We got snow

We got a bit, it faded or melted or something, it snowed more, then that melted and I think it's been doing both those things again since, maybe a few times. I, of course, took some photos at some point.

    

A little bit o' snow

Earlier this week.

Winter is here..

Been very mild around here, which is nice, well not nice it's not terrible. It has been, for the most part quite dull and grey, except fro when it's sunny which it has been sometimes, but you know.. it gets dark early, and the trees are all bare so, it's still sort of dreary looking out there. It's still not that cold, which does quite please me but this morning I got up.. not sure what time it was, Cooley woke me and was messing around and wouldn't stop so I got up.. first went to er.. you know nature calls and all that, looked out the window and.. it looked just the same as it does every morning. Then about an hour, 2 hours, an hour and a half I'm not sure, later, Erik got up and said.. hey.. there's white stuff out there. And there was, white stuff. Snow it was, kind of a dusting, ie sorta light but still, pretty. It's been snow/raining most of the day so it's still around, though it seems a bit warm for it to stay so we'll see how it looks tomorrow, but I have my dreams of heavy visibility issues inducing snowfalls and piles and piles of snow on the ground and a perfect winter wonderland, whatever the forecast says. I'm looking forward to it.

So it's winter.

Officially. This is news, I thought it was, um, I dunno. It's weird to me this whole "seasons starting halfway through the month thing". I'm not sure if they do that in the southern hemisphere or if, it's just me, can't be bothered to find out though it's possible to google it.

Anyway.. as far as I'm concerned winter starts on December 1. Unless you're in the southern hemisphere, that is. None of this.. solstice and equinox beginning seasons. Oh and don 't get me started on the beginning of summer, the summer solstice and midsummer for fucks sake I mean HOW CAN MIDSUMMER BE THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER THAT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY!

So.. I.. forgot what I was going to say next.

Well anyway, it's the solstice, where I live it means that tomorrow will be about a minute longer than today, and the day after that yet another minute (or so thereabouts) longer and so on and so forth. This pleases me. It doesn't please me so much that it'll be at least another 2 months before it starts to be nearing reasonable hours of daylight but what can you do? Move I suppose but I won't be doing that.

Of course, the holidays are all happening in the middle of the next week, so it's big party time, something that pleases me as well as kind of.. I dunno, already tires me out, but it makes all this cold and dark better.
After all the partying will be Jan, which pleases (all the parties and shit that can get too much will be over) and displeases me (Jan sucks, it's still winter, the days are still to short, and all the parties and shit will be over, so it will be boring). Oh and it will be '14 which pleases me dorkily for reasons that are both probably obviousish, and stupid. And there will be stuff starting I hope which both pleases me and, something else.

How do I feel? Well.. going to see a really cool, favorite local band tonight so that's good.. of course, it's the last gig with their current singer, who sorta makes the band really so.. I dunno.

Freezing Point.

Yesterday, morning the temperature here, at least as reported by one site, was 3 degrees on the celsius scale, that was the official temperature, but apparently it felt like 0. That is zero, no degrees. "Zero!" I cried, "have we hit that point already", I told myself.

The answer was no, because it was 3 degrees.

Then this morning came. I got online, visited the same place, this site that I use most often for getting my weather information and though I'd locked the cat out.. allowing me to sleep in, therefore coming to my weather information just a bit later, there was a big fat 0. Right there in the bit where they tell you the temperature, the actual official one. So if I'd asked myself the same question I asked yesterday then the answer would be "yes". It is that time of year, we've hit that point. Oh and it felt like -3.

I'm not really sure it did feel like -3. It probably wasn't (that is 0 degrees and feeling like -3) by the time I got out but it was damn cold. I went out bareheaded, because I was rushing to meet someone who was late to meet me anyway, and couldn't find my woolly toque (as some call it) in time, and I felt it. Really could have used it, though it was the middle of the day.

It's drizzly, misty, the trees are almost at their winter bare o leaves phase and it's certainly cold enough. Winter is certainly coming, and it's very near. Brace yourself for a long string of boring weather posts for the many months ahead.. assuming I actually keep up with blogging regularly, of course.

I was joking.. joking!!!!

Nice little joke I made yesterday on the annual day o fools, the first day of April. Yeah, that site, the one from Science, wasn't real. well is was a real site but it wasn't really from Science.. there isn't going to be a new ice age.. that's ridiculous!

