Freezingly cold!

We've had a peculiar winter in Finland this year. First it seemed that winter wouldn't come at all; we had surprisingly high temperatures in December and January, and all the snow that we had had so far melted away. Then the weather suddenly got cold and it's been like this for several weeks now.

The lack of snow causes many problems. Naturally, people who like to ski or downhill ski are annoyed because their skiing season cannot start, but also farmers are worried about their future crops because of the combination of terribly cold weather and lack of snow. Snow works as a good insulator, and also many animals who live in the wild are unable to find shelter.

I can relate to these problems, but personally, I really didn't mind that we didn't have a 'proper' winter a month ago. I'm constantly cold in the winter, so relatively mild temperatures suited me just fine, and since I'm not a winter sports' enthusiast, I didn't miss snow that much. Of course, it's nice if you have snow at Christmas but that's about it if you ask me. Actually, I wouldn't mind being somewhere warm right now, dressed only in a bathing suit and sipping a cold drink to keep the heat away. Tahiti or Mauritius; that would sound nice...

Week 2; back to normal

Now that we've had Christmas and New Year's celebrations, it's time to get back to the normal everyday routines. Many people have actually said that it feels good to get the holiday season out of the way and the usual rhythm back. It might take a while to get it back, though, because it seems that quite a few people -including myself- have been extremely tired in the morning during the past week, and in the evening it seems difficult to go to sleep early. I've been trying to console myself saying that getting up early in the morning will get easier; it's just this post-holiday period which is always difficult. And it is a fact that we have passed the Winter Solstice about three weeks ago, which means that we are heading towards more light every day!

January is also a time for New Year's resolutions, and it's a known fact that fitness centres, gyms and all kinds of health clubs get loads of new members every January. "New year, new me" seems to be the goal for many. I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but this time I've promised myself that I'll try to struggle myself out of this sugar addiction I seem to have developed over the holidays.

I actually came up with one long-term goal for myself: from now on, I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to make sure that my children will never become astronauts or any kind of space engineers. The reason for this notion is that I went to the movies yesterday and saw Gravity on 3D, and the experience was so scary that I don't even want to think of having someone I love working in space!