Thursday, December 21, 2006

Other Random Connections at McMurdo

As I've mentioned before, Sean approached me at the Coffeehouse two weeks ago to ask if I was from Westby. What I forgot to mention in the story was that he also told me that a co-worker of his named Paulene has a sister who lives in Westby, a woman by the name of Raylene. I don't know Raylene, but when I ran into Paulene and asked if she'd been to visit Westby, she had! She seemed a little shocked when I randomly stopped her in the hallway.

I got an email from my mom earlier this month, and she asked if I had met this one guy who was down here working for Mayo Clinic on a study they were doing on Polies. The email went on to say that my dad was bartending at his part-time weekend job about 6 miles from any town, when a guy and his wife walked into the bar and asked my dad where he got his Antarctica hat from. Dad told him about me, and the guy told my Dad that his son was working for this Mayo Clinic study. Unfortunately, he had already left by the time I heard the story.

The last random occurence I've had down here was just last week Wednesday, when we threw a little bon voyage party for the film crew on their last night in town. A few beakers (that's what we call scientists down here) stopped by later on in the night. We get to talking and turns out that two of them are from Wisconsin. I blurt out that I grew up in the La Crosse area, one says he's from Madison (that's what they usually say), and the other said he was from Eau Claire. I corrected myself and told them that I've been living in the Eau Claire area on and off for the last eight years since I studied at Stout and worked in EC recently. The beaker tells me he's a professor at UW-Eau Claire, so I ask him what he teaches. Geography. Whoa - I ask him if he knows my friend Dave Speer, who I used to work with at Radio Shack. Turns out Speer is actually a student of Harry Jol's and has a bunch of assignments to turn in soon. And Harry's leaving the next day with the film crew. So before he left the Hotel California (my dorm) lounge, we wrote Speer a quick email. I couldn't believe how random that was... too bad I hadn't met him earlier.

Posted by Katie from the Ice @ 11:30 PM