antarctica raze a scientific engineer and a welder both became avid readers to pass the time and combat the overwhelming sense of isolation while working on king george island. for four years the welder went out of his way to spoil the endings of books the engineer was preparing to read. finally the engineer snapped and stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife. it's the first attempted murder on record in antarctica, as far as anyone can tell. my first thought after reading about this was, "i probably would have done something similar in his position." 181030 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I forgot to tell this story! A week before Christmas, my uncle - the neglectful MENSA one - texted me something like "Tomorrow I'll be in a place you've written about...on walls." I showed the message to Dad, suspecting a riddle. Walls? What had a wall? "Berlin!" I said, and answered that. "No...you haven't written about Berlin on your walls," was the reply. "Your walls"? And then it clicked. When I was five and my brother was three, we'd gotten hold of two permanent markers and proceeded to decorate my room. He scribbled on the crawl space door. On the walls, I wrote the name of my favourite place four or five times. Needless to say, our parents were not pleased. Later on I was embarrassed about the spelling: for several years, "ANTARTCICA" loomed over my bed as a reminder against hubris. "I give up, unless it's Antarctica (?!)" I wrote. Yes, it was Antarctica, bracket question mark exclamation mark bracket. I was both excited and jealous. The way it seemed so casual... You know, we're in South America anyway and what's a few thousand more dollars? might as well take a jaunt to the frozen continent, right? ...With a grr that this mooch of an uncle got to go before me. (I respect mooching food and small things, but depending entirely on a partner for money seems unfair unless you can't help it.) So boo, he got to my bucket list place first. My wall list. My off-the-wall list. Then again, why not? I'm not in a harsh situation, as in they_told_us_where_to_live. And imagine being dumped in the middle of Antarctica. THAT would be bad, wouldn't it? See, it's better being in the middle of nowhere here. And I can ask him for Antarctica pictures. 240122 ... e_o_i Today my brother got a postcard. Turns out Uncle Ron went on a cruise in Antarctic waters. He never got to go on land, apparently. The boat didn't even pass the -60 degree mark (latitude, not temperature) needed to enter the Antarctic Circle. But the postcard had two killer whales on it. 240125 what's it to you? who go blather from