What do you do for fun?

What Do You Do For Fun?

16 April 2017

Hi everyone, sorry for the very long silence.  We had several weeks of really bad internet connection (think 1 Kb/s, or literally hours to upload a single picture), and then I got lazy.  Right now our satellite window is in the middle of the day, and I feel a bit guilty about blogging during standard work hours.  Even though I can flex my schedule, old habits die hard.

So I thought I would talk a bit about social activities on the station.  I find boredom is rarely an issue, which is a pleasant surprise.  We're obviously a very small community, but a good one.  There is at least one organized activity every night of the week.  On Mondays folks play board games int he galley.  On Tuesday we're holding an astronomy class, followed by TV series night.  We started watching HBOs "West World" and are currently going through the BBC's "Sherlock."  Both are excellent if you haven't seen them.  I'm giving a few guest lectures for the Astronomy class which is really fun.  In fact I'm doing the next two weeks covering stellar evolution.  We have a resident astrophotgraphy expert who conducts classes on that.  Wednesday's feature volleyball and Unicycling classes, and Thursday's have a casual hangout/conversation group and a classic movie from the 40s-70s.  Fridays offer some sort of sportsball game in the gym, and on Saturdays our station manager shows an adventure film of some sort.

Of course, these are just the main options, and not everyone attends all of them.  You can usually find someone to hang out with by looking around the halls, or there's a pretty good book and movie library that you can always borrow from to just watch quietly in your room or one of the two TV lounges.  There's also a small but adequate gym which I've been using very regularly.  I also volunteer in our greenhouse a few days a week, so that we have *some* sort of fresh vegetables for salads, etc.

Overall, I manage to keep occupied and entertained.  Signing off for now, hopefully I'll be better about being regular here.

Oh, one more thing!  We had our first visible auroras of the season a few days ago!  The first I've seen in person, which has long been a goal of mine.  I didn't have my camera, so no pictures yet, but there should be even better shows to come as it gets darker.  I leave you with two pictures.  One shows another social option, two different groups which meet on Saturdays and Sundays.  They don't quite see eye to eye on things...

BYOTFH=Bring Your Own Tin Foil Hat

And the other day/night (there's really no difference), there was a great moon pillar.  I took a few pictures, and while this ine is a bit dark, I think the starburst pattern on the moon makes it one of the best