h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thursday 4th December.

Fantastic sunny day in Perthshire and in the Cairngorms (for that is where I've been again).

Ice first thing that had to be scraped off the cars. Chilly all day - 4C plus windchill.

Beautiful sunrise and then a totally spectacular red, salmon pink, blue blue, yellow - oh, every colour! - sunset 7 hours later. One of those days that makes you glad to be out and about.


F/b

Thursday, December 4th 2003, 19.05

Beautiful day here in San Antonio (and nothing or nobody got exploded Mudhooks )

Driving down here this morning the sky was a picture. I-35 between Austin and San Antonio travels sort of NNE to SSW, and most fronts in these parts come from the north west. The sky while we were on the freeway (we left Austin at a little after 9am) showed all the classic signs of an approaching cold front. Looking to my left, the sky was mostly clear apart from some very high cirrus and whispy mares tails. Directly above was a gorgeous mackeral sky. To the right - where the front would be coming from - the clouds gradually merged together and the cloudbase could clearly seen to be getting lower.

Thing is, a few when we came out of the building where we were working (no windows), instead of having an overcast sky above us, the sky had cleared There is a front forecast for late tomorrow though, and a slight freeze on Friday and maybe Saturday nights. Not cold enough to bring the plants in but cold enough.

Should be back in Austin tomorrow evening. God only knows what we're going to find after Dewey's been cooped up in there for a day and half.


...


With Flossie

Was it Fred Nothing or Wilber Nobody who got exploded?!

A little from column A and a little from column B

Wouldn't it be a shock if you got home to find them both cuddled lovingly together?

No windows at work ???

There are no windows in the small room where we sit and list stuff for eBay, but we're only in there for a few hours at a time, and we're moving around the rest of the building anyway - weighing items, going to the kitchen, the bog, that sort of thing. It's no different from working in say, a big department store or a big shop like the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street - those places are so big that you don't really get to see outside. Same with most factories.

Yeah, you're right. I'm just used to having windows. It's kind of weird not to know what's going on outside though isn't it? Or do you get used to it?


F/b

When I'm back in my old job at BBC TV Centre, I'm in the middle of what's essentially a huge air-conditioned cave. There *are* windows, but about 100m away behind me - you have to turn around and stand up to see over the desks and monitors behind you if you want to see daylight, and even then the blinds are shut half the time.

And because of the lighting and ambient temperature, it always feels like a grey autumn day with long evenings and winter just around the corner...

On the other hand, it's a fine sunny, crisp winter day in Leeds right now, looking out of the office windows that I'm fortunate to have

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a large proportion of people who work in buildings have no view of the outside, or even of a window during their shift. If you work in - off the top of my head - a large factory, a warehouse, a warehouse type store, a cinema, a theatre, a department store, a studio (radio, tv, or recording), a power plant - pretty much any kind of large building, you're going to be lucky to have natural light.

Lord Scott has usually been extremely fortunate to work at radio stations that have at least a small window to the outside world. A few, including his present place of employment, have huge plate glass windows in the air studio.

The production studios and many of the offices, since they're interior rooms, are usually windowless though.

So anyhow, he was able to watch the snow falling while he was on the air today, and the studios look out over a highway, so he could even tell how traffic was moving, and whether the snow was starting to stick to a fairly heavily travelled road.

I have 4 huge windows next to my seat at w**k ... I got to see the snow fall all evening. I'd rather watch the tv.

Perthshire Sunday:
Fantastic winter day today. Sunshine all the way. 5C in the shade.

I'm off into the garden.


F/b

Sunday, December 7th 2003, 07.30

Pretty damn cold - currently 38ºF (I really must get my temperature conversion software instralled on this machine), but should get up to the lower 60s by this afternoon with abundant sunshine, and 70 tomorrow Then a cold front on Tuesday which should bring us some rain.

Snow stinks!

I'm singing in a Christmas concert at 3:00 this afternoon, and it's going to be horrid trying to park if the parking lot hasn't been plowed out properly (or at all). There's at least 15 inches of snow on the ground here in Boston. I shovelled several times yesterday, and there's still a lot to do this morning. I can do it, but there will likely be many singers and other musicians who can't get to the concert. If we have a chorus and *some* of the instrumen-talists, we will have to cut the pieces that require the instruments that are missing. Yes, they are getting paid to come, so there's some motivation there, but i8t might take a miracle for some of them....

So how did it go Paul?

They called it off. There's an effort being made to reschedule the concert for next Sunday, or Sunday January 11.

Under the circumstances, it only makes sense to reschedule.

We had lots of events postponed, rescheduled or just plain cancelled here this weekend, and we didn't get nearly as much snow as you did.

Still no snow in Perthshire. But -5C first thing and clear clear skies

I quite envy you guys all that snow, but I guess if we had it, I'd be complaining


F/b

There's still icy patches out there on the roads and parking lots. Even our little sidewalk from our driveway to the house has some icy patches on it, which can make it rather treacherous.

The snow was still drifting yesterday too, so we keep getting more snow on the roads.