Home Again

Well, we're not really home. That would be our cozy
little house in Grand Junction. However, over the years we've
spent so much time in Antarctica, that our room in Dorm 208 is
our second home. After a couple of weeks for me, and a couple
of months for Lynn, we were finally able to move into our summer
home in Dorm 208 after our Winterover friend Mark left the room
and headed back to civilization. Of course, we have to do a
bit of furniture moving, box moving and general decoration to
make it "ours". It felt good to back in the neighborhood again.
Lynn was in a temporary room during the six weeks of Winfly, and
I joined her when I arrived several weeks ago. No more walking
down the hall to the bathroom since we share a bath with our two
suitemates. We also know most of our neighbors down the hall
since you have to have a fair amount of months with the program
to reside in this dorm. I'm looking forward to settling in.

Where's Tom?

Click on Photo to Enlarge

On one of our trips this summer, we found a Waldo
(you know, Where's Waldo?) in the parking lot of a
Wendy's in Silverthorne Colorado. Lynn brought it
with her down to the Ice and it's currently residing
in our Dorm room. This inspired me to create a small
map titled "Where's Tom?". Maybe I'll expand it someday,
but for now, I spend roughly 90% of my week in one of
three places or walking between them:

A) Dorm 208 - Where I sleep
B) Building 140 - Where I work
C) Building 155 - Where I hunt and gather food

Soon Not My Room

I pretty much have everything packed and am ready to leave.
Only just a few more days before the plane takes me outta
here! My side of the room is all but stripped and Ben's is
not...but Ben will be spending the winter in this room so it
is now his to do with what he wishes. The nice thing is, I
won't get a room inspection from Housing as he is taking
responsibility for it in it's current condition. In return, I will
do the same in October for him. This is the room that we
have every year, but because Lynn wasn't here this year,
it really didn't seem like home. Seven roommates in all
made it a trying season. I know this room will be cosier
next year.

Roommate-Go-Round

When I came home from work tonight, my new roommate,
Dave was packing. Oh no, I thought. My coughing and
snoring has driven him away. No, thankfully, but
nevertheless, Dave was moving to one of the 203 dorms
because he was told he didn't have enough housing
points to stay in Dorm 208. If so, he probably
should have been told that in the first place before
he was able to settle in for over a week. So now, I
am roommate-less for a couple of days. Good thing,
bad thing, I don't know. I guess I'll just play the
waiting game.

Dreary Dorm Days

It's difficult to write about anything very
interesting when one doesn't even leave "the
house" for two days. In most parts of the world
that's really not that hard to do, but here, it
seems you have to go outside to do almost
everything, and being outside is not really
what's best for me right now. So, here you
go...a lovely view of my dorm...Dorm 208.
Yes, I'm bored by this as well.

Chick Flicks

Since I won't be in touch with anyone else's feminine side
until I see Lynn again in just over four months, I might as
well be in touch with my own feminine side! I've been
invited to show up every Sunday afternoon by several
friends (who happen to be women) to watch a "chick flick"
with them in the Dorm 208 2nd floor lounge, which happens
to be next door to my room. Lynn would have been invited
if she were here, but since she's not, I'm the only Hamann
they can invite. Today we watched "My Fair Lady", starring
Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. I'm not a huge fan of
musicals, but I had never seen the whole thing and three
hours later, I had. It won't go down as one of my all time
favorites, but I didn't run screaming from the room either.
I probably never would have lived it down if I had since
there were seven women in the room and I was the only
guy.

House Mouse

One of our assigned duties during the winter is to act
as "House Mouse". This entails cleaning your work space
which isn't a big deal for most since you're the one
making it messy. However, for one week, you're assigned
to cleaning the dorm you live in. This week it's my turn
and because Lynn and I swapped with another person, she's
on duty this week as well. We don't have to clean the other
two dorms, but we have to clean Dorm 208. She's happy with
vacuuming, cleaning the stairwells, lounges, etc. as long
as I take out the trash all week. So far it hasn't been
horrible, but yesterday there were over a dozen bags of
different types of trash that had to be taken out to the
dumpsters in front of the dorm (see photo above). There
are several dozen categories of recycling here at McMurdo,
but only 11 types that are sorted within the dorms so that
makes it a little easier. All I have to do is go to the
can's, pull out the trash, tie the bag (this is very
important to the Wasties) and then place a new bag in the
can before dragging all the filled bags down to the dumpsters.
Not hard work, but time consuming and this takes about 90
minutes each day. At least it's only one week.


First Floor Trash


Second Floor Trash


Third Floor Trash

Who Are We?

These are a few demographics about the folks that
are living at McMurdo this winter:

34 Women
91 Men

41 Live in Dorm 155
43 Live in Dorm 208
41 Live in Dorm 209

39.13 Average age for Women
39.87 Average age for Men
39.68 Total Average


We’re From Four Countries:
USA
New Zealand
Canada
Belize

Americans are from 32 Different States
26 From Colorado
9 From California
7 From Alaska

Of the 34 Women, 31 different names are represented:
2 Angela
2 Elizabeth
2 Lisa

Of the 91 Men, 61 different names are represented:
7 William
5 David
4 Robert

208 Open House

We've been living on the second floor of Dorm 208
every winter since we've been coming here and usually
it's a pretty quiet place to live. This year isn't
much different, but there are some new folks that
haven't wintered before living on the floor and
they decided to host a hall party. We werent' going
to participate at first but we decided to and I'm
really glad we did. Half the station showed up and
for once, our quiet little floor seemed to be the
center of the station. It was fun to have all kinds
of people drop by our room and tell us they thought
it was "colorful" and "cozy". We even found out
that one guy here is from Bullfrog Utah, near Lake
Powell, and he flies in and out of Grand Junction
when coming down to the Ice.


Earlier in the week we borrowed a DVD copy of Wonder
Showzen from our friend Nick and showed it in our room
during the Hall Party. This show is definitely
"F'ed Up". Picture Sesame Street on crack! It's
really funny but really really disturbing at the
same time. I really can't explain it more than that
and it's definitely not for everyone, but it really
made me laugh. It's kind of like watching some kind
of disaster...you want to turn away from it but you
can't! Anyway, it left us rolling on the floor and
our sides were hurting!