Today we learned a little bit more about our upcoming deployment to Antarctica. Here is the basic lay of the land:



We will be deploying out of McMurdo, where there are penguins:



and we will be camping in tents in the North and South forks of upper Wright Valley.


(For us there won't be any snow)

On the right side of the map you can see the great Mount Erebus, an active volcano with an active lava lake, one of only three active lava lakes in the world! Mount Erebus is completely covered in snow, so there is always the danger that a huge eruption could send giant mudslides and torrents of water down the sides of the mountain. This is called a "lahar". Another worry is the chance of pyroclastic flows. Pyroclastic flows are incandescent clouds of ash and rock fragments that rush down the sides of volcanoes at more than 300 mph. They were responsible for killing most of the people who were killed at Pompeii, and more recently, a pyroclastic flow completely wiped out a town in Columbia, killing more than 40,000 people in the matter of seconds.

Luckily, Erebus hasn't shown any signs of having an explosive eruption, and we are going to be too far away to be in danger.



The Antarctic Dry Valleys are pretty much the coldest and driest places on the Earth. In this way, they are a very good analog for the planet Mars, which is also extremely cold and dry. The temperatures of the Dry Valleys will likely be between -35 C and -3 C while we are there (they drop to low as -60 C in the wintertime), and the temperatures on Mars can be anywhere from -143 C at the poles to +5 C in Gusev Crater.

We'll be attempting to study how water (what little there is) moves through the always-nearly-frozen landscape of the Dry Valleys from the great ice sheet that surrounds the valleys to its final resting place in little saline ponds or cracked permafrost ground. We are also studying how the rocks in the Dry Valleys are chemically weathered. We have some evidence to suggest that the way that rocks weather in the Dry Valleys is very similar to how they weather on Mars. Thus we can get a little taste of ground truthing without making the epic journey to the surface of the Red Planet. This will likely involve a lot of flying about in helicopters:



Chillin' out in small yellow tents:


And generally checkin' out the sweet glaciers:

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Why am I still here?!?!?!?!?!!?

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Nighttime. My office. The rain is coming down steadily outside my window. I am listening to Nocturne in D Flat, Op. 27, Chopin. I am in love with Nocturnes. I am in love with the night, I am in love with the rain. I am so filled with love that it is brimming right over, spilling all over my paper-laden desk and dripping down the sides. A Prelude follows the Nocturne. It is hesitant and hopeful: I am neither of these things. My feelings for the night are too passionate to sympathize with the Prelude. I am committed, I have already leapt into the darkness, sparing no thought for what will be there to catch me. My fall will be cradled by gauzy darkness. Another Nocturne, Op. 15 No. 2 in F sharp minor. This one transports me to a grand house, long, long ago. I am looking in on the parlor, the night is warm and still outside. I hear the music warbling softly to itself from another room. There is love here, too. Music from another room.

In other news, I have gotten involved with a couple of new things:

1. Ballroom dancing (again) [Tues]
2. Greek folk dancing [Wed]
3. Cake Decorating #2 [?]
4. Learning Chinese [Mon]
5. Going to gym in the mornings [every day?]

We'll see how that last one works out tomorrow, depending on how late I have to stay here before I finish my paper.

In other other news, my cat viciously attacked me again today. I've been a little afraid to go home. Thalweg isn't going to be back for another week, so it's just me and my water gun versus the Beast. And I accidentally dyed all of my socks bright pink. But I am going to Maine for the weekend to pick blueberries and eat lobster. I also found my perfect town and neighborhood and library, were I ever to live in Rhode Island permanently.

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So a guy in my group was offered a chance to go to Antarctica. A complication: he's getting married this month and his wife is moving to Providence to start their new life together (they've been doing the long-distance thing for a year while she finishes college). She doesn't want to move to a brand new town where she doesn't know anyone and find a new job if at the end of October he's just going to up and go to Antarctica for 2-3 months. In fact, she went so far as to say that if he went to Antarctica, she might not be there when he got back.

Before I add my opinion on this matter, what do you guys think?

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GAHHH! There are fruit flies EVERYWHERE!! I've killed about 25+ today. Why can't I move back to Colorado where there is no life!!

...

In other news, today is the third day of my new "regime". My friend needed a bunch of people to be subjects in her "experiment", so I volunteered. After all, the point of the experiment is to make positive changes in my life, so why not, eh? Well I'll tell you why not... because granola bars without chocolate in them are NASTY, and cucumber and tomato sandwichs, while delicious, are not filling, and drinking two liters of water per day makes only one difference that I can see and that is having to get up to go to the bathroom ALL the TIME.

But surely the effect of my increased positive speak and visualization and exercise and the like has been a great increase in my productivity? If you count looking through pictures of hot guys on Facebook and staring blankly into space as "being productive", then I've been very productive today. :P

But surely the effect of my new regime has been to increase my happiness and energy?

If happiness is defined by a light-headed, hazy feeling with occasional headache, chest aches, and soul-consuming depression combined with lethargy, then I am the happiest person I have ever known. Though this all might have a little more to do with going back to work after an awesome 2-week vacation and having to finish my Mars paper. As you all know from how I complained about my Mercury paper, I find the very end part of a paper (revisions, revisions, revisions) to be the absolute WORST part of the whole endeavor.

DAMMIT! I just encountered a spider that crawled out from under my papers, and I was going to mercilessly kill it, but the Welshman never lets me kill spiders, plus there's the possibility that it could build a web and catch fruit flies. So instead of killing it I put it in my poinsettia. Now it keeps repelling down the side of the poinsettia leaves and flailing its disgusting legs in an unseemly manner and distracting me from my WORK. Which is clearly not getting done. And it's 4:20.... I should just call it a day and take a nap, which I'm apparently not supposed to do according to my regime.

In other news, Thalweg and G-bird both have LYME DISEASE! One of G-bird's lymph-nodes is swollen like a tangerine!

**NAP ON DESK DOESN'T COUNT AS NAP!**

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