Well.. it seems like they're really saying it.

I mean.. yeah, people, even members of Science get things wrong sometimes, are influenced by the same biases/experiences (ie a really long winter that's getting like, real annoying) like the rest of us. And some of them disagree, well I assume they do because, they're always disagreeing, those Science people. Still, I didn't really want to hear that it's a thing, you know.

Anyway we probably have a few years left of, regular weather, whatever that is, and then I can move to somewhere that's too hot now, but will be just right then, maybe. I should get a head start on buying property, I suppose, if I can scrounge a couple of hundred thousand of one of the larger denomination of currencies together.

In any case, it's April. This was your last chance weather gods! I can't think of another milestone for spring to finally be here by and if you can think of one email it to me and I'll give you another chance but I'm telling you I'm extremely grumpy about all this! That and I have the sniffles. Do something about it already!

Winter is Coming

No, I haven't moved back to the Southern Hemisphere. And I'm not speaking metaphorically to give a sense of foreboding about some dark days ahead ie really really annoying bad shit I have to deal with which is actually a thing with me but let's not get into that now. It's not even just another grumble about this long winter which is not coming and not just beginning despite the.. there's a whole lot more left of it aspect. t I'm speaking of the long winter, similar to the long night as experienced in Westeros.

Yes, winter is indeed coming. I speak of the coming Ice Age. You might remember the last ice age.. the one with the mammoths and the humans evolving to keep up with the changes and stuff. There was also a little ice age in more recent history, starting in medieval times to the 19th century.. so, you know, it happens.

Well, it's happening again.Yes, this is not just a freaky long winter that's just another type of freaky weather that we always get in one way or another, it's a fucking ice age! I'm not making this up! I consulted science and it's true.

Leave Phil Alone!

punxsutawney phil
Originally uploaded by ewaldmario.

The current ongoing winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere has caused millions to cry out for a scapegoat, and they have found it in lovable rodent and well known meteorologist Punxsutawney Phil.

It dates all the way back to February 2nd of this year, Groundhog Day, where Phil, in his infinite wisdom, declared that there would be an early spring this year, after emerging from his grounhog hole, and not seeing his shadow.

Well, anyone living "literally" anywhere on earth, that is the Northern Hemisphere and particularly places that get cold at all, know this to be utter bunk. Nevermind early spring, it's March 26 already.. 6 days into official full on spring and well.. I may have mentioned this myself once or twice but... it's cold. And people are enraged! They're saying Phil maliciously and deliberately deceived people. They're calling for his head!

I for one, however, do not blame Phil. Phil is but merely an adorable burrow dwelling squirrel hedgehog or whatever he is, and he did what he was told to do, see his shadow or not, and deduce the facts from the evidence he found. There was no shadow.. so he said it's spring! A simple mistake. Or was it...

This is what happened. Phil did not see his shadow. This was not a mistake of Phil's, or the conditions at the time, just bear with me.. I will explain.

Back in late February, I went to Eilat in Southern Israel. It's a very warm place, you may imagine, like summer.. even in the (we thought then) dying days of winter. Oh what a beautiful week it was, after a long enough already winter, it was like paradise to lie by the beach with the hot sun upon our backs, but of course, all holidays must come to an end, and after a week we had to return to Prague where it was still winter. I did not let it get me down though, do not mope, I said, the day after we return it's March, and spring will soon follow.. the days will get longer, warmer, buds will blossom, birds will sing... etc etc etc.. and I said it again and again and again.

Needless to say, I was mistaken. And that is not all.. you see, young Phil, our furry friend, was merely doing a job, he reported what he saw.. and at the time, I believe he was correct. He did no wrong. I however, did what any human over the age of 6 should know well better than to do. I tempted fate. To wish and hope and be so fucking sure.. and vocalize one's idea of the future should be? Utterly irresponsible. You see, fate hates it when smug knowitall humans talk like they know what's fucking going on.. and fate, total asshole. It wasn't enough to fuck up the weather here in the little part of central Europe that I inhabit, or even all of Europe.. but all of the fucking Northern Hemisphere*.

So don't blame Phil, blame me, for, in my foolishness are the cause of all of this. The worst part of it is knowing that those people are suffering is because of me,  that Phil is getting persecuted over something that is my fault.. and that if no one else does, I deserve all of this, and more, fully.

Leave Phil alone. Take me.

I think I understand "other people" a bit..

