Last week at the Pole, life for the IceCube winterovers was bookended by a very busy beginning and a fun and lighthearted ending. For the first few days, they had to contend with some detector issues arising from run transitions and test runs performed. They had to pull and replace a DOM hub (basically a computer servicing all the DOMs on a string)—a fairly major operation that took hours to complete, but all went well. By the end of the week, things had calmed down and they were ready to celebrate. Celebrate what? Christmas in July, what else? They love their traditional celebrations at the Pole. This one included a decorated tree and a gift exchange that allowed for (limited) swapping, or “stealing” already opened gifts from others.
