Night Owls

I have about 15 minutes to post this before we lose satellite connection. Still alive down here, just been very busy working. We have been fixing bugs roughly as fast as finding them, which is a good thing, though it makes the apparent progress seem slow. But we've accomplished a lot and have started progressively more difficult tests, including a first try at operating the new IceCube strings and the old AMANDA detector (IceCube's prototype) together.

The routine I'm settling into seems to be, get up in the afternoon, have a small breakfast, go to the gym, do treadmill + weights + anything else I feel like doing, take a 34 second shower (we're allocated 2 showers per week at 2 minutes each - that comes to 34 seconds per day), work all evening and all night, punctuated by mealtimes and occasional wanderings about the station, or perhaps a movie in one of the lounges. At the end of the day I crawl into my tiny cubbyhole, watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica or read a little Pynchon, put on the white noise mix I made with Garage Band (crickets, night campsite, distant erupting volcano, cave drips), and fall asleep for 5-6 hours. Then do it all over again.

I don't think I've been outside in two or three days.