Ice is remarkably pretty. It settled on the windscreen and around the doors of our car this morning in precise snowflakey crystals - the kind of thing that chemists dream of resulting from the most perfect, slow and gentle recrystallisation. Feathery crystals in long arcs traced their way along every scratch or imperfection in the duco or the glass.
All of this was remarkably nice until we needed to drive. Nic tried the usual, tested technique for a frosty windscreen in Perth - pour some warm water onto it. Unfortunately in the subfreezing air here in Durham, the water simply slid down the glass until it too froze, leaving a couple of thick lumps sitting above the windscreen wipers. So then, I guess out of reflex action, Nic turned on the wipers and the water - with the result that we smeared a fine layer of crushed ice across most of the windscreen! All of this would have been great if we'd been wanting to make Margaritas (hmm, which, now that I think of it, would be nice...) but was not so good for visibility and all that good stuff. So we turned the heater on in the car, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best... and all was well.
So, its COLD. -8 last night. Despite the conversations with various friends from Montana who maintain that -10 FARENHEIT is "quite ok", I'm not keen on it being quite this chillsome. However, we still have all of our extremities, so I suppose we've adapted reasonably well!
Everybody: Nic has received his authorisation to work! Its valid for THREE YEARS! This is awesome - it only took 1 month to come through (we expected 3), and its been really really painless! So with any luck Nic will have a much shorter period of being a kept man than he did last time round! Although this does raise tricky questions about timing, post docs, and finishing off the "volunteer" work that he's currently embarked upon... happily, that's Nics problem and I'm sure he'll do a wonderful job of solving it. Until I start asking for money... *grin*
On a serious note, its a great relief that this has come through - so hurrah!
No comments:
Post a Comment