h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A better day today, but I'm getting a little worried about groundside support.

It was Cjob's turn to do the weekly solar panel and general inspection EVA - 'State of the Ark' he calls it, ha ha. It's really just an amble around the outside of the station, tougher than it looks in zero G, to make sure it's all holding together. The solar panels can warp in the steep thermal gradients between sun and shade, and they're much more sensitive to MMS than the rest of the structure. With all that junk flying around out there, we have to keep a weather eye on them. Still, sooner him than me, although to be fair, you do get a few hours to yourself in the best suit.

With him on EVA, running over the rig with Sylvia, it was down to me to prepare the food. OK, it's mostly dried stuff, and we don't have the full hydroponics they have on that Japanese orbital 'hotel', but we've got a few greens and herbs - enough to give the mush a taste of home. It's fairly simple work, and only takes a few minutes to prepare, so I got a chance to give some tender loving care to Freddy and George, our pot plants. There's not really enough light to produce quality hash, in spite of the good CO2 levels, but we can't smoke in here anyway, so we just use it for cooking. Mostly the buzz comes from looking after the little monsters...

I also spent some time 'window shopping', gazing down at the blue-green-white-brown Earth below. Even though we pass over the same ground time and time again, it's always different, and always beautiful. You can never tire of that.

News from groundside is that the resupply has been delayed (again!) for a couple of days, due to unspecified 'technical' problems, and more worrying, the full recrew that was supposed to get us caretakers out of this place in two month's time and replace us with the full complement of flyboys and eggheads, has been postponed indefinitely. There's something going on down there that they're not telling us, and it doesn't smell good. The usual politics and funding problems is my guess, but there's something else. Obviously they don't want to worry us, but any fool can see things aren't right.

I talked it over with Cjob over dinner, and he agreed. It's a worry, but there's nothing we can do about it, at least for now. Ho hum, I only wish we could get some new music up here; they don't realise just what that resupply means to us. They're sitting down there with all the latest technology, and we're up here in yesterday's smelly tin can...

Anyhoo, it's another night, and another night's sleep - "perchance to dream."