things are good. I am good. My tooth is all better. I had to get a root canal. But I was AMAZED.. it did not hurt one bit and it was over in about 25 min. and it cost me only $62.00 HA! When they did the conversion for me on the calculator I thought it was $620.00 and thought that was not to bad. But she smiled and said NO.. only $62.00. I was thrilled and could not believe it. I had a wonderful Christmas dinner last night. Rebecca came in with a whole bunch of others and we had a GREAT time together. They had rented out this hall with an open fire/grill inside. We BBQ'd lamb and chicken and steak. It was really good and really fun. Today is a beautiful day in Punta Arenas and a couple of us are going to the spa at the hotel and get pedicures and a massage. What a treat. Then a dip in the beautiful pool and a carpet picnic in Rebecca's suite. :) I am treating my self by staying in the Dream hotel. We get a discounted price through Raytheon and I just can't get enough of that pool :)http://www.mundodreams.com/puntaarenas/hotel.html

So it seems that I get to fly to Ushia on the 27th of December and get on the National Geographic Explorer. http://www.nationalgeographicexpeditions.com/home YIPEEE! I am so excited I can't stand it. I also found out that Buzz Aldrin will be on the ship. How amazing. Me meeting two men that have been to the moon and back. I am so very lucky.

I hope your Christmas day is filled with much laughter and hugs and cookies and really good food.

Thanks also for all of your wonderful kind emails you sent me and well wishes for my tooth. They worked. It was the cheapest and most painless procedure I think I have ever had.

Computer time and availability is kind of limited. I am at the office right now down at the pier but there is a nice long line awaiting to get on the two computers. I assume that there will be Internet access on the Explorer so I will send you an update from there of how things are going. Here's the cutest picture of my friends dog. Just to make you smile.

Have a wonderful blessed day.

Big hugs

stace

Tooth- OUCH!!

I am departing Palmer tonight on the LMG to go back to Punta Arenas to get a broken tooth fixed. I have been in pain over the past 4 days and trying to "will" the pain to go away. I was in contact with our Doctor here and we where just waiting to see what would happen. Thankfully, The LMG came in today and is leaving tonight. And my tooth flared up and I am in much pain. Even with my tooth all numbed up, it's still hurting. :( So hopefully, I will arrive back in Punta Arenas, get my tooth fixed, relax for a day and turn around and come back on the Vandamn Cruise ship. (one of those huge big ones) And be back here at Palmer on the 29th of December.
More later.. :)

Is it Christmas Time already???

Hello friends.
Happy Holidays.
I hope that this finds you all in good spirits, rested from a great weekend and WARM. I was going to say "that's for you NW folks, but as I have been reading in the news, it's just plain COLD everywhere in the US." Much colder, I am just a bit embarrassed to say, than here in Antarctica. The past three days have seen VERY warm weather. 36 to 39 degrees F. The snow is melting so fast it sounds like rain out my window. It also brings much calving of the glacier ( when large pieces of ice drop off) hence why the past couple of days our pier here at Palmer Station has been iced in. Also there is a HUGE iceberg just set off station. As exciting as it is to see such an amazing chunk of ice,(see photo attached) we are a bit worried that it will get into the shipping lane here for Palmer Station, which can create a whole other bag of trouble. Not only the LMG (the big orange ship that brings folks and freshies and cargo to us) but the numerous cruise ships and yachts that are scheduled to stop by and visit Palmer. So far so good, it's keeping it's distance.. Let's just hope it stays that way. :)
This week brings crazy busy to Palmer Station. Two cruise ships, a yacht full of 13 students and a couple of teachers and the LMG. The first cruise ship is 200 people.The Minerva.
http://www.abercrombiekent.com/travel_interests/adventure_cruising/Minerva_Adventure_Cruising.cfm
 Most of the tours are 70 to 130 folks.. but not this one. Yippeee. Add to that a mini-film fest, band practice, science lectures,Christmas cookie decorating, Christmas decor of station and tree decorating, off load of cargo from the LMG, cross town pizza with the LMG(crew of 56) and everyday life.. It's going to be a fun week. :)
This week marked my 1/2 way point of my time here at Palmer Station. Amazing how quickly 3.5 months can go. This next part of the season will bring more science and variety of people in and out.
I have to admit I am just a bit homesick for the Holidays. This is the first year of my many years away from home that I long for the tree decorating we use to do growing up. The thousands of lights my dad and I put up on the Christmas tree. ( really..it's 10's of thousands:) but the few hundred we have here with our beautiful fake tree will have to do.. It will add some nice Holiday Spirit to Station.
Yesterday we did do a "Plunge" Jason, one of the journalist here from NPR wanted to do the polar plunge and so we gathered folks and made it happen. It was pretty fun. And from the photos on Flickr you can see the huge iceberg that was in the harbor. Ad's just a bit more "Antarctic" feel to the 30 degree water.
Not much else going on here. The "daily-grind" has set in, which is not a bad thing. Oh, Neil Armstrong did e-mail station and gave us a big "Thank You" and sent us a picture of him and his wife standing by the photo we gave to him. That was kind of fun. He said he had a great time here at Palmer and was fun to meet like minded people. (I keep having to pinch myself that I got to meet him and talk to him.. this guy has stepped foot on the moon.. WOW)  What a guy :) Well on that note I will bid you all a good night. Thanks again, as always, for your continued support and love and smiles. It allows me to make it down here. New pictures up on Flickr as well.
Have a blessed Holiday Season my friends.
Big hugs,
stace
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8448893@N05/

