Kellie Gerardi
02/16/2015
Journalist Report
The party continues for Crew 149. After a day of celebrating Elena’s birthday yesterday, we moved on to my birthday today was my birthday! I turned 26 on Earth, but here on Mars, I’m a wise 13.8. We had a great day here around the Hab, and I feel lucky for the opportunity to spend my birthday around such a fascinating and accomplished group of people, crewmates who have become real friends.
I was surprised with a Martian tiara and another cake. Elena made some fantastic pizza and Paul made “Martian Nachos” – Dorito chips with reconstituted cheese, peppers, and beef. It was a lovely day.
I spent the day writing op-eds for the Huffington Post, Popular Mechanics, and Space.com – hopefully they’ll be published soon. It was very difficult to send the content (and photos) and we had to use cell phones as well as break up the messages into multiple groups in order to send content (not even the highest-res photos).
Still, it was a great day and I’m pleased that we’ve been able to get some content out. All of our research is going really well, and we’re sad to think that we’re already more than halfway through our rotation. We feel like we just got used to our schedules, and we’re really beginning to hit our stride as a crew.
Tomorrow we’ll have the BBC on hand, along with the producers of “An Idiot Abroad”. Having an international crew truly be hilarious, because they’ve been walking around all day saying things like “When is the Idiot coming?” “Is the Idiot coming tomorrow?”
All in all, this was a birthday to remember. Tonight, we’re going stargazing from the Engineering Airlock deck.