Poor Poly! That must be the worst!
Ah, the days in Portugal... Dad, sis, Gran and I went there on our 1995 vacacion. For some reason, Gran had little problems with the 39C heat, while I had reached boiling point and was barely fit to walk between sea and towel. She thought that was funny.
(of course, by the end of the holiday she wasn't fit to walk from sea to towel either. She'd broken her ankle. All her bones were still in place, so she could walk with it, but with much pain.

after a couple days above 5C and bright, sunny, today they predict freezing rain and drizzle that will turn to snow and continue through Wednesday. Blizzard conditions with >56km/hr winds expected, so power lines might go out in all that. 30 - 40 cm snow expected which will drift in high winds.
I bought a professional microphone with a port for a cord for a USB connex.
And slowly play with audacity to see how it goes. So I have a new toy.

Hit the down. Apparently the US Blu-ray quality of Neverending Story is so bad that someone on another forum wanted to get the Dutch version, which I bought and then mailed to him.

Hey Punky, I'd definitely not rather have a blizzard, but I am, in a strange kind of way, missing the UK. Mind you, I'm talking about on the same latitude as London or further south.

The aunt saga continues.

When my grandmother passed away, we found her camera, with some exposed film in it. We wound it back and took it to the photography store, where it got developed. Two pictures were on it: one of dogs that my cousin had made, and a picture of Gran she had made by accident. We were very happy with that Gran photo.

In my aunt's home we found a disappointingly low amount of photos, maybe about 30 while Gran had hundreds. But we did find a camera, containing a partly exposed Kodak film, of the pince nez shape. We wound back the film, and yesterday I took it to the shop.
"Can you do something with this?" I asked.
The friendly assistant replied: "I don't know if we still have the machinery for that. They stopped producing that type of film at least 15 years ago."
I quickly remembered that time my sister forgot her film and had it undeveloped in her camera for a year. When it came back from the shop, it had a warning card in it that leaving your film on the shelf for so long will cause damage to the photos, and they indeed were very blurry.
"So after fifteen years there can't be much left of the images, can there?"
"Well, we could always try."
And he went to call the lab. He warned me that it would be expensive, that the developing would cost 15 euros alone and that, since the film format didn't exist anymore, all prints would have to be cut manually. And that it would take two weeks. I paid the developing costs, left name and number, and went out.

Later that day we received a phone call from the photography shop. They'd started working on the film immediately and found only one photo on the film, and printing that would cost 10 euros. We agreed, and I went back today.

And so I went to pick up the 25 euro photo. It was in colour, but the photographer had it printed in black and white to make it slightly clearer.
In the foreground are a table and four chairs, which we don't recognize. The background looks like trees.
On the photo are a woman and child. Since the photographer told me the film dates back to mid-80s, it's possible that they are my mother and sister. But we can't be sure.

I can't stand the heat in summer so I sympathize. Can never get naked enough while sweating on everything, never near a pool to cool down often enough, always tired. Just miserable without air conditioning. I admit.
On the other hand, I prefer winter, so long as I have a place to stay and it's warm. So far so good.

I like it here in Kansas because of the changes in the weather. Never the same day to day. That's what everyone says here, "Don't like the weather? Wait awhile, it'll change."
Always does. I would love to visit england or france to see the sights and so on. I don't think I could live there for long though. Rain all the time, why I wouldn't live in the northwest US, Portland, Seattle. Not bad for awhile...
I lived in Florida for just over a year. Didn't like it. No culture except for very specific spots that's all full of tourists (I'm thinking Key West and Miami). Plus it rained everyday. Then the sun would come out and be hot or always near 100% humidity. Yuck.
It's my perception that when it stops raining in england or normandy, the sun may come out but doesn't warm much. So it stays wet and cool more often with the warm sunny days less frequent. I may be wrong, but the culture, the tea drinking, the gabled roofs, the proliferation of hedges and bridges, awnings and smoke filled pubs, the clipped speech --- all speak to me as products of such a climate.
Lovely people, but dour climate produces pessimistic outlook. Just an observation, a generalization. Individuals are always different.

For comparison, I know it rains all the time in Holland. And again, I may be wrong in my perception but the dutch all seem sunnier in outlook somehow. Big bright colors on the buildings, even if the colors on a Rembrandt may be dark, the personality shines thru. As if because there is so much water in the lowlands, people have more time to see their reflection and have spent the time to scrub out the gloom.
Colors: Red and blue for england and france, I think of sea and beef blood. Holland's colors are bold orange and green which makes me think of bright banners and tapestries, big hunks of cheese :biggrin:

but damn Poly! that looks a BIG hurricane heading for landfall...
I'm all safe and warm here, so far

Hope you're out of the hurricane zone, Poly...

Think about North America. The hurricane zone is toward the equator, so, for example Florida in the south gets hurricanes but not New York in the north. In Australia, in the southern hemisphere, the directions are reversed. Northern Queensland or the north of Northern Territory get cyclones. I'm way down here away from the cyclone zone in the south of South Australia.

