Shoshe -- toasty warm

We have decided that the most appropriate temperature scale to use is absolute. It is currently a toasty 255K outside. That's warm even by Martian standards*!

*But not in summer, when it can get up to 50 degrees warmer. Goddamn it's cold out.

Shoshe - nice neighbours

We accidentally left the car's boot wide open for about 20 hours the other day. Luckily, that was about the only 20 hours in the past week and a half that it didn't snow. The battery died (NRMA-equivalent took care of that), but everything in the car was still there! That includes the muesli bars -- we figure the local critters couldn't smell them because it was too cold for scents to waft.

Shoshe - Warm! (er). and then cold again

Yesterday it got all the way up to -4C! The hottest it got between Wednesday (when we got home) and the day before yesterday was -9C. Now it's -10.5C. The coldest it's been since we got home was -20C, which is even negative in Fahrenheit.

Today was the first day of the semester, and tomorrow is the first day I have class. I haven't felt as unenthusiastic about a semester starting for a long time, if ever.

Shoshe - Snow with bad timing

My qualifying exam was supposed to be yesterday at midday, but it was delayed due to boot-deep snow (the top of the boot, not the bottom. The kind of snow that, for example, closes multiple airports and flight paths so half of your examination committee can't make it to town before your exam should have been halfway over). We postponed it till 3pm, and eventually until this morning. Saturday morning! It's an oral exam, where your committee members get to ask you whatever they want that might be remotely related to your research project or (very loosely defined) field of study. For 2 hours. Except that mine ended up taking 2 1/2 hours. It went okay though -- they weren't as mean as I expected.

In related news, one of the local coffee companies will give you a half-gallon of coffee in a nifty thermos/urn for $10 if you give them 24 hours notice, and apparently just trusts that you'll return the urn (they don't actually ask you to). Another local coffee company charges $24 for the same amount of coffee in a box, and a third charges $14 for a box of coffee, a variety of sweeteners, cups, and milk.

Shoshe - new windows!

We got new windows yesterday! It was particularly exciting because we'd been told that we wouldn't be getting them. Also, on our old windows, everything that wasn't glass was metal, meaning that there was a direct thermal contact from the outside (which last year got down to about -22C) to our attempting-to-be-cosy apartment. So the double-glazed glass part wasn't horribly cold, but the frame sure was. The new ones have plastic frames and extra-wide double glazing.

Mostly though, it's nice to not be offended by my windows' very existence. Who the fuck makes windows that have a direct thermal contact to the outside?! In a town where it gets down to -22C?!

Shoshe - How does it do that?!

Last night when I went to bed (around 2am) it was 10C out. This morning when I woke up (around 8:45) it was snowing, with 1cm of accumulation. What the hell?

Shoshe - Snow

Yesterday+today was the first real snowstorm we've had. We've had snow, but this was the first decent fall -- probably about 20cm or so. Last night was beautiful. Everything was white (including the sky, even though the full moon was a week ago). But the snow removal was much worse than it's been -- the little uni snowplows hadn't been through by the time I left choir practice (about 9:30pm), and they haven't done much salting at all.

In other news, my classmates and I are trying to be good about going to the gym. We call it FAATS: Fabulous Astronomy Athletic Training and Science (we read journal articles so we don't feel like we're wasting time that could be spent studying). If you're a student here, it only costs $145 per year to join the gym (including access to all facilities and classes)! I tried the rowing machine for the first time yesterday -- it hurt a little to breathe today because my lungs and diaphragm are trying to let me inhale, but my abdominal muscles don't think anyone has any business making them move (it feels remotely like having cracked ribs).

Shoshe - Trivia, grading and COLD

This weekend my officemate (who conveniently lives around the corner) roped a bunch of us in to a 50-hour trivia competition. It was crazy and fun, and B and I made it through about 15 hours over two days. I tried to do some of my uni work over the weekend, but it feels like all I've accomplished is grading. And right now it's 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-15.5C)! Yesterday it was a few degrees above freezing. Weather here confuses me.

Shoshe - Car! and snow

We got my car back this afternoon! It's been in the shop since the end of November. I do not recommend the body shop we used, but the insurance people (not the national free-call people, but the people down the road from my parents who we've been with at least since I got my licence) kicked some body shop arse in the end (I have a new fender! It replaces the one that the body shop scraped up).

It's been above freezing for days now, and our snow actually disappeared (almost completely and by melting, instead of slowly and through sublimation). But it was back below freezing today and it snowed all day, so it's okay. Except that my right snowboot seems to have a leak.

Sun gone

Really not one sentence but...

After most of the snow went away yesterday, I decided to actually wear shoes instead of snowboots today. Fortunately, I looked outside before I left -- everything was white! The sky, the cars, the trees, the ground, the falling flakes...

My bus got to uni early enough for me to go to Coffee Hour. I usually just drink tea, but because I had been up until around 4am grading papers, I decided to try the caffeinated hot chocolate that I'd bought for the office. Big mistake. I don't know how much caffeine you absorb from that compared to coffee, but it's way more than I normally get from tea. Unpleasantly so. I'd recovered enough to do some work by around 2pm.

Then at 2:30 we got an email saying that the head of department said we should go home because of the snow. I didn't think the snow looked too bad, but all of the staff -- the people who've lived here for years -- thought it was bad. That was worrying. And I'd just missed my bus (we now live around 15-20 minutes away from uni by bus, and our bus comes once an hour). So I waited there, the only person on the whole floor, for almost an hour. Spooky. I got to watch people with a cherry-picker and a huge (pool?) brush try to keep wiping the snow off the building across from my window though. It's having structural issues, and apparently if more than 3 inches of snow accumulate on the roof it might collapse.

The bus came late but made it home okay (a friend of mine reassured me by saying "the buses here are tough as fuck, as are the drivers. I don't think they've ever shut down due to weather"). Now we're sitting on our couch with a fire in the fireplace, and I'm trying to finish grading my students' papers.

It was a weird day.

Shoshe -- getting there

Mineralogy is done (yay!), the seminar is done, and now there's just a term paper, a problem from a way overdue problem set (but I've handed the rest of it in), and grading 30 8-10-page papers.

Our snow is starting to melt. It's weird when the temperature goes above freezing.

Oh yeah -- the other day, first I realised that it wasn't snowing. Then I realised that there weren't any clouds. Then I realised that the sky was blue. It's funny how fast you can acclimatise.

Shoshe: It's snowing!

It's just a flurry, and you have to go outside to see it (you can't really see it through the window), but it's snowing!

It's 38 degrees out, and tonight it's going down to 25. Fahrenheit. I think we're just not going to translate that into real units 'cause it'd be too scary.

Now you can see it out the window! It's not sticking to the ground yet though.

We need to buy snowboots.