Starship Asterisk*

Wow, neufer, I'm sorry! I hope everything is okay.

owlice wrote:
Wow, neufer, I'm sorry! I hope everything is okay.

Someone is supposed to go inside today
and check the places out.

My son Stephen from California flies in tomorrow with family
and they were planning to go out there next week.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
KING LEAR: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens [e.g., Neuendorffers] spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

I should think the second floor will be okay, and hope your son and his family have fun there next week!

Smite flat the thick rotundity

Occasionally, I try ...

owlice wrote:

Smite flat the thick rotundity

Occasionally, I try ...

Haha, but I live ~1300 miles away.

Cool (53) and wet here. Only to be expected, the State Fair started, yesterday. Just in time, we really needed the rain.

bystander wrote:
Haha, but I live ~1300 miles away.

You've probably never seen a tornado.

bystander wrote:Haha, but I live ~1300 miles away.

I meant my own!!

Hope everything is okay, Art.

Ann

Makes my almost having a frost (Brrrr...) seem rather insignificant!!

Ann, you've lost a few post counts overnight. What happened

neufer wrote:You've probably never seen a tornado.

No. I've lived in Oklahoma for most of my life. I've seen super-cells, meso-cyclones, wall clouds, roll clouds, shelf clouds, ominous circulation in storm clouds overhead, but I have never seen a tornado.

owlice wrote:I meant my own!!

Oh, I thought you were trying to smite me!

bystander wrote:Oh, I thought you were trying to smite me!

Smite you?? Smite you?!? Smite you?!?!

I might sometimes want to bite you, but smite you?! Never!!

Traffic seems to be flowing like any other day in that video.

owlice wrote:

bystander wrote:Oh, I thought you were trying to smite me!

Smite you?? Smite you?!? Smite you?!?!

I might sometimes want to bite you, but smite you?! Never!!

The code-seeking Vampire Raptor

Beyond wrote:The code-seeking Vampire Raptor

She does seem to be a bit batty!

bystander wrote:

Beyond wrote:The code-seeking Vampire Raptor

She does seem to be a bit batty!

A bat with thick rotundity: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110916.html

I'm still a bit shaken about what happen to your condo, Art. Where are you and your family going to sleep tonight? On the second floor? Will that be okay?

And how long will it take to repair the roof, and can you live there while it's being done, and how much will it cost, and who will pay for it? Your insurance company?

As for me here in Malmö, Sweden, I had a lovely day. Last Sunday was the last day of summer of the year for us. It was delightful to be out in a T-shirt and a cotton skirt. Today I'm washing up that skirt and hanging it in the attic until next summer.

But today was really nice too. It wasn't summer, because the temperature didn't climb higher than 17 degrees Celsius, and it was a bit windy, too. But the sunshine was lovely, and everything was so lush and green. Only a few of the maple leaves had turned and shone bright orange-red in the sunshine.
I leave early from work on Fridays, and today I was having lunch here, at Saint Gertrud's in Malmö. It was about as lovely as it looks in this image. The half-timbered yellow house to the right of the tree is called the house of Karl XII, who was king of Sweden between 1697 and 1718. The house is about as old as that, and Karl XII may or may not have visited it. The house in the background, behind the tree, is from the 16th century. I had spaghetti Bolognese, by the way, which is always delicious.







Then I cycled to Limhamn, a sweet old-fashioned part of Malmö, which for centuries was a fishing village of its own until it was incorparated into Malmö. Limhamn used to have a lot of farms, and in this painting by Anna Öhrström you can see what these farmsteads looked like a hundred years ago or more.

Charmingly, at least to me, you can find streets and alleyways with names like Getgatan (Goat Street) and Ankstigen (Duck Footpath), although you won't find any goats or ducks there, not these days.





But Limhamn was more famous for its limestone quarry than for its farms and for the cement that was produced by the big cement factory in Limhamn, Cementa. (By the way, you can hear from its name, Limhamn, Lime-harbour, that this is a place that has been known for its limestone for centuries.)






Old people in Limhamn like to call the big statue of Jesus in Brazil "Jesus from Limhamn", because they say that the statue was made of cement from Limhamn. Apparently the foundation of the statue was indeed made of cement from Limhamn, even though the rest of the statue wasn't!



When I was in Limhamn I visited Criollo, a small chocolateria whose owner, Birgitta, makes her own fantastic home-made chocolate. I bought some generous thick pieces of dark chocolate filled with white chocolate, white nougat and caramellized almonds. Yum!









So today was a lovely day in many ways, and we had lovely weather.

Ann

Ann wrote:
I'm still a bit shaken about what happen to your condo, Art. Where are you and your family going to sleep tonight? On the second floor? Will that be okay? And how long will it take to repair the roof, and can you live there while it's being done, and how much will it cost, and who will pay for it? Your insurance company?

The sliding glass door on the ocean side got blown out and they are currently working on the roof; insurance should pay for most of it. When UARS crash lands on it, however, I'm not exactly sure who will pay(; perhaps I should put out a plastic shark head.)

This place has been a summer getaway since my folks bought it in the early '70's but we don't live there except for a couple of weeks a year (usually those times that I stop posting here) so we'll be fine, thanks.

