Why Toasty Spot?

Well, the South Pole is just that - a toasty spot. This has at least a couple meanings. To me, it has to do with the simple way of life down here - eat, work, eat, work, eat, recreate, sleep, eat, work, eat........... You get the picture? Okay, you can throw some different spins on it, but the bottom line is that I don't have many of the same worries of those folks back home. Lets start with my living situation. I have my little 6 x 8 room to take care of, I have to help keep my work place clean, and I get to share in weekly community cleaning (house-mousing, we call it). That's it. No home repairs to deal with, no lawn to mow (hope you read that, Big Mama), no 1000+ sq ft of living space to keep clean. Furthermore, I don't have a car to deal with. That is HUGE! Now lets move on to the matter of feeding myself. Well, it's pretty simple: go to the galley at meal time, grab a plate and utensils, step up to the serving line, dig in. Yep, it's all prepared for you by the friendly kitchen staff and I think they do a damn fine job of it. Okay, there must be more to it than this. Well, except for a mortgage payment that comes out of my bank account every month for this SWEET piece of property that my girlfriend and I bought last July, I have no bills to worry about down here. I'm not paying rent to live here, I have no electric or heating bills, no grocery bills, no cable bill. Everything is very simplified here. Okay, what else makes this such a toasty (as in warm and toasty) place for me? Well, I love to ski and let me tell you, all we have around here is snow - hundreds and hundreds of miles of it! And it's not going anywhere. Well, not in my lifetime, anyway. So, I get to do my favorite activity any time I please and all I have to do is step right out the door of my Jamesway, put on my skis, and start going - 365 days of the year. That is sweet!!
Okay, the other reason that "toasty place" is appropriate for the South Pole has to do with the condition of some winter-overs after they have spent 8 months here during the Antarctic winter, not seeing any planes, running out of freshies (fruit, veggies), wanting the sun to come back, getting tired of their jobs, getting tired of the isolation, getting tired of seeing the same folks everyday, dreaming of warm beaches, etc. The people that really start to fray around the edges because of these factors are said to be "toasty".
So, there you have it! Welcome to the Toasty Spot.