Hoarfrost

So it was my birthday on Monday (44, and fine, thanks), and with it the beginning of a pretty weird few days. We had dinner Monday night at Jaro Blue (same place we went for New Years) and it was mostly lovely, although their weakness is still desert, which is too bad since they have a nice drinks and espresso menu and it would a great spot to drop in for desert sometimes… but some of the tapas were superb, so yeah, nice relaxing birthday dinner.

I woke up on Tuesday with a little discomfort in the intestinal region and, well, it got dramatically worse. “Food poisoning”? Norovirus? Well, most food poisoning IS Norovirus as it turns out, so it doesn’t really matter. Brian didn’t get sick, so there’s that. Funny thing is I had the exact same thing with the same sequence of symptoms (ending with a fever chaser that lasted maybe 12 hours) last year at the same time, second week of classes. THIS year I called in sick, so inshallah I didn’t infect anybody. But I did call in sick Tuesday and missed office hours and department meeting on Wednesday, so having only taught yesterday, it was a nice short week.

But on to hoarfrost. Hoarfrost occurs when there is “freezing fog” and moistures settles and freezes on various outdoor surfaces. It happens here A LOT, although not so much this season (fall and winter I mean), and it is one of the most beautiful weather events I’ve ever experienced, right up there with rainbows. We had a freezing fog last night, so I was thrilled to get up this clear sunny morning and take some pics.

From the front porch looking east:

Front of our house (note the cool new house numbers I put up a few months ago):

Big trees (the trembling aspen was very badly damaged in a late spring snowstorm last year which is why it looks so spindly) across the street:

The frost is thick on EVERYTHING- cars, roofs, sidewalks.

Other stuff: As anticipated earlier (search “High Performance Rodeo Preview”), we saw Kevin McDonald’s one-man show, Hammy and the Kids, at the High Performance Rodeo last Friday–KITH/Loose Moose alum and Calgary native Bruce McCulloch was in the audience– and it’s a funny, bittersweet show that I very much recommend.