That's good news, I was worried there. Thing is I live in a stamp size nation in comparison to Australia and when there's harsh conditions up north the south is getting the same problem sooner or later.

I see Milton Bradley over in the other place got some real snow in Michigan. We were ready here but got half of what we expected. Maybe 15-20 cm. It drifted. It's still real cold. But it took me 20 minutes to shovel off the walk. Pretty, white, cold. Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan all got hit pretty hard.

Okay Bonny, seeing as you haven't answered my question on Cal's forum, here it is again. What is the year round weather like in Holland?

Year round? Changing. Really. Summers can be heatwave or five consecutive weeks of rain. We've had hail in June and very hot Januaries. This year's January had one warm week where I could go out in T-shirt, but it started freezing again a week later. In general, unpredictable is one of the better words.

Right now it's storming in the north, and over here it's quite windy too. That's why it's a bit confusing for me, weather in Australia. Netherlands fits many times into Australia, if something happens out north here the south will usually get some of the effects too. A storm on the other side of the country isn't ever as far away as you are from the floods.

Measured from 1971 -2000
All are averages/year over this period

Days with rain (more than 1 mm) 131
Days with snow 25
Dry days 109
No sun 76
Fog 65

ours of sun 1524
rain in mm 827
Humidity % 82
Temp in winter 3.3 centigrade
Temp in summer 16.6 centigrade
summerdays (25-30 centigrade) 22
tropical days (30 and more) 3

source KNMI

At our base in Eindhoven it is alway a few degrees hotter in summer en colder in winter than close to shore (The Hague)
In Arabia we sell holidays with rain warranty. ( sure bet with 131 rainy days in average).

When we go on holidays in France we keep drivin' until the grass beneath the crash bars is brown. Due to all the rain Holland (where not urbanised) is green.
The painting of our houses is grey, white or standard yellow or brown bricks. The difference you will find is in tghe front door. Not a single one looks llike another.
For colorful painted houses you must go to the Algarve in Portugal or Crete.


And when we're home we have to make sure that we are save from the water

[Edited on 4-2-2011 by DED]

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I get your point Bonny. It's a 2,000 km road trip to Brisbane, the capital of Queensland and about 1,750 km as the crow flies. The region where the cyclone hit is several hundred kilometres north of Brisbane, almost 2,000 km as the crow flies from Adelaide. Brisbane got hit with bad flooding but has very little risk of getting a cyclone, here in Adelaide we get neither.

Thanks for the info DED. Wow, do you really only get three days a year above 30C?

Does anybody know what's happening with Calvin's forum? It seems to be down at the moment.

On average over 30 years that is. We've had heatwaves that have made me wish I was on the North Pole, and we've had years where winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight into autumn.

We have seasons with just one tropical day and we have seasons (not many) with 18 in parts of the country, but that is an exception.
Our country is splitted in 4 parts, the one at the coast is the coldest and north-east part of Limburg in the south is the hottest. When there is a average is about the whole country (with is no greater than aprox 400 x 250 square km). The hottest part is only 50 km long en aprox 10 width. Traveling within our small country can give a difference in temperature of 6 or 7 degrees. 20 at the coast and 27 in Eindhoven. In Belgium (smaller than the Netherlands differences are even bigger from the hills (ardennes) in the east up to the coast.

Eindhoven itselfs lies in a lower part than the surroundings, so temp is mostly higher, but also the air polution has high marks.
We dont have actual mountains or hills in our country. Differences in hight are due to the redrawing meltwater in the iceages. In the highest parts of the country (350 m above sealevel) you can find fossiles of fish meaning that our whole country was covered by water ages ago. Springtides (1953) and meltwater from the alps can cause some problems but apart from that we don't have many real extremities in weather. Our bodies are use to the conditions. In our parts of the world (including scandinavia) it is enough to be outside for 20 minutes to get our vitamines (d) out of the sunshhine. Arabian migrants here still clothed in their portable prisons mostly suffer from a lack of vitamine D.

I was once on Rhodos in Greece ( 8 day trip) where temperatures raise upto 40 centigrade in shade. It was a hell of a holiday, crawling from one air conditioned bar to another. Back home I was ill for weeks.

:swear:wow, a great week-end beginning at my house, no more water because a pipe is broken, some guys from the water company repair service are working hard to fix it, hope they'll soon succeed. My vacuum cleaner just broke down, strangely just a few weeks after the expiration of the two year warranty, I took a warranty extension when I bought it so I hope it'll be ok and get out of the shop with a new one, or they'll lend me one until they get mine repaired.

Well, anyway, my girlfriend and I will go to the restaurant tonight and have a good time, if the place hasn't burnt down to the ground by the time we get there. :umm:

[Edited on 5-2-2011 by aquagoat]