Saturday 11th December and Sunday 12 December

I've decided to combine Saturday and Sunday because, to the casual
observer, what we did on these two days would seem repetitive and
uninteresting, however if you are a dallas bus, a supervisor computer, a
spectrograph called Nigel, a winter-over scientist called Karim or a
piece of rubbish, then you would be most interested.

The dallas bus had more cables swapped and being in the mood to change
things, Jon added some new circuits and replaced some old ones. This
involved lots of soldering and he didn't even burn himself - this young
lecturer is learning well, silver end = hot. The supervisor computer had
its backup batteries changed and The spectrograph called Nigel had his
images looked at and his software tweaked.

I started writing some instructions for Karim, every few weeks or so
we're going to get him to check a few things in the AASTINO to make sure
everything is dandy. I alternated between doing this and trying the
teach Simone the computer the meaning of random music play. She seems to
think it involves either playing 2-5 songs then stopping or cycling
between the same 6 songs, somewhat like a commercial radio station...of
all things, this is starting to drive us batty.

There was a baby foot (foozball) tournament on Saturday night which Jon
and I got roped into. I've played the game twice before and Jon admits
he is not very good but we thought we would be playing on the same team
so at least it would be a laugh. Turns out in some baby foot ritual, the
teams are chosen at random...uh oh, there were going to be a couple of
not very happy Italians coupled to some unskilled Aussies. I was playing
with Luigi the carpenter who can't speak a word of English so I couldn't
really explain to him my lack of skill on the baby foot table. We lost
the first game, although I did manage to fluke one goal. By some random
miracle we won our second game but lost the third.

Jon and I also got involved in a French card game called Tarot which Jon
had played before but I hadn't. I would try to explain the game but I
still don't understand all the rules...and don't get me started on the
crazy scoring system. I watched the first few hands then alternated
hands with Jon, trying not to lessen our score too much. At last weeks
game they were playing for high stakes, the loser had to do the winners
washing up turn. This week no one was on the roster for washing up so we
were playing for Sunday breakfast in bed. The winner of the game was one
of the drillers who was starting work at 6:45am so I think the loser got
off the hook.

On Sunday we had the regular camp meeting which is carried out in a
combination of Italian, French and a little bit of English. Jon and I
usually understand about a quarter of the meeting and then make the rest
up. One thing we did get from the meeting was we found out that we'll be
leaving on the 16th of December at 5am. There are six people on our
flight and 9 on the flight leaving on the 18th/19th, most of whom are
bound for L'Astrolabe. The plane is limited to carrying 900kg so the
people on the second flight have to put their luggage on our flight. If
the second plane doesn't come, due to bad weather here or Dumont
D'Urville, the 9 people on that flight will have to wait for L'Astrolabe
to come back again in January, L'Astrolabe waits for no man, woman or
penguin. After the meeting we had a group photo outside with Concordia
in the background.

**********************************************************************
Monday 13th December, Dome C
Packing Up
**********************************************************************
Sid and Jimmy the engines got some attention today, I think they deserve
it because they work hard keeping us warm and the instruments running.
Jon installed some new software that allows the O2 snap value to set to
below 1300 without an sensor error reading, so there. He also gave the
engines a service and now they are "sweet as".

I was back to rubbish sorting today. On Sunday I sorted the inside
rubbish, a riveting task involving separating paper, recyclable plastic,
other plastic and random bits and pieces (ie electronics bits, wire,
metal). Today we attacked the big crate of rubbish that has been sitting
in the snow for 2 years. Turns out there was a lot of snow sitting
inside the crate. At one stage I climbed into the crate, not an easy
task when wearing ECW. I hoisted myself up the side and tried to swing
my leg over...nope couldn't raise it high enough. I tried again, got one
leg on top of the crate, Jon grabbed my arm and pulled and I went in
somewhat sideways. I then grabbed the shovel and started hurling the
snow out of the crate (after separating out the rubbish). We had to
continually go inside to defrost our feet because our shoes are designed
for working on the coast of Antarctica rather than on the plateau.

When we emptied the rubbish crate we found the old ICECAM box, full of
lithium batteries. We went into destruction mode, grabbed the wire
cutters and stanley knives and cut all the cables and ripped out all the
batteries. Jon commented that it is much more fun and easier to wreck
things than to fix them and make them work...we gave the AASTINO a
menacing look. The ICECAM box contained about 50 batteries and we also
had another collection of about 45 batteries which have to be either
brought home or added to the station battery deposit. Lithium batteries
are very explosive, flammable and all over nasty and don't appreciate
being shorted out so began the epic gaffe taping of the batteries. While
Jon conveniently worked very hard on the computer I gaffer taped the
terminals of all the batteries, he eventually took pity on me and helped
out by cutting the tape.

I emptied the tent and brought everything inside the AASTINO to either
pack it for coming home or to stash it somewhere in the AASTINO. This
resulted in the floor space in the AASTINO reducing to almost nothing.
For tomorrows entertainment we are going to take the tent down,
hopefully it isn't windy. In the afternoon Karim came over to get his
instructions for the winter. He had to wade through the mountain of
equipment and bubble wrap that I had strewn all over the place but I
think Jon managed to show him all the important stuff. The most
important, and the highlight of the AASTINO, being the superbly
installed switches for the fan and lights.



- Suze