What Day is it?

Just when things slow down enough to where I have two days in a row of thinking "I'm bored," things pick up again. This weekend we had two yachts in, one Australian, one German. The Aussies hung out for three nights, learning Kubbs, drinking, having a good time. Sunday we broadcasted the Superbowl live from Denver via slingbox. It was very cool that we could watch it over the internet, but was like watching distorted videos on youtube. It still didn't take anything away from Prince's performance. No one particularly cared who won (I just wanted not chicago), yet we had a big party with brats and wings, aussies and germans. Full house for the whole game. That was a lot of fun.

Then monday I went out to the Prinsendam (the ship that was supposed to come in last week but got rocked by back-to-back 60 foot waves in the Drake, they were still cleaning up the damage when they arrived here on monday) to sit in on the Q and A. Much better questions this time... I also got a tour of the engine room, waste treatment, laundry room, kitchen and crew quarters. Not quite a massage, but cool nonetheless.

When we got back to station, the birders needed help wrangling penguins. This might have been the funniest thing I have ever seen. The fledglings are leaving the nests (only a month after hatching) and the birders are measuring the size of the individuals getting ready to go. So we head down the beach and surround a group hanging out by the water. Armed with flagged bamboo poles and fishing nets, we corraled them into a ball and captured thirty to weigh and measure. Try to imagine 6 people running after 80 foot and a half tall penguins, all of them screaming and flapping their wings (people too). Insanity. After that we pick up the penguins by the wings (they are superstrong little creatures, really cool to hold one) take a beak and wing length measurement, stick them in a bag to weigh them.
There's Nikki blocking off the water. And a bunch of 1-2 month old penguins.