Oxygen Requires The Don to Live

New Year’s Eve, I thought about counting down to midnight like this:

10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… BLASTOFF!

But then I decided that’d be a little too corny. Even for me.

Here is a blog post full of non sequitur:

We got up this morning to watch the first sunrise of the year from Radio Ridge, but managed to miss it. We’ll try again tomorrow … get outside extra early. The ISS will be passing overhead again, too, this time when the sky is still dark.

We have almost finished the skirt around the hab, to keep the wind out from underneath it. I got to play with saws today.

Jeff has only one lung.

The crew has really bonded by now. MDRS has been, at least for me, even more of a social experiment than scientific. Group dynamics are critical in any long-duration mission … imagine being stuck on a spaceship for six months en route to Mars! Ten days is hardly a drop in the six-month bucket, but I’ve been amazed how well complete strangers have not only gotten along, but really worked as a team, and enjoyed doing it.

I’ve sort-of abandoned biology here for the time being. I collected some soil samples on an EVA, which will be analyzed in the lab, but I’ve been much more interested in doing practical things around the hab. Being around these engineers has been an inescapable reminder of how much I don’t know.

The Don came to visit us today. It’s supposed to be close to 0 degrees F … and he was wearing short sleeves!

For fun, we’ve been watching Firefly, and having bad pun tournaments. Tonight we’ve opened a new can of worms: rewriting Chuck Norris jokes, replacing Chuck with “The Don” …