Have you ever seen the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day?  The one where he relives the same day over and over?

In some ways, being on the ship is like that.  I don’t mean it in a negative way at all.  It’s just that I seem to have lost that distinct feeling of one day ending and another one beginning.  I don’t know if the people on other shifts have the same experience or if it’s just me.  When I wake up to start my shift, it doesn’t feel like “morning” – it’s just time to get to work.  The meal where they serve most of the breakfast foods is 6 am, which is my second meal of the day.  I try to eat cereal and fruit when I wake up so that it feels like “breakfast”, but then sometimes I end up eating breakfast food for lunch.  Then in the early afternoon, I head off to read and go to sleep.   It’s almost like one long day punctuated by naps.

In the movie, Bill Murray uses the time he spends stuck in that single day to learn lots of new things.  It turns out I’m doing the same thing (not that I consider myself “stuck”) – learning more every shift.  Today one of our physical properties scientists, Daniel, showed me how he runs tests to determine the strength of the sediments and let me help a bit with them.

I’d love to hear from others on the ship, or who have been on the ship in the past – is this a common feeling?