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Starbucks love project....

Hey y'all
Just wanted to let you know we had a fun event yesterday. We got this random phone call from England asking us if we wanted to participate in the "love project sing along"  We quickly gathered and uploaded our video. It was poorly sung, but much fun. You can't really see us in the video that is now on, so I am sending our out take... kind of funny really. Thought it would be a fun laugh on a Tuesday morning.
Cheers :)
http://www.starbucksloveproject.com/#/main/
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Thankfulness

Hello There..
Well I hope that y'all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Filled with lots of friends and family and turkey and PIE! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We celebrated on Saturday so that we could have a day off on Sunday. Wednesday found the kitchen full with people baking pies. We have 36 people on Station and baked 31 pies. It was wonderful fun. Dinner went without a hitch and Brock did an amazing job carving the turkey.
The Humpback Whales are HERE! We went out a couple of nights ago and had a fantastic time with two hummpies. They came and checked us out and showed us a lot of tail and the water was like glass and it was almost 30 degrees outside. So beautiful. Summer in Antarctica.. can't beat it.
Well this weekend brings us two days off. We where suppose to have it over Thanksgiving, but the LMG came in and gave us 5 journalist for Thanksgiving and dropped off some fuel for a field camp. It's quiet fun to have these folks around. They will be here for 3 weeks. They come from all sorts of different back grounds, but they all write or produce science related items. One guy, Jason,  http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/freeze_frame/  works for NPR and National Geographic as a photo journalist. It's been so fun to talk to him and hear his stories. He has done some amazing things. Don't think I will be throwing THAT business card away soon. :) Angela is from Columbia http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/  but now lives in Miami and writes for a science magazine and also is an author of young teen related science mysteries. She is fun. A bundle of energy and love. If you click on the link above and scroll down... you can see a pic of me ( not a good one but still... :)
Scott is from St. Louise and does mostly international coverage, has been all over the world and has a very "down to earth..normal guy" approach to writing. He's funny.
The NBP (Nathanial B. Palmer) came by yesterday and picked up their fuel for the field camps and stayed for about 5 hours. It was fun to see and hug some old friends. It is always a constant reminder just how small this world is.
This weekend I am going to go camp at Old Palmer over night. It will be fun to be "farther" away from station and camping. Old Palmer is the first original sight of the station when the Navy came down here in 1965     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Station    It is a beautiful spot and has a whole new view and outlook to Anvers Island. :)
I can't believe that it is already December and Christmas is just around the corner. I'm trying to sneak in a few Christmas songs here and there in my IPod mix.. See if anyone notices. :)
I do have bad news.... My nice Canon camera died... It gave me a ERR 99. Which in Canon talk means "there is so much going on right now that is broken I am going to send you just ONE overall ERROR message." OUCH! So I am going to send it back to Canon and see what happens. Luckily I have my canon powershot and other folks on station with nice camera's are going to let me use theirs. I want to make sure I get my beloved Skua's...
As I am writing this, I can hear Dan in the kitchen talking about his beer. I don't know if I told y'all that we have an "official" beer maker on station. That is his job. He has gone to school for this. He is just down here with his girlfriend Maggie as science support, but otherwise.. he makes beer. He brought all of his stuff and he turns out some AMAZING BEER! He has been making a batch every weekend. We are up to 3 beers now in the bar and 2 more coming out for Christmas. What a treat. Today is Pale Ale day.. I've attached a few photos of him rolling the barley.
OK, so this is dragging on so I will let you go. I've put some new photos up of whales and icebergs and penguins and lots and lots of ice and snow. :) Also Thanksgiving pics.
I hope that this finds you all happy and wearing DUCK GREEN  If you don't know what that means.. The University of Oregon  DUCKS won last night over the Oregon State Beavers and are heading to the Rose Bowl... Wahhhooo! Plus a picture of the BEAUTIFUL carrot cake Diane made last night for Maggie's Birthday. She is so good... :)
Thank you again for allowing me to share this adventure with y'all and for all your support and encouragement. What a blessing y 'all are.
Have a great weekend.
Stace
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8448893@N05/

