Monday morning in Oslo

Update on the weather—about the same as it’s been the past few days. Raining today; it rained yesterday (although it cleared up nicely last evening—long enough for me to get in a bike ride), and it rained a bit on Saturday as well. But we enjoyed two restaurant visits in spite of the weather, sitting indoors of course—on Friday evening at Mucho Mas for excellent Mexican food, and on Saturday evening we found our way to Jonoe at Ringnes Park for some excellent sushi. We’re on vacation now for the next four weeks, so it’s only to pray for some nice weather. I hope whoever created the Higgs boson is listening to our prayers!!

I saw an article today in Britain’s newspaper The Guardian, that the weather in England isn’t much better than here. Rain, and lots of it. And more to come. That’s what’s predicted for Oslo this week. So I guess I better tackle my indoor projects that are waiting for me. No time like the present! Still working on my photo and writing projects, so I guess I won’t complain (too much) about the weather. I’ve sorted through my recent photos and organized them. I’ve created a few photo blog posts and written a few posts for my other blogs. The house is in order, household tasks are mostly done, and now I can read and write to my heart’s content.

The USA is experiencing one of the worst heat waves on record, with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I can attest to that, as I grew up in New York, and I can only remember one or two summers in my growing up when the temperatures even approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 38 degrees Celsius) or went slightly over that temperature. New York summers were always warm and humid though, and it was nice to come inside to an air-conditioned home or office to cool down. Or perhaps we ran through someone’s sprinkler to cool down; I remember doing this often as a child. There were always some homeowners who were watering their lawns and who didn’t mind that we ran through their sprinklers. I remember some wicked New York thunderstorms, with intense thunder and a lot of lightning, followed by torrential rains. And then, the storm was over and the sun came out and life went back to summer normal. But when I talk to family and friends now about the weather in New York, many of them say it’s nothing like it was when we were young. So I have to conclude that either we all have collectively bad memories, or that weather patterns have definitely changed. Whether the changes are natural or the result of global warming, I cannot say. But I can also say that summers in Oslo are not like they were in the early 1990s when I first moved here, so I really do believe that weather patterns are changing. I can remember longer periods with sunshine in June and July in Oslo, where it was possible to go out on the boat without being drenched by a sudden rainstorm. It’s harder to trust that there will be stable weather now, anywhere.