The weather has been lovely, again... sunny and warmer, mid-40s daytime. In the orange dome tent, it was mid-50s and one of the team (J.) took off her layers and was in a tank top yesterday. It's all relative... after days of 35F and drizzle, sun and 58 feels balmy! And I think we're all readjusted metabolically to "winter" setpoints.
Saturday was a workday, we spent time testing software fixes in the morning, then the team stayed (their choice) through lunch while I went back and forth the 5 km up out of the crater and to base camp. Where the repeaters weren't getting finished because of contention with telemedicine, they were doing a telecon so we couldn't test our connection. It was necessary to be a bit hard-nosed at that point... I'd been patient the previous day, bumped by telemedicine experiments. So I appealed to Pascal... that was sufficient to reshuffle priorities, and the remaining net bugs were addressed and we had a connection to the drilling site. :) Where we reached 74cm in the pilot hole. Then... when we pulled out of the hole, preparing to move the drill to its "production" hole site, the casing came up with it. It had to be partially dug out, and
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dangerpudding today cut the casing off with her Dremel. It is dry down there at 1m, little ice or liquid water, so I think we'll omit the casing for the next hole.
Sunday mornings are traditionally a brunch at 10:30am, instead of our usual 7:30am breakfast meeting. My DAME team had been pushed nonstop since Monday, and we were exactly on schedule, so I decided to relent and give them a break and stand down today, given the short day after brunch. It was good to relax... we all took turns in the wooden shower booth with the garden hose, and felt better. Today I handwashed laundry, and applied sealant to my leaky tent seams, and caught up on email, LJ and photo uploads.
And last night I was persuaded to try Skype with
cyan_blue... it was great to see *and* hear her, live. For years, I've done occasional webcams, without sound. The IP phones are now working, too... including the one down at the drill site, miles away down in the crater. If anyone else wants to try, let me know. Late nights here are best, so as to not interfere with others' bandwidth needs.
Tomorrow... back to drilling full-time. But the respite, combined with sun and clear skies, has cheered many of us here.
