Posts tagged ‘Weather’
An apology for the poor blog output
I’d really like to be blogging on everything related to our upcoming move to Laurelville, but with work, church, and preparation for the move, I don’t actually have time to think or write much of anything.
On a different topic, the weather in the Midwest has been crazy warm for this time of year. If you’re into weather, you might enjoy reading Dr. Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog for today.
That’s all. Sorry.
Like this:
Loving the winter weather
Check out the “winter” weather that we’re having in the Chicago ‘burbs…
And the extended forecast for the following five days…
You may say, “Ten day forecasts are worthless.” I reply, “I don’t really care, since we’ve already had a few days of bizarre (“unseasonably warm”) weather, and it’s technically still winter until next Tuesday.”
And I’m liking the fact that our flower beds should look nice when we’re trying to sell the house. I just hope that we don’t have a late frost.
This week in the garden… Leap Day edition!
Apparently, this is becoming a tradition… 2010, 2011, and now 2012. I provide an update on our flower bed on the last day of February.
Actually, it turns out that we’ve had such a mild winter in the Chicago ‘burbs that I could have provided the update earlier – a week ago or maybe even two. I almost walked out of the house this morning without taking the requisite pictures, but at the last moment, I grabbed my camera. Without further ado…
It’s all the usual suspects, you know?
And look at the weather conditions this morning when I left for work…
But I’m reminded that we are currently in that muddle of time between winter and spring. Since mid-day, a cold front has rolled through, the temperature has fallen from a high of 60 °F down to 35 °F, and we have winds gusting to 45 mph.
Ah… such is the midwest!
Like this:
Cambodia, part 9d – Angkor: Other sights from Angkor Thom
This is the fourth blog post describing our visit to the Angkor area on November 20th and 21st. The first post has two maps of the area which indicate the locations that we visited. It also lists the references that I’ve used to supplement my knowledge of the area, which is extremely limited.
After our group finished going through Bayon, we were ready to retrace our route back to Angkor Wat. Nevertheless, we took some time to look at a few things as we walked back toward our van.
Some of us walked past Baphuon. This temple, though located within the walls of Angkor Thom, was built roughly 150 years earlier than the ‘Great City’. (Jayavarman VII oversaw the construction of Bayon around 1200 CE. Baphuon was built during the reign of Udayadityavarman II at around 1060 CE.) When Ordinary Spouse and I visited ten years ago, the temple was not in good condition and was in the midst of restoration. Today, much of that restoration has been completed. We didn’t take the time to look at the temple up close, but I took two pictures of the entire structure:
Baphuon. I like these two pictures.
Buddha
Meanwhile, two of my daughters wanted to see the contemporary statue of the Buddha that was located nearby. Youngest Daughter was a bit upset when Ordinary Spouse told she that she couldn’t walk all the way up to the statue, especially since there were supplicants present at the time. (Note YD’s face in the photo.)
Are we enlightened yet?
It probably didn’t help that the day was getting hot, even though it was only mid-morning. All of my daughters did wonderfully with the walking and hiking that we did, although we had to be sensitive to YD’s energy levels.
After those two stops, we walked for a ways along the Terrace of the Elephants. This 300-meter-long platform may have served as a viewing platform for the king to review his troops or to watch other parades.
The terrace has three main platforms and two smaller ones. Here, my daughters stand at the south stairway that leads up to the terrace. The elephants hold lotus flowers in their trunks, which form the pillars.
Oldest Daughter sits on the terrace.
Youngest Daughter views a carving of an elephant in the midst of battle. Note how it is picking up some animal with its trunk.
Garudas support the terrace as if it were the heavens (and in the process, suggests something about King Jayavarman as he stands on the terrace).
After walking along the terrace, we all gathered again at our van, ready to continue our day at Angkor Wat. There are a series of towers across from the parking area known as ‘Prasat Suor Prat’. I remembered them from our last visit, and although I haven’t explored them, I find them to be visually compelling. Their use is unclear. There is a legend that ropes stretched among the towers allowed acrobats to perform. Another idea suggests that they held the jewels and other treasures of the king. They may have provided lodging for visiting dignitaries, or provided altars for people swearing loyalty oaths to the king.
