15 ft of pure white snow

We finally got out of town and went on a hike yesterday. The way at first was very steep, and I was totally out of breath and sort of amazed that they just let people climb up these crazy volcanic crags, when they are so intense about SAFETY.
(We have a safety meeting every morning at work for about 20 minutes. We are working our way through a binder of dittos about all sorts of safety, and today was tool safety. Each one is easily summed up by "Don't be a dumbass and you won't get hurt".)
Anyway, the hike was pretty magnificent, and we didn't get hurt, and my facemask froze solid, even though it was pretty warm by Antarctica standards. There is a Virgin Mary statue in a cage at one promentory, where people have left little votives and mardi gras beads (of course) and remembrances to other dead Catholics. That was very cool.
Did you know that there are GIANT golf-balls perched on the hills above McMurdo Station? Well, there are, a white one and a black one. They house giant satellite dishes, I'm told. I really wish they housed giant planetariums, like in The Dark Crystal, with spinning brass and silver and ebony and onyx balls that move in concordance with the planets. Oh well, a girl can dream.
And dream I do: the view of ANTARCTICA is pretty nice and also impossible to take a picture of. The mountains are SO BIG and the ocean is frozen with ice SO OLD. I don't know I'm just a speck on whiskey-drinking dust. Trying to stay warm in the face of UTTER EMPTINESS.i don't now. to really connect with a place I have to form my own mythology about it. Here it's pretty easy. Ice crevasses and far away mountains where Nothing lives can be the stuff of fairy tales. So that is comfortable for me. I'm not sure where this behavior came from. But the mountains are really East of the Sun, West of the Moon....


I should take a picture of my hands to show you what "the driest continent" means.


La Musica

I would like to recommend my new favorite band Beruit, and if I haven't gone off to you about them, er.....him, then I probably haven't seen you in about two months. During my brief stint at the record store I was shelving albums and read the little record blurb on the front of the CD (which also had a very intreguing cover) and straight up bought it. I've discovered some of my favorite music by reading, not listening. When I worked at Bookcafe I would read SO MANY music reviews that I would base all my music shopping on stuff that sounded in print like I would like it.
Anyway, Beruit is like a Balkan Brass band mixed with Neutral Milk Hotel. Fucking Fantastic. Upliftng and introspective at the same timereminds me of a place so vivid, but a place in which I never lived...

I also am in the midst of a Billy Idol renaissance. Before i left the Real World, Lucia let me burn her Billy Idol Cd (she has like every album) , and I am about to make an all-rockin' morning mix for work...