Day 2

Gosh I'm out of shape.

I've been wondering why I've been shaking the entire day I've been here. Apparently I'm so out of shape that standing is a chore for my leg muscles. Must work on that. Granted, coffee for the first time in six weeks helped a bit with the shaking. O glorious day. The Return of Coffee.

We started off our morning by sleeping in a full hour. We woke at 7.30 MT, a step up from the 6.30 David wanted us at. He cut us some slack because we were all pretty wiped after yesterday. I had my first cup of coffee in six weeks. Again; O glorious day.

The Don came and brought us Christmas cookies! We're all very excited. We planned to have turkey tomorrow. (Turkey sandwiches!) and rice and gravy. Yum. After The Don left, we split up into our groups to start our daily work. David got the lovely task of cleaning the toilet bucket. I trained Zena on the ATVs and the EVA suits because she will most likely be using them the most. I don't know if I'm going to go out in them. They're awfully heavy. I know I have to do it at least once, but probably I won't be doing it often.

After ATV training, I returned to a pleasant surprise. Derek had fixed our computer in the observatory. It was very exciting, but we couldn't do anything because we were extremely hungry. We broke for lunch, and talked about splitting up into three shifts, paired off so that I could get my work done at night with the telescope.

Point: The moon, while being very pretty, is extremely annoying when it's full. It's blotting out everything except the very brightest stars and Mars. This would normally not be a bad thing, because we would still be able to look at Mars, but the moon is positioned such that it blinds anyone trying to look at Mars. They're very close together on the sky right now. Annoying.

Even if we do get the scope and computer working, I might not get any data because the moon is so bright.

After lunch we refilled the water tank and then went on a hike out to a mountain. I didn't go up to the top, I waited at the bottom with a walkie while the rest of my crew climbed. (Scared of heights, yea) I had a Stargate moment. It was nice and warm today (a toasty 36F!) so I opened up the neck of my coat and slipped the walkie onto my collar. This way, I could click the talk button without moving the walkie around in an irritating manner. It reminded me of what Jack O'Neill does in SG-1, and that made me inordinately happy.

On the way back we saw a desert hare. There is life on Mars after all!

The toilet issue is still rather horrific. It's supposed to get down to below zero tonight, and not get above freezing for the rest of the week. Right now we're peeing into lovely bags and dumping them outside. It's slightly gross, but the water pipes above ground keep freezing, and there's not much we can do about it. Jeff and his engineers are working their hardest to remedy the problem.

Without any science to perform, I'm not sure what exactly I will be doing here. I'll probably help Zena out in the lab a bit if I can, or do housework-type things around the HAB. I really hope we get the telescope working.

Night Monkey out

Day 2