Life in the cold

This year at Pole, I got hired as a carpenter helper. I originally was hoping to get on as an electrician helper, or maintenance, but by the time Cori and I decided to come back, all those spots had been filled. Our former supervisor, who'd been begging us for the past 3 years to come back, got me on with the carpenters. I'm not a carpenter, never wanted to be, but, I thought in the back of my mind that I was enough of a well rounded individual to be able to pass myself off as a beginning carpenter. --I now laugh at that foolish notion every time I try to hammer a simple nail. Whether it's the mittens I work in, the extreme cold that makes the wood split, or the body harness that causes me to flounder around; those nails seem to keep eluding me. Not just the nails, the screws that dont seem to want to go in, or jump off the roof whenever I try to put them in. Those simple, pesky tools of the trade have humbled me to no end! --Luckily, I'm not the only one who has difficulties with our daily battle on the roof. Whenever I'm about ready to throw that hammer over with the nails, I take a look around and see someone else shaking their head, and you just have to laugh! We're at the South Pole! --I sure do miss those rocks though!