Happy New Year, Baby

There is a tradition at Palmer Station that the youngest person on station dresses as Baby New Year on New Year's Eve. This year, I am the youngest person. That means I got to wear the depends. That means I got to prance around the Antarctic nearly naked. That means embarassing pictures of me are plastered all over station (well, I guess only one of those is from New year's...). But, damn, was it funny.
Our New Year's Carnie Prom turned out to be a great event. We had beer, dancing, kazoos, champagne, singing, more beer, a 6'3" baby, carnival games, beer fights and basically a whole lot of people having a kick ass time. I even managed to survive until 5 a.m. in order to be with my special lady for New Year's, Pacific Standard Time. New Year's day was nice too, because we got the day off and I spent all of it sleeping through movies. Good times.
One of the Holland America cruise ships was in today. There are more people on that one ship than the entire scientific community and support staff in Antarctica. Crazy. I was supposed to go answer questions after the science lecture, but went out krilling instead. Too much work to do this week. But another one will be here in a couple weeks, so I expect to get to lecture 600 people on that one (2 sessions of 6oo or more people, to be correct).
Anyway, the holidays have come and gone and in a week I will be field team leader. No more days off for a few months.