Octobrrrrrr

October was dominated by my preparation to leave early at the end of the month to interview to be an Astronaut with NASA. Spoiler alert: I ended up not being able to make it in person and staying instead to mid-November at the South Pole. But I’ll tell this story from the perspective of someone who thought they were leaving at the end of the month of October! 
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We had an Octoberfest and Jenna had a karaoke birthday party in the B1 lounge.
I continued with teaching my programming class, and had a regular group who attended and made great progress.
I finished my copper mug in welding class!
I switched my sleep schedule to CST (Houston time) by reprogramming my lights and got the official letter from NASA to follow up their phone call.

I worked out at least an hour a day all October!
I got my winter over medal and signed the pole marker. 
I spent a lot of time writing in preparation for some big deadlines (about 60 pages of material) on November 15.

My apple watch got bricked when it tried to automatically update itself on a bad satellite pass.
I started shipping stuff to home and I sent out a newsletter telling people they could get postcards: I got a ton of responses! Overwhelming!

The first plane arrived October 11. It didn’t bring any fresh fruit, unfortunately.
I took the pilots on a tour of DSL. I did an outreach event and answered questions of 3rd graders, which was super fun.

I said goodbye to our first winter over to leave, Warren. 
Amy and I did our last SKF testing (motor testing of the telescope) and docked (parked the telescope so we can climb in it from inside the building) October 13.
The flags that flew the previous year were raffled off as they were replaced and I won the US Antarctica program flag.
I worked on my postcards and sent more stuff from the post office. My last programming class had poor attendance which I was super duper disappointed by–all the other classes had great attendance.
I worked on updating my journal and worked on my postcards. I packed even more.

Did my last day of greasing–lubricating the gears of the telescope outdoors in cold weather on a roof. I also wrote my last day postcards (sent 317!). I also discussed transition tasks on the telescope with Amy.
We took a group photo in ERT–Emergency Response Training, in which I am in the medical group.
I worked on packing. I worked on creative writing.

We had two power outages, and telescope had trouble coming up each time but eventually we were able to get it back to normal operations.

October 21st, I had what I thought might be my last visit to the telescope. My flight was delayed and then canceled due to weather. I took Christian, the IceCube winter over for a tour of DSL–the Dark Sector Laboratory which hosts SPT. On October 22nd my flight was canceled again due to weather. On October 23rd, the weather was great but the pilots needed crew rest so didn’t fly. 

October 24th got up early in the morning. I had slept fitfully, it was my last chance to leave in time for my NASA interview. I “skuaed” or put out for others to reuse the rest of my toiletries and cleaned my room. I even took the sheets off of my bed. At first Oregano, the night meteorologist, said it looked great for a flight. He was smiling. We played cards later (Batman flux) with Christian at which point Oregono said the weather had changed: the people in McMurdo had additionally been using an incorrect weather model. The visibility was still OK, so Oregano said it would be pilot’s discretion. At around 7am I finally got the call that the plane was
canceled, and my last chance to make the NASA interview in person was spent. I did a lot of talking with NASA and canceling flights and rerouting things. I unpacked and was very tired so took I took a nap. When I woke up I was ready and even excited to stay at the Pole until mid-November and get the chance to see my lovely telescope every day for another few weeks.

One October 27 the first C-130, or large plane, came in with new people! I had my first “freshie”–fresh vegetable, an apple.
October 28 I had my NASA interview. I can’t say anything about the interview process, but I was proud to have done NASA’s first ever Skype interview to be an astronaut. More updates on the process next newsletter! The entire station kept their internet usage to a minimum so that I could have enough bandwidth. I also had to borrow all my clothing (I didn’t have anything professional enough) and a friend even braided my hair, which hadn’t been cut since April, to make it look more professional. It was a fun experience and such a privilege to be a part of.
October 29 we had our station halloween party. There was also an overflight by NASA Ames of the pole and they took a picture from above of the station. Can you spot where the South Pole Telescope is?
October 30 the photo of the winter over crew was posted in the hall with all the others, since the inception of the US’ permanent presence at the pole, every winter over crew has a group photo posted. Super proud to be in the lineup.
October 31st we again docked the telescope and did some maintenance. Christian came out to see us dock.