WE'RE BACK!!

Ah yes, back in Antarctica... after three months of traveling it seems good to be home and then I snap out of it and realize what home means!



OY!!
Currently we're in the middle of our vessel offload process which is pretty much exhausting. This is our resupply for the year and it's days of long shifts and work, work, work!


The boat was delayed for quite some time due to problems with the Russian Icebreaker, the Krasin. Seems it broke a prop while trying to break our Ice...


Once vessel offload is over then people can leave and we can start digging in for winter!

Mainbody starts TOMORROW!...

WOW!... Today is October 3rd and that means that the first flight of mainbody is scheduled for ~gulp~ TOMORROW!! In the first week we are expecting to get about 500 more people in town and with only a handful of us "winter-overs" left, there won't be many leaving so it's just going to seem like an invasion! The good news is that we now only have 14 days left and that means only 10 more days of work, so it should go fast. We've also got a few friends coming in so that will mean some good times with them before we flee the continent. Travel plans are all in place and I'll be sure to post that to our other blog: http://thedietsches.blogspot.com, so check it out!

New Zealand Residency Progress...

Some good news has come via the New Zealand Immigration offices... We have been granted a 2 year Work to Residency visa!! We're super excited and have already been hammering out a plan on achieving our full residency. We anticipate spending next winter in Antarctica with me leaving at Winfly to step into a job in New Zealand. Once I have been employed in that job for three months we can apply for our full residency!

Winfly is HERE!...

OY! Winfly is here and and half way over. New people are running around and all smiley and happy and you just wanna choke them! It's a hard thing to deal with these folks after you've been down here and isolated and really got things just the way you want and then that first plane lands and all hell breaks loose!

Winfly is also the return of the sun and an actual sunrise...

So it's not all bad, we did get a LOT of package mail in and so Heather and I have plenty of Farscape, SG1 and Six Feet Under to watch. Here's a picture of me on the right in the mailroom sorting mail...

Still, it's a weird time and a bit of an adjustment. We're now reduced down to one room until we leave but that does force us to pack up a lot of our stuff and makes it easier for our eventual departure now scheduled for October 17th.
Some good news has come via the New Zealand Immigration offices...

August and Winfly is just a few days away...

WOW! I can hardly believe it's August and that Winfly, the time when we get our first flights of the winter, is just a few days away! OY!! A lot has been happening in our lives:

First, there was a crazy hall party two weekends ago that just kind of happened. We were invited over to dorm 155 for drinks with a few friends and that seems to have been the plan for nearly everyone in that dorm so it didn't take long for things to turn into a full blown hall party with lots of mischief! Here's a picture of Heather dancing up a storm in our friend Tony's disco room...

and here's a picture of us together...


So that was two weekends ago... This last weekend we got notice from the New Zealand Immigration Service that they will be granting us a two year Work To Residency visa! We've got three months to claim the visa, which we'll do first thing off the Ice in October and then we'll have two years in which I'll have to get a job in NZ with a NZ company that is considered "skilled employment", which basically means it's employment that applies to my education or previous job experience. Once I've held the job for three months we can apply for our residency, so we're practically there! WHOOO HOOO!! Sorry, no photographic evidence of that weekends festivities!


Oh, and as for the potential job in Port Hueneme... Well, in typical Raytheon fashion the powers-that-be have failed to make a decision on anything and, in turn, failed to tell us anything. I got an unofficial email from one of our bosses noting that the subject was supposed to come up at a recent meeting and didn't and his advice was to make other plans because it likely wasn't going to happen this year.

Still no official word, but Heather and I have vowed to only wait until Friday and then take ourselves off the list. Part of me actually hopes they do get it together and then are left with NOBODY to fill the positions! Would serve them right!

Mid July and all is well...

Here it is mid July already! Hard to believe that time has flown by like it has. This being my first single season down here has surely made all the difference as the perspective of a full year contract, and the mid-winter burnout that comes with it, is not nearly what a single season, winter feeling is! I'm not nearly as toasty as when I've done the full summer season and then right on into the winter, but I'll check back in August when the first flights arrive and see just how I feel then!
Life is good, although we're still waiting on things like our court case against the IRS, our residency application with NZ Immigration and the Port Hueneme job. Still, it's not bad and we're managing to have some fun and keep our sanity. Whether it's lounging with friends at someones birthday party...

Or throwing a BBQ for my customers, complete with a game of horse shoes...

or just watching the night sky for aurora's, it's all good!

I've actually been working on our other blog, our Off Ice Antics blog, and that's coming along nicely. Just updated it with our travel info from last year off Ice, which took up a LOT of time! We hit five countries, from Australia/Pacific to East and West Europe, then a whirlwind tour of the states! Crazy to think about all that traveling in a three month period but it was fun and we'll be doing something similar again this year although we're still waiting on the decision for the Port Hueneme gig to decide on what travel plan to go with... Waiting for a decision from the home office is always trying... Times like this I think their just trying to break me!

Anyhow, we should be hearing some news soon and I'll try to keep things a bit better updated here, so stay tuned!

Well, that last storm was big, but the one we had yesterday, June 30th, was a BEAST!! High winds and lots of snow!


Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!!

Midwinter and midwinter storms!

Well, believe it or not, there's been a LOT going on here! We celebrated our midwinter here and the 50th winter over!

It was quite a lovely evening with a formal, or as formal as you can get, dinner followed by dancing and then live music at our Coffee House. Heather was looking SMASHING!

And I wasn't looking too bad...

That's me and some of my homies. From left, Ben, me, Jason, Ron and Andrew.
But of course, there's always a picture of Heather and me...

That was a great evening and one of those points you mark your memories of this place with.
Another marking point is the storms we have here! Our friend Christine held a pool to see who could predict as close to the date our first "Condition 1" storm! These are the worst of the worst and are times when the station pretty much closes down and you stay home and ride it out. Last year the winds hit 160+ MPH in our worst storm and a few days ago we peaked at 120 MPH! Last night into this morning we had long sustained winds and woke up to a "stay home" message on our pagers. Well, that didn't last but an hour or so and we got the message that the winds had died and it was time to return to work. We all wandered back to our workcenters to shovel out. Here are a few photos of what I had to look forward to outside of my building...




We're still waiting on word about the Port Hueneme jobs and worry a bit that the company may take the good idea they had and tweak it into something... ackward (and I'm being nice when I use that word!). So, holding pattern here for the IRS case, our New Zealand residency application and the Port Hueneme project! I'll keep you posted!
So that's us... halfway through winter now and it's all downhill to sunshine! First flight of winfly is scheduled for August 20th!