A little bit of (Canadian) winter ...

I'm staring out the window at some nice blue sky and enjoying the rare site of a strange, yellow ball hanging in the middle of it. The forecasters have said that it won't last, which is hardly news in Scotland. Whatever the weather is, it never lasts which means that the forecasters are always wrong. From me, that illicits pity; from others, outrage. People are apparently specifically outraged at the fact that the Met Office has paid £12 Million in bonuses to their employees. I understand that the term "bonus" has become somewhat of a touchy subject due to the Nero-like excesses in the banking industry, but I scanned past the headline and found that the amount had been paid out over the last 5(!) years, resulting in an average yearly bonus of about £1,500 per employee. Must be a slow news day when that makes the front page, even if someone ruined your summer vacation by forecasting in February that we would have "BBQ summer" and when you got to the Lake District in July it rained for the whole week.

But I digress ...

What we have right now is rare for Scotland and very much reminds me of home, where you could look out your window at a clear blue sky and blazing sun yet have your jeans freeze solid by the time you got to your car. It's not quite that bad, but several straight days with -7 C in the morning (that's in downtown Aberdeen, not the highlands) and no need to scrape the windshield is quite unheard of. If it is going to be cold, dry cold is the best.

We're supposed to get some rain again this afternoon, possibly turning into snow at the end of the day. People are really starting to grumble at how long winter seems to be taking. Our cabbie coming back from the Italian restaurant yesterday claimed it's been the longest, coldest winter since '62. Glass-half-full people are chirping about how wonderful it will be when the spring and summer flowers are all in bloom together. Glass-half-empty people are disappearing into their houses, filling the other half of their glass with an alcoholic beverage and belly-aching about how terrible it is to have to listen to those glass-half-full people. We waffle between glass-half-full and glass-half-empty. We made a vow never to let the weather stop us from getting out and doing stuff, but it is a heck of a lot easier to be optimistic with a blue sky overhead.

That being said, we'll be stuck in the house tonight, making sure it is presentable for Fiona's mahjongg group tomorrow. We've both been a little under the weather this week, so the housework has been left for the dog to do. She does an OK job, but tends to ignore the nooks and crannies. I've also got a jigsaw puzzle that is begging for the last few hundred pieces to be sorted and a good book - the first of a two part-er on the planning and building of the first trans-Canadian railroad. I'm aiming to finish it off by the end of the month so I can take something new on our travels through southern France. T minus 27 days and counting ...

We concluded a long running research project yesterday by concluding that Ciao Napoli is indeed the best Italian restaurant in Aberdeen. Although the evidence had been pointing in that direction for some time, we made it official by returning to our old favorite for a final comparison. They were weighed and measured, and came up wanting.