Glow

A glow around the station.

It has been pretty amazing to watch the changes outside the past couple of weeks. Things have gotten brighter, at least when it's clear. Along with the rising light, we've also gotten a little bit wilder weather. Today it is cloudy and in the -60's, yesterday it was clear and in the -90's. While we probably won't make it back down into the -100's again this season, we'll probably get some pretty big swings in temperature as the sun comes back up and more energy is pumped into the atmosphere because of that.

On clear days, we've also been treated to a view of Mars, Saturn and Spica trailing the sun along the horizon.

Spica, Mars, and Saturn off to the right. Wave hello to Curiosity!

That picture is a couple of days old, and since Mars has been moving fast in comparison to the others, those three now form something close to an equilateral triangle, rather than a line. Also, while the picture doesn't show it, now instead of a hint of light, we've got a little bit of orange and pink just above the horizon to go along with the general glow. I think that the prospect of the sun rising has also brought the mood up around the station.

This weekend was our monthly two-day weekend, and to celebrate some folks organized a small fair. There was a chili cook-off, a photo booth, a bean-bag toss, a pie-eating contest and an auction. I somehow got talked into doing the pie-eating contest, so now I will never have to do one of those again. I did come close to winning, but Shawn beat me in the tie-breaker (30 seconds to eat as much pie as we could) by a half an oz. I think his beard gave him an advantage, what with being able to stick more pie to his face. I'm trying to get pictures from some of the spectators, so I will post those when I get them.

Also, I finished up my biggest milage week so far at Pole. 42 miles on the treadmill, and felt good for most of it. I was pretty pleased with myself, and then I read Nicole's blog, where she did 115 miles. So, while I'm still pretty happy with myself, that certainly put things in perspective. Also, the group I've been working out with finished up our P90X rotation and we are now moving on to Insanity, which we should be able to finish up before we redeploy.

Oh yes, we've finally gotten an ETA on our redeployment. No ticketing info yet (we probably won't get that until October), but at least we've got some info. I, and most of my friends are scheduled to get out of here on Nov. 2nd, so depending on weather, it could be the 5th or 6th before we get to New Zealand.

Auroras out by SPT and BICEP2