Martin's leaving and a good day at the office

Saturday April 17th
Woke up early as usual but couldn’t get out of the bed this morning as it was very cold. It seemed like it changed about 3 am when I needed to put some more clothes on and added an extra blanket. I finally got up about 7am. The sun is up but doesn’t hit on us until about 745am.
It has been a cold, windy and cloudy day. The wind is coming in from the north and has been real cold so I hope it is a better day tomorrow as I really would like to have a shower before we go up to camp 1 for a couple of days.
Martin left today, while it was a bit sad seeing too old men leaving each other with tears in their eyes, I was happy to have spent the last 2 weeks with a great friend who came in to support me personally on this adventure of mine and added more in his mountaineering career highlights. We had a great time discussing our last 6 years of adventures (and all the great friends we have made and miss) and are already planning the next one in Oct in PNG so all of you are invited ( details to follow when I get off this one, just let Martin know asap if you are interested). We went by to see Wally before he left and got some great pictures to remember and Martin was wearing his new hat ( Everest Doctor’s Hat 2010) which he said would be a collector’s item when he returns to Australia late week. He will be back in Katmandu in 4 day of hard walking and if gets lucky with the weather in Lukla for the return journey. He plans to spend a few days seeing his friend (ANG) and the 2 kids he supports educationally in Katmandu.
After I returned to our camp, I started helping Jim set up the communication tent. It has been a great day for working inside and we now have set up an official office at Everest base camp 2010. If you saw it you would think Jim and I were just working away back in the US. We have satellite phones; we have radios for Staff, a desk telephone, Printer and 3 computers. We have email service, internet service and blogs for me and for Exploradus so we should be set now to communicate when we are here in the camp. I will get a picture of this and show it when I return but Jim sets up a pretty good operation. If the damn heater worked a little better, I think I could be very productive.
I have set up an alternative email address which I will send out if David and I cannot get it worked out with my company email. We should have this done in the next couple of days as I just have been able to communicate with him via email so early next week should be good to go either with my new address or my company address.
The rest of the day we continued to get the mess tent set up and now we really have a home here and tried to stay warm.