Good morning and Happy New Year to you all! Penelope and I celebrated by welcoming the New Year in Prague, Athens, Bucharest, Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo and Damascus, not to mention Helsinki, Riga, Sofia, Tallinn, Vilnius as well as Jerusalem and Minsk. And a splendid celebration it was too!<\/p>\n
You will have noticed (probably) that the New Year brings a \u201cnew\u201d blogging environment; from henceforth all future editions of the Befouled Weakly News will be posted here. The only difference is that we are now using a WordPress template which provides an opportunity for readers to comment on the postings as well as a relatively easy way to search through the archives. I\u2019m not satisfied with the current \u201ctheme\u201d yet (the general layout) so you may see some changes in the weeks\/months to come but you can rest assured that the content will remain as tediously dull as previously.<\/p>\n
What a difference a week makes! This time last week we were enduring freezing Arctic conditions with mountains of snow; this week we are positively basking in almost tropical temperatures. Well, perhaps not quite tropical but definitely and deceptively warmer. That\u2019s what happens when you get a 20 degree temperature swing in a matter of a day or so \u2013 the perception is that it\u2019s quite warm when, in fact, it\u2019s still cold! Last week we had temperatures of -15\u00a0degrees (Celsius, of course); today the temperature is forecast to reach the lofty heights of +5\u00a0degrees C. For those of you working in Fahrenheit, that\u2019s a swing from 5\u00a0degrees F to 41 degrees\u00a0F in a matter of a day or so which, as I say, leaves one with the feeling that it\u2019s tropically balmy outside.<\/p>\n
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Speaking of warm, tropical, balmy conditions, I ran across an excellent time-lapse sequence of the recent blizzard in the northeast which you can see below (maybe); if not, it\u2019s here<\/a>.<\/p>\n