Perhaps the most interesting explanation for their use is that they provided a means for divine judgement. Two people in a dispute would be forced to sit in a tower for a few days. When they emerged, one person would be in perfect health, while the other would be suffering from some malady. In this way, the gods indicate guilt or innocence.
From here, we all piled into the van for the short trip over to Angkor Wat.
Next up: Angkor Wat
Snow!
We pause in the midst of the reports from Cambodia – They’re coming! I promise! - to enter this note into the blog record:
The year’s first measurable snow fell overnight!
It wasn’t much: the grass is still sticking up through the snow. But it was enough that the girls are busy pulling on snow pants in order to go outside to play at 7:30 a.m.
Here’s the forecast for the near future. Check out that low for tonight.
Cambodia, part 1 – Getting there
It has been three weeks since my blog proclaimed that the ordinary family was on its way to Cambodia. Even though I had composed that particular entry the day before, it turns out that it was pretty accurate in announcing our departure. However, what preceded our departure was (at least in retrospect) somewhat amusing…
About an hour before we were to leave, we got a phone call from Mr. Guest Complacent (my brother-in-law) in Cambodia. He talked to my wife, so I didn’t get the whole conversation, but he said something like…
Well, it’s like this… When are you arriving here?
And in the background, Ordinary Spouse could hear Mrs. Guest Complacent and my mother-in-law (who had traveled there a few weeks earlier) laughing.
It turns out that they thought that we were arriving one day later than our actual plans. But when they read my “Countdown to Cambodia… 16 hours” blog post, they realized that they should probably double-check our itinerary. It’s a good thing, too. We would have arrived with no contact information and no way of knowing where to go. In hindsight, perhaps that wasn’t the smartest way to travel. Nevertheless, we got things straightened out and off we went.
And boy – did we go in style!
The administrator at my work place made a transportation reservation for me: a ride to/from O’Hare Airport with the company that we use for business travel. Little did I know that when they work with groups (six of us went to the airport and seven came home) the company uses stretch limos. I had just assumed that they would send a van.
You should have seen my daughters’ eyes when the limo pulled into our court…
We dubbed our ride “The Rainbow House of Learning school bus”.
We made it to the O’Hare in good time and settled in to wait for our flight. Activities included climbing, reading, and playing farkle.
Ordinary Spouse and I had never traveled with all three girls before, and we were pleasantly surprised when a Korean Air employee approached us shortly before boarding and invited us to the front of the boarding line. Thanks, Korean Air! That made getting settled into the plane much easier.
Speaking of Korean Air, they were the carrier-of-choice for the duration of this trip. Both to and from Phnom Penh, we had one stop at Incheon International Airport near Seoul. And one stop is much better than when Ordinary Spouse and I visited Mr. Guest Complacent ten years ago, the first time he lived in Cambodia. Back then, we flew from Detroit to Chicago to Los Angeles to Tokyo to Bangkok to Phnom Penh. Whew!
The Chicago-Seoul flight is roughly twelve hours – a bit longer if you’re westbound, since you fly into a headwind, and a bit shorter in the opposite direction. I was aware that the shortest flight path might not be readily apparent (since it’s on a sphere), and it turns out that the quickest way to Seoul is to first fly far to the north…
That white line is the “straight” path. Our actual flight path initially took us more to the north – over the western edge of Hudson Bay – before turning west and passing over the north edge of Alaska, essentially where the line indicates. In other words, we flew over the arctic. And when we arrived in Cambodia later in the day, we had been in both the arctic and the tropics in a single day.
As our flight turned south, we passed over Siberia and China, but then something interesting happened…
Again, the white line is the “straight” path. But it certainly wasn’t the path that our plane took. Shortly before reaching the China/North Korea border, the plane veered west… and stayed well out of North Korean airspace. Hmmm… I wonder what that was all about?
Anyway, we made it to Seoul, not in the greatest shape due to a messed up sleep schedules, but glad that we were most of the way there…
(Ordinary Spouse with blurry eyes.)
(Middle Daughter is much too distracted to rest.)