It's so beautiful, so white and magical and.. white and snowy and.. white.. yeah it snowed again. It's been doing that. It did it last week and then it kind of went away, snowed a little more then went away... then it went away and was grey and ugly for a few days and it continued cold but I thought, it's got to be over it.. got to be out of it's system now all there is left to do is for it to warm up, and bloom, and stuff. And it snowed. It's slightly warmer than it was but at this point I want weather that's appropriate for a different season altogether and nothing less. I mean, it is beautiful, if I'd gotten this 2 months or even a month ago, which I did, and quite a lot really.. I would be.. oh pretty. Ok by about the 4th week of having this regularly it was more like.. "oh, it's still snowing" *closes blinds* but you know, none of the grumbling that normal people do as soon as there's a hint of snow, none of the flashbacks to getting up at the crack of dawn to sweep tons of snow off the porch so dad can drive into town back in the old town.. but ya know.. it's kinda bugging me now.

Guess that rat/hedgehog thing was right.

You know, the one that looks at the sky and runs from it's own ghost? You know, the one in that movie where Sonny and Cher wake you up every morning? You know? It's right.

I mean, if it said we were gonna get 3 more months of winter which I'm sure it did, what else would it say? Well, it looked like it was getting nice here.. it warmed up, the sun even came out but that was like 2 days.. and on a Monday! As soon as it got near the weekend it got drizzly, and now that it's Friday it's got cold again and tomorrow it's supposed to dip right back down to winter. Typical.

It's because of me you know. All because I'd quite like it to be spring when it's supposed to be (almost) spring and just to make sure I don't get anything at all I want ever no matter what and always live under these nasty drizzly cold conditions, it's got like this again. It's not fair, especially when we just got back from sunny seaside Eilat and have to deal with reality like it is here! And then there's all the other stuff I've got to deal with.. life is just so hard.

I definitely need beer.

*counts the days, months*

I'm over this winter thing. I wasn't all that interested in the first place, to be honest. I mean, I like snow and stuff.. but, there really isn't enough of it for the whole time that winter is around, and if there was, I'd probably be as over that as well, like people who grew up with it, and grumble as the snowflakes start falling, turning the landscape all beautiful and stuff.. when kids and dogs come out to frolic and.. ok I like snow. We had another shower last night, well, quite a heavy fall.. it was particularly wonderlandy this morning, complete with snow on the end o the branches of the trees where the leaves are supposed to be. It was very pretty.. of course, this morning was the morning the fixit dudes came in to fix the windows in the bathroom, and they came late, and took their time starting, and then the 2 or 3 hours estimate they gave us for the time it would take turned out to be wildly inaccurate and they were here all day and thus, I have not been out once. Except to go downstairs to buy a few things.. and well, it seems to have melted pretty quickly giving us that "recently snowed and there's some lying about but it's not all that pretty anymore" look. It seems to be like that most of the time, except for when it's just grey, and the days are still to short and to be quite honest it's too cold. And in just under a week we're going to Eilat, a particularly lovely warm town by the sea in Israel so.. nice break from this all. After that we're back, and it'll be March, and it will probably be cold to very cold for some weeks yet and might even snow more and it's not even officially spring until the late part of the month according to these northern hemisphereans which I've never really gotten used to but apparently it's like that.. but, nevertheless it is going to be March.. and March is.. spring, sorta. So it won't be so bad after that. Just 5 days.. and a couple of hours we're off on a midnight flight. Quite looking forward to that.

And it's winter again.

I woke up, and it was all grey and stuff.. about an hour, there was a light smattering of snow on everything.. about a half hour after that, not so light smattering. And it just kept on going. It's quite nice really.. and for once, I didn't come across a single grumbler today, I either met with people of a similar background in that they come from places, even if it's been a while since they've been there, where it doesn't snow, or, well, didn't really talk to anyone, or speaking to tourists that are visiting, or just talking to myself, but I didn't have to listen to the usual grumblers grumbling that it's no longer that dreary, grey, leafless pointless season that is winter when it doesn't snow or where it doesn't snow, to the more, wonderland-ish type of winter, that's all white and beautiful. So that was nice. I believe it's still snowing too. I don't know how long it will, but it's possible I will start grumbling at some point, I won't just yet though.

What it's like here..

It's cold, been snowing a bit sometimes, not too heavy, but staying cold enough so it doesn't melt. Not the best conditions really.. and not the most pretty.. this is already a few days old as my batteries completely died and I haven't gotten new ones yet, not much out there worth shooting though.

