Last Friday on the ship!!

Yup, its the last Friday I will spend on the ship. You might think I'd wax nostalgic about this and that, the incredible sunrises and sunsets, the warm weather, and the like. However, although these things are nice, nothing compares to being home, cooking in my own kitchen, sleeping in my own bed and having Jeboleth in person rather than existing as a few lines on the IM chat window. Yup, I'm ready to go home. Its been good out here, we've accomplished a lot, and I mean a LOT of work. We will have sampled 11 hydrothermal vents and taken 6 CTD casts, that is a whole lotta water. Not to mention the worms, sediment and chimney pieces. I feel like we've collected enough samples for a decade worth of data and analysis. Mookie, Maddhatter and Strawberry Shortcake broke down one of the LVWSs today, while the last sampler went over this morning. We'll get that one tomorrow, process the water, I'll set up my last induction and then we'll break that one down too. Work will be done.


For those of you who've asked, yes, we did have a good Thanksgiving dinner. The kitchen crew decided to play a little trick on the scientists and crew. The menu white board tricked us at first, as you can read from the picture, we were expecting a rather unique meal of some icky food (in my opinion at least). Luckily the real meal wasn't the case. We were served the traditional foods of veggies, mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. I also got some asparagus! One of the cooks posed a plate for me to prove to everyone that no spam or grilled liver was actually served to the poor scientists and crew. And even though I'm ready for a potato strike (for at least a few weeks), I did have some mashed potatoes and they were quite tasty. Yet, I will have to forgo potatoes for a while when I get back, because I am looking forward to December 27th's homemade latke's from Jeboleth's mom. I really like those so I want to be "potato ready" by then!


For us out here, we have one more dive tomorrow, that will be the last sub dive. As soon as Alvin is on deck we will kick the ship into high gear, chugging at 14 knots and haul butt back to land! We can see land, but haven't stepped on land since November 9th when I walked from the hotel in Manzanillo to the ship. We're coming into port to Guaymas, and I've already told you about the fun fun fun of that little town with the one-legged man.... Sigh. Most of the rest of these days we're trying to get the last bits of work done, aside from beginning to pack, and take our sleep when we can get it. I realized I haven't had a solid straight 8 - 10 hours of sleep in one session since I left the US. We have been sleeping in little pockets of time. Four hours here, three hours there, maybe up to 5.5 hours if we're lucky. I think my body is completely out of whack with this schedule. The other day I was given the wonderful opportunity to sleep in... I didn't have to wake up until 6 am (I know, gettin' crazy here!). But my body, which is now so used to waking at 4:45 am, decided to wake up , at 4:45 am. I had to force myself back to sleep, but it was one of those sleeps where you're pretending to sleep to say that you're sleeping rather than actually sleeping. Eh. I hope my sleep schedule gets back on track when I get home, I really don't want to continue to wake up at 4:45 am. :( Ah, sleep, sweet sleep....


Okay, time to go. Things get busy out here from 5:30 pm on these last few nights, hence the earlier post. I finally got a beautiful sunrise this morning, not a complete since there were still clouds in the way, but its the best so far. It was a pretty awesome sight this morning. It was a nice gift from the ocean. :D