The Whole Wide World

As I sat down to write this, I realized tomorrow is my Friday and shook my head in disbelief at how quickly the week went by. The summer did not go by anywhere near as quickly as the winter season is going by. I know I’ve said that before, but it is worth noting again that time is flying by. I had two different people reach out to me at work today regarding our mid-winter dinner, it’s only a couple weeks away, which is unbelievable and believable at the same time. The days and weeks are short, but the months seem to be long.

There will be a special dinner to celebrate mid-winter. Since I do not work in the galley this season, I haven’t had any intel on what the special menu will be, but if it is anything like Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’ll be great! In fact, it will most likely be even better since the population is a tenth of what it was during the holidays. The individuals who reached out to me today are on the planning committee if that gives any kind of clue as to it being a special shindig. Anything with a planning committee has to be special. The precedent is that a donation jar is put in the store to collect money for a special cocktail hour before the dinner. Everyone on station has to abide by the ration system for alcohol purchases, but there are a handful of events that are sanctioned by station management and extra alcohol is allowed to be purchased for those functions. I will help facilitate that since I am the winter beverage supervisor.

We had our first condition one last night, which is the most severe class of weather. There are three levels; three being a clear day, we’ve dipped in and out of a two a bit so far, which is reduced visibility and extra blowy and cold. Three is a shelter in place scenario. Shortly before we went from two to one, I went out one door and walked around the corner of the building and into the next door. It was so windy it almost blew me off the stairs. Snow blowing everywhere I could hardly see a thing.

For those of us who haven’t been down before, it was exciting and all part of the allure to spend a winter down here. The veterans don’t feel the same way though. In speaking to a few of them I learned that they know all too well that things go wrong and break and that a con one just means they are going to have to spend extra time outside fixing something. I can understand their lack of enthusiasm.

I posted a video of the storm and some photos on Instagram last night, so check that out if you haven’t already. Apparently, last night’s storm was just a preview of the storm that is predicted to hit this Thursday.