After a short layover, we were on our way again – the final leg from Seoul to Phnom Penh. Unfortunately, I had something new to worry about – pictures for our Cambodian visas. My father-in-law (who was traveling with us) asked if we had them ready. No, I said. We didn’t even realize that we needed them. This was another example of how not to travel, but there wasn’t much to be done until we arrived in Phnom Penh, so I tried not to dwell on it.
Finally after a full 24+ hours of travel on sporadic sleep (I think I got a total of four hours in two different installments), we arrived in Phnom Penh. Local time: 10:30 p.m. Current temperature: 29° C (84 °F). Relative humidity: something insanely high. Time to start acclimating.
Immigration was our first stop, and we quickly found out that the penalty for not having pictures was that Ordinary Spouse and I would have to pay $5 each* to have the pictures in our passports scanned. Ok – I wasn’t going to quibble with that. I was actually quite relieved. In addition, our visas were $20 each, and the girls’ visas were $5 each. After transferring $65 to the Kingdom of Cambodia, we were on to baggage claim, through customs, and then out the airport doors.
* US dollars are accepted nearly everywhere in Cambodia – at least, I didn’t go anywhere that I couldn’t pay with them. The local currency is the riel. The conversion rate is 4000 riel = $1. I have a hunch that the simplicity of this conversion, along with the fact that every vendor uses it, has helped to peg the riel to the US dollar. The exchange rate has fluctuated between 3800 and 4200 riel to the dollar for at least the last ten years.
Immediately outside the doors, we were met by a mob of people. Some of them were waiting for family and friends; some of them were moto/taxi drivers waiting for passengers; and perhaps some were just there to watch. I was expecting this, since it was the same way ten years ago. The girls, however, didn’t know quite what to do with this. It may have been craziest for Youngest Daughter – light-skinned young children are something of a novelty. When she walked outside, people were openly staring and pointing at her. It wouldn’t be the last time.
However, The Guests Complacent were there to meet us, and they swept the girls away to a van that was waiting to take us “home”.
(Here we are shortly after arriving. Note the clock in the background.)
And that pretty much wraps up the opening chapter of this story. The girls got to sleep around midnight. OS and I got to bed at around 1:30 a.m. (which was 12:30 p.m. Chicago time).
Next up: Acclimating in Phnom Penh (which I’ll provide as soon as I can get it typed up!)
Like this:
Countdown to Cambodia… 6 days
It is official! We are moving from fall into winter, here in the Chicago ‘burbs. As proof, I saw the first snowflake of the year, followed shortly by a few hundred of its closest friends. The forecast for the next few days is looking like this…
Compare that to Phnom Penh over the next few days…
Note that the packing list for Cambodia includes sunblock and a protective hat.
Like this:
The October heat wave continues
(Continuing the theme of a previous post.)
We’ve tacked at least two days on to the end of our October heat wave…
Yesterday, I was tweeting about it:
The world outside my office had its heart broken when summer left, and now its bleeding all color all over the place.—
ordinary (mostly) (@ordinarymostly) October 05, 2011
(Sorry for the missing apostrophe and the extra ‘all’. It’s only 140 characters. You’d think I could proofread it before it goes out.)
Ironically, the Chicago Sun-Times picked yesterday to report that we are supposed to have a very wintry winter. Win-win situation for me!
A bad winter might be coming (http://j.mp/qoMkED), but today it looks like creation is living for the moment.—
ordinary (mostly) (@ordinarymostly) October 05, 2011
October heat wave!
Here in the SW Chicago ‘burbs, we had our first frost last Sunday morning, but it looks like we’ve been given a temporary reprieve. It’s a shame I’ll be inside for most of this time.
This week in the garden… Boom! Bang! Pow!
We got our first taste of volatile summer weather this afternoon. A hail storm rolled through around 3:30 pm.
Below, I’ve put in the radar loop from about 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. (In order to see the animation, I think that you’ll have to click on the image.) Plainfield is the fat, black cross in the middle of the map. Watch how the storm explodes with lightning (black squares) just as it crosses over Plainfield.
(Click on the image to view the animation.)
