sleepless and sunlight

So I'm sure you saw the pic a couple posts back where I showed that the sun is starting to come back.  I took that maybe a week or so ago.  Most of all my work lately has been in this building or I've been able to do remotely.  If I have had to go out to do something it has been really early in the morning or toward the end of the day. Apparently I hadn't been out around noon since I took that last pic.  I went over to a building to do something about 9am today and was stuck there for about 3 hours. I left and I walked outside and was hit with what you see in the pic. It, was, amazing!  I can't believe how blue it's getting. It was enough that it kind of threw out a little light and I could barely make out the ocean, well what is now ice anyway.  Ya know that feeling where you're so giddy and excited you can't sit still? That's how I felt walking back to my shop! I was grinning ear to ear and like nervously giggling to myself the whole time. I can't believe the sun is FINALLY coming back.  Only 2 more months and I get to go homeeeeeee!!

Well I don't have any pics of this because my camera isn't good enough, but I can still tell you about it.  I've been having trouble sleeping for the last few weeks.  I'm taking either Melatonin or like a Tylenol PM type thing and that usually works great but not lately.  I usually like to get around 8 hours of sleep because of I don't I just feel so tired and dont want to get out of bed in the morning.  So normally I try and get in bed around 11:30-ish.  Lately I'm not feeling even the slightest bit tired even after taking the pills. So I try to get in bed and I just lay there, or I get up and do something and then go back to bed and maybe get to sleep. So last night I was laying in bed at about 2:30 and still couldn't sleep, I didn't feel tired at all.  I put my pager on the "aurora pager list", so if someone spots an aurora they call the firehouse and report it. Then the firehouse sends a page to that list with the information.  So I was laying there last night and my pager went off about some "intense" auroras. I couldn't sleep so I figured I'd check it out and I'm glad I did.  I went outside and it was just barely breezy so it wasn't too terrible out, I took a little walk down the road which in reality is only a few hundred yards, but everything seems further away when it's -20 outside. I found a spot where I could see them and it was kind of in a shadow so there wasn't any light in my eyes.  It's just amazing to stand there and watch how beautiful the auroras are. I stood there for a half an hour staring at the sky. The only dilema is, do I watch the auroras, or look at the stars?  The auroras are a greenish color and the just kind of move gently. They'll get brighter and dimmer and then disappear and reappear, it's like a silent little dance in the sky.  The stars are more amazing here than I've seen anywhere else.  There are so many that it seems impossible to find a patch in the sky without any.  I've never seen the stars twinkle like that before. There are so many more really bright ones. I found a 6 pack of really bright ones next to each other and they were twinkling and they'd get real bright and then get real dim like almost going out and then get real bright again. It seems like what I was seeing was almost impossible and couldn't exist but I was staring right at it.  I saw a shooting star and then I saw one that got brighter than any start I had ever seen and in a instant it went out.  It wasn't a shooting star, it didn't move at all, it was just a pinpoint of light that got incredibly bright and then went dark.  My first though was maybe that I had just seen a star die or something. I'm sure that's not what it was but I've never seen anything like that before.  I didn't see any this time but the last time I went out looking for auroras I saw 2 satellites passing overhead. I had always heard you could sometimes see satellites with the naked eye but I never had. They just moved in a straight line across the sky, it was so cool.  Last night was just amazing. I'm not sure whether I like the stars or the auroras more, tough decision.
Sometimes I get so caught up in either work, boredom,  or being home sick that I forget where I am and what an amazing experience this really is.  I was thinking about the numbers and just how few people have ever been here and been lucky enough to have seen things I've seen.  I read somewhere that about 3,000 people come through the US stations here each year.  We've had operations going on here for 55 years. Alot of people come here year after year, but even if ever single one of those 3,000 were new each year, then thats only 165,000 people who have ever been through the US stations.  Of course there are other countries who have stations here but the US outposts are by far bigger than what anyone else has. Alot of the other countries are newer additions, I don't think anyone has been here longer than we have. So most of them haven't had people coming here for 55 years or have a fraction of the people we do.  Even if you assume they have all been here 55 years and you double the number to 6,000 people a year on the continent, then that's 330,000 people.  So even with the most generous guess of the number of people who have been here, I'm still one of only 330,000 people to get come here.  That's pretty unique.  I think the Earth's population is about 7 billion now, so that's a pretty small number of people overall. An even smaller number, is that out of 7 billion people, I'm 1 of 153 people who have been lucky enough to spend the 2012 Winter season here at McMurdo station, that's pretty neat.