A regular schedule and a one-pot dinner

The team is doing great. It's just the four of us -- Neil Shubin from the University of Chicago, Marcus Davis, a professor in Georgia, and Mark Webster, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies trilobites -- and we're getting along well, which is important.

Every day we make a plan and go out and do what we need to do. We keep a regular schedule. We get up at 6 or 6:30 a.m. We need to check in by radio with the research base at 7:30 a.m. every day. Then we start to work at 8 a.m. We come back to our base camp at 5 or 5:30 p.m., prepare dinner and eat it around 7 or 7:30 p.m., then we're in bed by 9 or so. There's not a lot of entertainment up here. We read books. Neil brought a Kindle.

Tonight we're going to have pasta with red sauce. We make some really good food. We do pay a lot of attention to food and to preparing the food. Usually we have pasta or a chili dish. Big one-pot foods, comfort foods. We eat lots of chocolate, energy bars and coffee. For breakfast we have coffee and granola.

My wife Emily is keeping me up to date with the Phillies.