the ride home

Jeff Jones (a JSC flight surgeon, formerly responsible for the Space Station crew) is doing research in planetary protection -- on microbe diffusion from the camp areas (current and the 1997-99 base location) on Devon Island. The surrounding soil is sterile... one may as well try to culture vermiculite. Except where humans have brought in bacteria and nutrients to support them in the soil... So Jeff took a set of careful soil samples and needed to keep them sealed and frozen for the trip back to Houston. Problem was, how to do this given six flights and customs and no dry ice in Resolute?
( travel home, and a photo )

spouse fall down, go boom

Last night patgreene tripped on the living room rug and fell down hard on her left knee, twisting and hyper-extending it. As well as breaking the glass she was holding and bruising her wrist. Her doctor this afternoon said he thought it was a torn ligament and would be acutely painful to walk for 2 weeks, and take 6 weeks to be mostly healed. Pat will need an MRI session this week to confirm that it isn't worse than that.

This leaves me frantically trying to get things caught up after the Arctic, no time to adjust, trying to get things together for Spain in 3+ weeks, and having to run back and forth between the office and home several times a day to take care of Pat and the kids. The latter are chafing, stuck at home, but there's not much I can do there. Likewise WRT food, there will have to be a lot of McDonald's over the next couple of weeks. Sigh. So much for a chance to catch my breath before plunging in... hopefully the MRI won't show something worse, I don't know how I'd manage to support everyone if Pat had to have surgery and was on crutches for two months.