October 10, 1975: Friday

Oh, what a beautiful day. Sunshine, warmth, clear skies, beautiful. Everyone laughing and joking. Mail’s coming in by noon. All right!

Spent the morning cleaning the lab. Moved Doug’s stuff to my closet. (My roommate is coming today). We saw a brand new bunny boot at lunch, with someone putting his initials on it. Far out. So warm, I took off the parka and ran around in my State Champ jacket. Jack came up, took some rocks, my address, and started our winch and told us how it works.

All sorts of Kiwi drillers and mustached USARPS, all new. My roommate is Steve Morrell, a Penguin Person. He’ll be leaving for Cape Crozier soon. He’s from California. Jan Boyd. Have heard a lot about her. (Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.) Only female in McMurdo. Don’t think she isn’t rich by the time the station closes. Looks like a cross between Pam Harpham and Anita, but shorter than I had imagined. Rings all over and smokes Marlboros. She has a high velocity voice. One other older lady, who is a H&N secretary.

Six letters, with four different zips. I think the problem is I gave everybody the wrong zip code. Oh, well.

Two from home (air mail stamps enclosed), none from Kay. One from Marylin Bath, Nancy, Deb, and ANDRIA! None from Joy or Cathy.

At lunch I got called for a phone patch. Gave Cathy’s number, and charge it to mine. And no connection. Told them to look up a new number. It was busy. Signal faded out. No luck. Tended to ruin my day, not getting a letter from her and Joy. But on the other hand Debrushka (addressed to Paul R. Baer, all right) and Andria made my day happy.

We’re getting the new guys psychologically acclimatized to our catabolic nonsense. They walk around wide-eyed, staring, whispering under their breaths, “Antarctica.”

“Hey! Clean the bathroom!”

“Antarctica.”

Letters off to home, Baths, and Nancy. Thinking about Deb’s and Andria’s. Guess that Cath’s and Joy’s will be down later. But then, the rule is that post cards don’t count. So I owe ‘em all letters. I rationalize pretty good, don’t I?

Interrupted by Bio-Mike while writing to Deb. Two GFAs are geology graduates, and think highly of DVDP. I’m either going to enjoy myself or make a fool of myself. Party in Mike’s room. Telling Peter Bunch and Jack Steinman stories to the new guys. Won’t get Andria’s letter written.

Days Total:
$7.00 Bought a USARP baseball cap and a penguin.