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Hello Friends...
I hope this finds you all well, warm and with as big a smile on your face as I do now. :) So the fun news that was just announced today was on November 20, 2009... Mr. Neil Armstrong will be coming to station for dinner and a talk. He is arriving on the National Geographic Explorer. Everyone is so VERY excited. We can't take any pictures "with" him and post them, all these rules he has, but I will try and get some of him.. :)
The Explorer was here last week and took Rebecca with it. ( Rebecca is our Station Manager) and dropped off Bob. Changing of the guards really. She is so very lucky, she got to ride in luxury back to Argentina. The room they put her in usually goes for $20,000.00/PP for a 10 day cruise. Nice balcony room service, SO FUN. She deserves it!!!
We had the Explorer folks over for a little food and adult beverages and dancing. Also about 35 lbs of shrimp. The DEVOURED it! They can't have shrimp due to some questionable techniques people use to capture them. So I believe the last Explorer person left station at around 4:30am. Then had to turn around and give tours all day the next day.. I got to bed by two, but I did not have to smile and talk to the tourist!!! Lucky me.
I had a wonderful day on Sunday. The weather was BREATHTAKING and a group of us went out and hopped from one iceberg to the other. The water was so calm and so clear you could see the reflection of the ice below. What beauty God displays!!
So I need to run, in the middle of making Greek dinner, but so wanted to share the fun news. I've posted some new pics on Flicker. Hope you enjoy them.
As always, thank you for sharing this with me and allowing me to share this amazingly fun place with you. What a blessing y'all are to me.
Ciao!!!
Stace
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8448893@N05/

Penguins and Icebergs

Happy Friday.
I hope this finds you all happy, healthy and having wonderful fun plans for the weekend. This past week has been full of fun things here at Palmer Station. On Tuesday, we had a fly by from NASA. They are doing "Operation Ice Bridge"  http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/ice_bridge/index.html
They are finding out some pretty incredible things about what is going on under the ice. We had about an 8 min. warning that they where going to do a fly by so we ran out and where trying to figure out some way of saying "HI" there was not enough people to lay down and write it so we ran and got our float coats ( those orange huge coats we have to wear when we are around or in the water) and spelled out HI for them. They sent us a picture from the plane. It's pretty cool. Then the birders found a new Gentoo colony. There is over 150 of them about 3 miles from Station. They where not there last year. Over the past few years, the Gentoo population has increased as the Adele's , once the main penguin breed in this area, decrease every year. The birders where so excited about seeing so many Gentoos they bought us all a beer. :) The weather has also been so beautiful that I have been able to go out after work and tour around in the boat. This seems to be the season of icebergs as well. There are at least 5 large ones that are within our boating limits and a dozen more outside of them (which we can't go to..at least 4 miles out) but they look so close... we always "will them in" it has not worked. ... YET! I also was able to go over the Island with all the penguins. It still just makes me smile to see them all. It never gets old. They are in the fighting stage right now. There is only so many mates and so many rocks exposed right now to start a nest, so competition is fierce. I uploaded a video I took to youtube that shows quiet the fighting. Also it has the fly by of the DC-8. It's pretty fun... :)
 It continues to amaze me just how beautiful rock and snow can be. God did some amazing work in this remote part of the world. Even in the icebergs ... they are works of art.. My tent is up as well. Today was so pretty that I finished digging and putting it up. I can't tell you how excited I am to be able to sleep out now every night. There is nothing quiet like the sound of the water and the elephant seals and the glacier. I feel so very blessed to be able to have the privelage of sleeping under the stars in such a beautiful place. I'm going to break the 20 month mark for sleeping outside in Antarctica... Yippeeee!! I'll take some photos and send them out this weekend of my tent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVBYyYOjWTQ     
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN3F-cpI8xg.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8448893@N05/


Well, that's about it for me... I've uploaded some more photos as well to flickr. As always thank you for sharing this with me and emailing what is going on in your life. It does tend to become a bubble down here. Time goes by differently yet the same.?? OK enough thinking, I must be tired, off to the tent.
Good night my friends.
Stace