Commercial Items Identified on my Commute

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I see a lot of interesting commercialitems on truck on I-75. When you make the commute many times you start to see the same items over and over again. Sometimes it is huge equipment tires, sometimes heavy equipment of different types. I see these huge blocks of aluminum going North. I think about what the mill must look like and where it is going. And how much aluminum foil a block like this will make. Using the Tesla Full Self-Driving (supervised) allows me to look for these things on the highway. The FSD also helps me through the crazy stop and goes. Easily over 70MPH and then sudden traffic at dead stops, frequently. I see accidents every trip. It is amazing there aren't more. A side note- aluminum foil has a shiny side and a dull side. The reason why is that the foil is folded as it goes through massive rollers. The shiny side is the side that faces the steel roller. The dull side faces itself - aluminum.
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It is Christmas on the ice. A white Christmas is pretty much inevitable I suppose although it is kind of gray and a little breezy today. There is volcanic dust blowing around a bit and it feels kind of dirty and cold outside. I opened my presents I had here and Bonnie sent me photos of the others. She didn't even have to wrap them. Our dinner last night was fairly spectacular. We had lobster tails, beef wellington and roast duck. Life is harsh in Antarctica, just not here, just not today. I went the chapel at 12:00 midnight and that was sort of weird having a midnight mass with the sun shinning thru the stained glass. There is just no getting used to that sun. I gave some sneak previews of my video I will be entering in the film festival on January 22nd. I will being doing some more editing, but I think the bulk of the work is over for now.

This morning an individual comes running up to me in the galley morning, "Charlie, Charlie", he says... I didn't recognize him at first. It took me a couple of minutes. We met early in the season and has been out in the field for the last 7 weeks. He lost a lot of weight and grew his beard. He also had a peculiar look like I was the first human he had seen. And in some ways I guess I was. He had some great stories and it was interesting watching him describe stuff and decompress over his experiences of tent fires and the night he almost died. They are back now and it sounds like they did some great science. What a difference between these science camps and the main stations. There is no comparison.

I got on the ham radio this morning and made a nice contact on the north island of New Zealand. I will be going up there later to see what else I can raise.

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