Aussiehalley - Halley Down Under

partly sunny with a chance of you-gotta-be-kidding-me

I've known some funky-ass weather in my life. I'm from Chicago, and I've been living in Boston. My high school stayed open one winter until it was negative 75 (F) windchill and two and a half feet of snow. Then they let us stay home. I'm familiar with swealtering summers with humidity that turns outside into a Native American sweatlodge. Don't like the weather? Wait 5 minutes, it'll change. --- The joke applies to both cities.

And somehow the Melburnian winter is messing with my mind. The past two weeks especially. In general, it'll rain for about five minutes. Then stop. It goes out for a coffee. Chats with its buddy, Windy. Then decides to rain a bit more, spitting all over everything. In between, it'll be sunny. And the day goes on and it's like the rain didn't happen. Like Florida. But colder.

The apartment has an aluminium roof, so you hear the rain. And the wind rattling things against the roof. And then you hear more rain. It's kinda like holding a big soup pot over your head and having someone drop jacks on top of it. Not dangerous, just loud enough that you consider finding Auntie Em and Toto and making a run for the cellar.

So it turned cold. But the thing is, you look out the window and it's bright and sunny. You walk around and the palm trees are still green. The Bird of Paradise flowers are still in bloom. Tropical flowers are attracting bees. It looks like Sunday in the Park with George. But the wind come in gusts and would knock you over. Or maybe just me. And we had days of nonstop rain, coming in sheets. But now it's nice out, and the pretty little birdies are hopping on the pretty little lawns again. And I'm in my ski jacket. (At the same time you'll see people in sandals and t-shirt, others in unzipped hoodies, and then those bundled in matching hat/scarf/glove sets.)

Tonight's bedtime story will be "The Berenstain Bears and the Anachronistic City."

We're lucky that our apt has central heat. A lot of older apts in Melbourne, and Oz in general, don't have it. The winter is generally short enough and mild enough that I suppose people just suck it up and deal with it. That many space heaters can't be safe. Maybe they just figure they look so cute in their knitwear and printed jackets that heating would only hurt the fashion show.

Either way, we've happy to have central heat. And it's very central. One large vent in the center of the apt. I keep my door open during the day, otherwise my room gets freezing when I open the door later on. The warmest part of the apt is on the stairs going up to the big bedroom. The living room by the door to the front balcony gets chilly. We could do an hourly weather forecast for all the different regional temperatures in here.

Next weekend, we'll be on the beaches of the Great Ocean Road. That is, if we successfully negotiate left-side driving...

posted by Halley @ 10:44 AM