More Weather

We’re coming into summer.. as the Canadian Thanksgiving approaches and things cool down back home it just keeps getting hotter around here.

The sun is coming up just after 4 these days, which is pretty early. But it doesn’t really seem early, and I wake with lots of energy. While I get up, have my coffee, a shower, watch a show, check the news, eat my breakfast, write for a bit, check my email and walk to work early, Jeri drags her butt out of bed in the cold and dark of Calgary and goes to work on the bus; in the dark.

Not fair eh Jer.

Anna, in RAK, is the only one getting up and going to bed at a reasonable time: well, she might be.. my point is she can! Like Mexico, it gets dark around 6:30 7 and light about that same time in the morning. While most of my friends imagine the Middle East as ‘different’, it is really Canada and Oz that are extreme.

Especially in the north.. Northern Canada, Northern Australia.

When I was in LaCrete, Alberta, Canada, close to the Territory border, it seemed ‘normal’ lasted a very short time: you had the day of the equinox and, that was about it: reasonable time disappeared.

In the summer the sun is always ‘up’: not hot, but up. Gardens race for the light and grow amazingly fast, and the bugs are huge and busy, taking advantage of the rays. Everybody and everything gets recharged, and sleep is only succumbed to for very short periods.

In the winter, it’s always dark: which provides an amazing back-drop for the Northern Lights, but requires you to come and go to work, using street lights to show you the way and people tend to hibernate.

But when you go out, the dark has you playing “dark’ games, like hide and seek at the school: you do what you can with the things you have! Using the whole school as a playground, “IT” would hide, and when we found IT, we would tuck ourselves in there with IT until everyone was together, in the dark.. It isn’t long before a whole pile of teachers are squished together in some ridiculous location, attempting not to laugh, while a lone idiot of two wander around looking for them: a riot actually: and you can only play it in the north, in winter.

Life is what you make it!

But I prefer the sunshine: and beer.

Lots of sunshine in Wangkatjungka: another dry community so I just have to keep my sense of humour. But I think someone should move time forward an hour.. can’t we do that? ..I am tired of going to bed at some ridiculous time, like my dad: maybe he’s always just been living in the wrong time zone too!

It’s going to be freezing in Jaffray pretty soon. But here, well, it is only spring and I already leave the air-conditioning on most of the day.. and night. Low 40’s are usual here.. in LaCrete too.. only that would be below the 0.

In LaCrete in January your nose hairs freeze: in the Kimberleys, well.. they don’t. And in the Middle East, it cools down a bit in December/January, and warms up again in May/June: as it should.

But there is no Thanks Giving in RAK or Australia.

Different realities: no turkey in this one.

Well, except for the idiot that I had to deal with at 7:30 this morning at the office. I really hope I can get out of here when the "wet' arrives.. and I think the 'build up' has begun.