The New Year, Ice Sculpture, Card Games

New Years eve was a blast! I had so much fun kicking off the night with our eight member "Bluegrass Band" I can't remember if we came up with a name or not. We played for about an hour and fifteen minutes, and then "Dawgs on Speed" came on to play for a couple more hours and rock us polies into the new year!

There have been several people spending hours outside working on their Ice Sculptures the past couple weeks, the judging was on Sunday but no results yet. Gus and I made a dog out of our chunk of snow and ice. It was a pretty fun time! The first day we worked on it I went and got all the tools gathered up which included and electric chainsaw, generator, and a hammer. While Gus was working at the 'store' I was outside sawing and hacking away at our block hoping it wouldn't all fall apart and end up looking like a big pile of ice blocks! Turns out I was able to get a rough shape down and by the time Gus arrived it was ready for more details like the legs, head, and tail. He is a real life dog musher and has ran the Iditarod a couple times so his knowledge of doggie proportions and anatomy helped a lot! We worked for several hours through frozen beers and parts falling off, at one point we had to 'glue' the jaw and a paw back on with slush! We managed to get everything put back together and after one more day spent fine tuning, I thought he was a fine pup! They outlawed dogs here at the Pole in 1994 because of water supply contamination issues, so it's nice to have a four legged friend here, even if you have to use your imagination a bit!

There is also a cribbage tournament going on right now with around 20 people playing! I lost my first match and won the second, now only about 5 games left! There is also a good amount of time spent playing rummy and hearts. I have a season long bet going with Darren on a rummy game, our scores are well on their way to 10,000 points. The lead has been back and fourth. Last night I played Apples to Apples with a group of dayshift friends (Travis, Grace, Brian, Mark, Phil, and Wayne) until 2am! Late night for them, but so much fun!

Everyone has started talking about what they are going to do when they get off the ice. I am excited to go Fly Fishing and Backpacking in New Zealand! I hope my fishing rod and reel gets here in time!