No ice for me, please (but I wish I had some)

I'm not going down to Antarctica this year. While I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to do it two years in a row, I really wanted to spend time with my son during his first Thanksgiving and Christmas and all that. Between Antarctica and military stuff I haven't had Christmas with my wife since around 2003 I think. So it was a tough decision to make but this year I'll be at home with my new family while my friends go down to the ice for the '07-'08 austral summer. Some of them are already there and one of them, Cliff, is keeping a daily blog. I wish I could be there so I could do what I do best-sit in a little tower on the ice looking at the sky and watching the planes come and go. Collecting snowflakes, making AT-AT videos and bootleg Iron Maiden shirts and looking for old robot cartoons in New Zealand record stores was pretty fun, too. It's especially rough missing out this time because I expect that in a few years the job may not even be available once the machines get good enough to replace human weather observers. I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back but if I don't I am happy with the memories I have.