Happy Friday and all.

Finally..

a change.

It snowed. Not a lot.. the light fluttery type that leaves a thin film on top of surfaces and is gone from all but grass, roofs and cars before too long, but it was something and it was pretty.

A bit of white instead of the usual grey. So that was nice for today.

I don't know why but I thought it might be worthwhile to mention that. There's some stuff going on but it's the kind of stuff I don't really feel the need to give details about just yet, so I won't give details about that just yet, if I get around to it.

The end is nowhere in sight.

They seem to have decided it's winter. Or at least, autumn proper with winter closely nipping on it's heels. It's cold. May not be that cold, but cold enough, and being only autumn,and earlyish autumn at that.. it's just the beginning, months and months of this but colder, and probably with a lot more weather.. I see no end in sight, I mean, the end of the world comes before the end of this no light, heavy jacket season.. yes, we're hunkering down for the winter, the weather gods have spoken!

Speakin of the elohim* I've finished Genesis and now I'm on to Exodus. Veru entertaining, and quite eye opening, if a little er.. well not so much surprising as.. well, troubling. Might do a review at some point, we'll see.

*see what I did there? see what I did? seriously did you, I hope someone saw cos I did something there.

I'd really like to have something to say which isn't about how fucking cold it continues to be..

But fuck! It continues to be so damn cold! Was out tonight... to stand around for a bit and then wait around a bit to go home.. no tour.. too damn cold. Not too disappointed that I didn't get to walk around in the freezing cold trying to entertain people who just want to get the fuck somewhere warm.. but it does tend to reduce the money ones makes over a month...

yeah there's other stuff.. I spose.. finally uploaded another video.. plan to make more, edit more and upload more soon. And this time I mean it, like soon soon not.. maybe think about it in another month soon. Seriously. Soon.

Ok Weather Gods..

So you sent a bit of snow, very little, but being as freezing as it will continue to be for about another week, it seems, it's going to stay around a bit, giving us a little bit of that winter beauty that is supposed to come along with outrageously inhumane temperatures... I mean, it does make everything slippery, and you have to walk in that slow shuffling way when it gets intolerable to be outside after 4:45 minutes, and it's generally a pain but..

oh fuck it.. warm up already!!!!!

And it continues.

The cold remains. And when I say cold, I mean unusual once in a.. I dunno, decade, century kind of cold.. at least stretches that go on for this long. I was hoping it'd be calmed down by now, but it's still below -10°C at the warmest part of day... on the warmest of these days, and by my next 3 hour tour, it plans to still be this cold.

I thought last winter sucked, there were many days like this, and nights like the one I'll have on Tuesday, but they were individual anomalies amongst a group of more normal days.. sorta... this is like.. too fucking much.

And it still hasn't snowed. Not properly anyway.

It snowed.. and it went away.

Now it seems to have snowed again, the last time I looked outside there was a light white cover on everything.. not sure if it's still there.

Been a pretty dull winter so far, haven't had much snow, yeah I like it.. I grew up somewhere it never snowed bla bla bla and well I like it. I mean, it's going to be winter, and cold, and overcast and drab leafless trees everywhere.. might as well be snow.

And there hasn't been. Until a few days ago and that went away pretty fast, and a bit earlier, no idea how long that will last.

Why oh why oh why?

Is it always so damn cold whenever it's nice looking outside? It seems as if when it's overcast, or drizzling, it's relatively warm, but you don't really want to go out there anyway, because it sucks, and it would be reasonable because it's not actually freezing and your toes can tolerate it, and if I have a tour, I do't have a tour.. you know? I mean, if I go for a tour then no one shows up for one because of the drizzling or even light snow (not that there has been much of that) and there's no tour, although it would have been ok because.. as previously explained.. not fucking freezing, and so I don't get much money.

When it looks lovely outside.. er.. sunny. It's freezing! What's the point really.. it looks all pleasant and stuff but it like, isn't, it's really fucking uncomfortable to be outside for more than a minute and your toes freeze like today when I had a meeting for work which took up a fair chunk of my Sunday not that I'm complaining about that and it was largely outside and it was cold. I mean, I remember back when we used to have snow.. oh, last winter and when ti did it usually was warmer than this as well. Don't know why it does that but I'm afraid I don't approve. Sort it out!