Wagons - Here and There

Hey. How's things?

We had another good day today. A good start to the year.

We pulled the bookwagon around our new, shorter route, cleaned up the office some, did some shopping. Then I came home and crashed for an hour.

When I climbed up onto these crazy internets, I found out it's Spirit's fifth birthday. (Solid post on this over on Universe Today by freelance writer/journalist Nancy Atkinson.) The little remote-control wagon is still functioning, despite suffering from cold, dust storms (meaning reduced solar power) and a bad front wheel.

Back on this part of Earth, it's slippery cold outside - wind chill temperatures of -19° fed by a northwest wind gusting to 41 km/h.

I don't know about you, but after I do some more paperwork, I'm curling up with blankets, popcorn, and a good book...



... about imaginary Mars.

2009

A fine, chill morning to start 2009. It would have been a lovely morning to shoe over to the pond. But I'm back in the city, so the best I could manage was the walk up to the bank machine to fetch out my rent money. Now it's snowing softly, but with a -26 c wind chill.

Tomorrow, I've got a meet over north - we've got to sort the office and do some community lit planning. I also need to do some maintenance on the bookwagon wheels. I'm hoping to connect with a couple of learners at the library in the evening. Then, it's bookwagon on Saturday, and (maybe) paperwork in the Reading Room.




But that's tomorrow. Today, I'll tidy up, stay warm, do some web work. And read, of course.



This afternoon I've been reading Max Hastings' 2004 history of the concluding months of WW2, while busily trying to rethink how I use my engineers to get Third Army across the Moselle and into Germany.

Christmas Beside the Woods

Out of the City

I get to spend the next couple of days out of the city, surrounded by trees and wildlife. A "merry Christmas" indeed!



Wish you were here.

Of Snowstorms and Earthrise

Okay. My last "storm" post.

Here's a morning after pictures from uptown. Actually, they were taken mid-day.

Snow removal was a bit of a challenge, as you can see. I'm not sure if that had anything to do with a city councilor's weekend comments about cutting city workers' pay. In any case, it made for few people at the mall, and a little less craziness in the parking lots. I was able to get almost all my Christmas shopping done in relative peace.



In other news, 40 years ago today the Apollo 8 spacecraft was on it's second day out from Earth, and about half-way to the moon.


On December 21st 1968, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell (of Apollo 13 fame) and William Anders were lifted off the Earth's surface by the mighty Saturn 5 rocket. Three days later, on Christmas Eve, they passed behind the moon, orbiting about 125 km above it's surface.

And sent back our first pictures of "Earthrise."



Has anything been the same since?

Snow and Blowing Snow

The storm arrived overnight, curling in from the Gulf. I heard it once or twice, scraping at the door, pulling me from sleep. By morning, the weather office was still calling for periods of snow and blowing snow, with a 40 click northwest wind and a daytime high temp of minus 6 c.

But the storm itself has moved on. It will hit southern Newfoundland this afternoon, whipping waves above the Flemish Cap. And then into the North Atlantic and gone.

Hazy, Lazy Days of Winter

And then the skies cleared and temperatures settled at a sensible minus 5. I hear Toronto's getting socked in by a storm off the Great Lakes, but we're hoping it will swing out to sea and pass south of us tomorrow or the next day.