They say that being a soldier in war is 90% boredom followed by 10% action and on this cruise it is feeling like being a marine geologist is pretty similar to this. We are now at our new drilling site and waiting for the fresh material to arrive in the lab so that we can get going. It feels like a false dawn since we are all mentally prepared after quite a long time without anything to describe but yet the engineering seems to take much longer than the impatient geologists would like. Of course we do have ways of filling up our days in useful fashions by getting on with our own papers, reading and of course wasting time with things like Facebook or watching movies, but that is not why we all agreed to come on the ship for eight weeks. We come here to get exciting new sets of samples to take home and work with and to write research papers based on samples that nobody has seen before and we are now impatient to have more again. Hopefully by the time the sun sets again tomorrow we will be back in action. In the meantime we have put our free time to good use preparing for a belated Mardi Gras party. We decided to delay one week because the actual date of Mardi Gras was very close to our Hump Day and having two parties back to back was not really practical. Patience is not exactly my greatest virtue but I have to remember that it is impossible to rush such things at sea, both sampling and parties.