The Man with No Time

Today has been a good day. Not only did we get another heavy snowfall, but it lasted all morning and was that wonderful snow that makes great snowballs. You know, the kind that's all large flakes, sticks together nicely, and looks really pretty when it settles. I woke up late thanks to my over-optimistic observing sleep-pattern (I don't know why I was still hopeful that I'd get any observing done this week, and it was snowing heavily. More excitingly, it was settling! It didn't stop snowing until about 1 o'clock, at which point everything had a lovely layer of snow all over it. This was the view from my bedroom window when I woke up about at about 10:00. It only got better from there. (Credit: David Brown) So after our usual Friday lunchtime pub trip we stopped in the gardens above the Physics department to make a snowman, and have a snowball fight. It was glorious. Best day I've had at work in a long time. Oh, and I handed in my first draft thesis ...

Whilst most of the UK seems to be in the grip of something approximating a very small blizzard (which naturally is causing panic everywhere), St Andrews seemed to escape the snowy menace. For the last few days it's been mostly wet, punctuated by periods of glorious sunshine. I confess that I was disappointed; I rather like the snow, and enjoy riding through it on my bike. Not to mention the snowball opportunities. It's also very pretty. However, over lunchtime today we actually had a snowfall. More like a snowstorm actually - it was pretty heavy for a while! Sadly though it didn't settle really, and what little that did vanished within an hour after the snow stopped. It was just too wet. Ah well, it makes me hopeful at least that we'll get more in the next few days. Fingers crossed.

I write this from my room in the ESO guesthouse in Santiago, having finished my observing run and made my way down from the mountain. The last two weeks have passed surprisingly quickly, and what seemed to be turning into a repeat of my lame duck observing run from last time ended up as a very successful trip to La Silla.