Journalist's Report

February 23, 2008

Private Ham



Today the crew woke up to sunny skies again, and as soon as the last
breakfast of their first week on Mars (the horrible scrambled eggs with
bacon that the crew has been putting off eating for as long as
possible) was finished, began preparing an EVA. The BioBabe needed to
collect some more samples for her research project, and Fam and Googly
tagged along to help her out. Interesting lessons for all soon
followed.

BioBabe learned that seeing through a thin film of water is difficult
when most of her helmet visor fogged up. Googly learned that opening
sample canisters while holding them in the wrong orientation can
sometimes result in a loss of valuable material from inside the
canisters, and Fam learned that it isn’t necessary to attempt to
eliminate other crew members (with judicious use of local gravitation)
while on EVA, but apparently forgot that sim breaks are bad, because
she committed another one and moved firmly into second place on the
score board.

Lunch was beef stroganoff with noodles, and the entire crew was
surprised when the look and taste of the meal weren’t completely
offensive and abjectly intolerable. The crew ate and prepared a second
EVA, wherein Kim, Whisky, and Lox took a long walk with their good
friend Mr. GPS. Kim set up his treasure hunt course, to be used in
future experiments, and all arrived back home safely in time to see
another loaf of bread go into the machine.

While the rest of the crew enjoyed the great and wild Martian outdoors,
the engineers kept busy at home. The ATVs were topped off with fuel
and oil, and work continued on the GreenHab. Phillip stayed in all day
and used his computer’s local network to have a series of extended
electronic conversations with his logistics container. Life continued
as normal, with the crew debating whether to watch more Firefly, break
out the Star Wars, or just get to the serious business of having a
beer. The Canadians on the crew continued to attempt to convert the
other members, showing several albums worth of wonderful pictures of
wilderness and trying to dismiss temperatures of -60 Celsius as
tolerable. No non-Canadian crew personnel have yet indicated any
desire to turn in their passports and start flying maple-leaf flags,
although it is expected that the voluble praise for large, open
territories empty of everything but moose, picturesque trees, and
beautiful frozen lakes will continue.

The crew is now awaiting another delicious dinner and a quiet evening
before getting well-rested, so that they might have an even more
successful day tomorrow.