Journalist's Report
March 24, 2008
Sean Blackman



Easter. A time of reflection, a chance to bond with those you love, an
excuse for good meals... a time of madness. You see, we learned a
valuable lesson yesterday. While days off may be a nice thought, being
stuck in a bubble with limited internet, no TV, and beautiful mountains
just outside of your reach will drive you as mad as a bulldog on
steroids. Don't get me wrong, we did Easter right. Sleeping in, food
a-plenty, and we even completed our Easter Mars-Egg Hunt (more on this
later). But none of this could offset the agony of having those
mountains just a breath a way from us. It's like the night before
Christmas as a child, but discovering that Christmas morning is still a
week away. And we are all still awaiting anxiously our present....

Curious thing about this Easter Mars-Egg Hunt. It's Tulika. She won.
How is it that the only one of us that has never celebrated Easter won
the Hunt? You would think the rest of us would have some innate
advantage from having done this year after year for our entire lives.
But no, Tulika won. And by some cruel twist of irony, I did not get a
single egg. Not one. I am blaming these unfortunate facts on beginner's
luck, the alignment of the planets, and cabin fever. And with that, I
digress....

So the holiday weekend is over and we had to get back to work. While
you may think we would be disappointed about this, you would be
entirely incorrect. We pretty much rocked out on projects today. The
Greenhab is a day away from being upgraded, rovers are running, wind
turbines are a-building, and Emily is having people try to drill
through rocks. Yes, rocks. She is measuring underground radiation
levels in various areas, and a valuable lesson learned today is that
rocks are indeed hard. They cannot be drilled though by hand.
Details.... In her defense, everything here looks like dirt.

Crew 69 out!