Banana!

I got a banana!! Wooo! Some freshies came in on the last flight and I got a banana! And I ate an orange last night! It's so exciting! Yum!


Also, GO TWINS!!! Woo!! I was trying to watch the game online but could only get mlb.com so I was watching the red squares move on the bases and when outs occurred. I'm happy that they beat the tigers! Woo! I'm rooting for them tonight! I'll be keeping an eye on the score all afternoon.


And, my drugs are working! I already am starting to feel better from my antibiotics. I still try to cough up a lung every morning and I am amazed at the amount of boogers I'm still producing but I'm feeling better. Hopefully this trend will continue in the next couple days.

I was going to have something exciting to write about today but it didn't happen so maybe later. But now I'm going to introduce you to the exciting world of making batteries!! Woo! This is my new thing, Terry taught me how to make the battery packs we use to power the ozonesondes and radiosondes that we send up into the atmosphere. I even took pictures for you. :) (yes i'm a dork and I know) and no whining that this is boring, you wanted to know what I'm doing and its making batteries.

First here is my work station with my soldering gun and solder.
I'm a beast with this thing. I can melt shit like nothing else and find this highly entertaining. Next you tape together the number of single batteries needed to make a battery pack and arrange them positive to negative ends.
Then its time to melt stuff. Making sure everything is perfect, I solder the tabs on top and bottom of the batteries in a circuit. That's me about to work my magic. I told you this was exciting.
After checking the voltage to make sure I didn't short any of them, I attach wires for the connector to the instruments.
Again, I check the voltage and now I get to shrink wrap some stuff around them. I put this black plastic tube around them and shrink it with a heat gun. This is fairly entertaining as well. Then... taa daa! Finished battery pack!
These are what power our instruments. I realize that was really thrilling so I'm going to give you a chance to catch your breath.

We took a little field trip to Cosray yesterday to clean up our storage area. Along the way, we stopped at the big orange and white NASA ball.
This receives data from the satellite circling in space. I can't tell you anything more about it. We could see where I happy camped last week from where we were.
Those tiny little dots are the buildings at the Happy Camper site, Mount Terror is the background. Yes I know the picture sucks but you come and take pictures of white and have them turn out fabulous all the time.

Lastly, I saw some seals out on the ice. They were a long ways off but they were seals. Look and see if you can find them. They are in this picture. :)
Well thats it for exciting news here on the ice. Its cold and windy today. Temp is -8F with 21 knots of wind, for a wind chill of -34F. It was pretty cloudy yesterday and still a little bit this morning but it is clearing up. We also were able to launch an ozonesonde yesterday. Sitting Bull Sonde was his name. Next up is the sonde named after me, Stephanie Sonde. Hopefully she performs well seeing as she has a super name. :)

Cheers! and Go Twins!!