Does anyone actually live in Ocean City? I've known several people with condos there, but nobody who lived there. The same with Atlantic City, NJ.

bystander wrote:
Does anyone actually live in Ocean City?
I've known several people with condos there, but nobody who lived there.
The same with Atlantic City, NJ.

<<Ocean City's population was 7,173 at the 2000 census, although during summer weekends the city hosts between 320,000 and 345,000 vacationers. (Atlantic City's population was 39,558 at the 2010 census.)>>

neufer wrote:

Ann wrote:
I'm still a bit shaken about what happen to your condo, Art. Where are you and your family going to sleep tonight? On the second floor? Will that be okay? And how long will it take to repair the roof, and can you live there while it's being done, and how much will it cost, and who will pay for it? Your insurance company?

The sliding glass door on the ocean side got blown out and they are currently working on the roof; insurance should pay for most of it. When UARS crash lands on it, however, I'm not exactly sure who will pay(; perhaps I should put out a plastic shark head.)

This place has been a summer getaway since my folks bought it in the early '70's but we don't live there except for a couple of weeks a year (usually those times that I stop posting here) so we'll be fine, thanks.

Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that.

Ann

Ann, can you dig up any pictures of those nice little streets when they have snow on them?

And, i hope you bought enough of those chockolate goodies for ALL of us YUM!

And since this is the weather thread, i thought that i would mention that at sundown, the tempreture was already down in the 40's(F).

After a short but very heavy downpour there was an intense rainbow over the dale. It came out quite nicely in this photo; thought you might like to see . .

Actually, if you look carefully, it was a double rainbow. There's a fainter one visible too!

Yay!, my first 'official' post as a fully signed-up board member
. . and with a picture too!

starstruck wrote:

After a short but very heavy downpour there was an intense rainbow over the dale. It came out quite nicely in this photo; thought you might like to see . .

Actually, if you look carefully, it was a double rainbow. There's a fainter one visible too!

Yay!, my first 'official' post as a fully signed-up board member
. . and with a picture too!

Welcome starstruck and Kudos on your first post.
It's been really cold here lately! I hope it's not a sign of an early winter.

starstruck wrote:

After a short but very heavy downpour there was an intense rainbow over the dale. It came out quite nicely in this photo; thought you might like to see . .

Actually, if you look carefully, it was a double rainbow. There's a fainter one visible too!

Yay!, my first 'official' post as a fully signed-up board member
. . and with a picture too!

Welcome back here, starstruck! You and I have been talking before in this thread, but now you are a full member! Welcome, and congratulations on your fine photo!

We have had our shares of rainbows where I live, too. Here in Malmö, Sweden, we have had more than twice as much rain as usual during June, July an August. And it hasn't let up in September by any means! Today has been chilly and windy, with occasional showers, and I haven't been this cold since April.

starstruck, I've re-read your last post before this one and admired two more of your local North Yorkshire words:

stone field barns or 'laithes', wooded ghylls

"Laithes", could that possibly be related to the Swedish word "lada", which means barn? (And "barn" means "child" or "children" in Swedish. Scotty in the original Star Trek series used to call his engines "my poor bairnes", which I always interpreted as "my poor children". You don't happen to say "bairnes" when you mean children, do you, starstruck?)

So there are undoubtedly some words in your Yorkshire English that may have their roots in old Norse, but that doesn't go for "ghyll". That word doesn't remind me of anything whatsoever. It's a fine-sounding word, undoubtedly with an interesting history.

And tomorrow I'll break out my umbrella again!

Ann

Beyond wrote:Ann, can you dig up any pictures of those nice little streets when they have snow on them?

And since this is the weather thread, i thought that i would mention that at sundown, the tempreture was already down in the 40's(F).

I doubt I can find pictures of the streets of Limhamn in winter. I couldn't find many images of Limhamn in the first place, sad to say.

Here is an image of the Limhamn marina.











So for centuries, there were a lot of fishermen in Limhamn...















...and women with wheelbarrows transported the freshly-caught fish to the fish market a bit further in land.









But this is the only Limhamn image I could find that looks even remotely like a winter scene. You can see the street, Järnvägsgatan (Railroad Street), with the railroad hidden behind the houses. The house at center left is the station house. (The photo is from 1910.)





Interestingly, we Swedes don't like winter. We pretend that we like it, since we've got so much of it, but we don't. Almost all Swedish films show you Sweden in summer. One remarkable exception is "Let the Right One In". That movie has now been remade as a Hollywood movie, but the original film is Swedish, and it shows you Sweden in winter. There aren't many films that does that these days, believe me.


Ann

Many thanks Orin and Ann for the warm welcome, it is very much appreciated and it is good to make your acquaintances. I have enjoyed viewing APOD almost every day for the best part of two years now and have also read many of the discussion posts along the way too. It was only recently that I started contributing my own occasional comments, but I thought if I were going to do that then I really should 'join' officially. I am glad I did.

Orin, I am interested that you say your weather has been so cold recently. Presumably your cold air systems come down from Canada? I wonder if it heralds a hard winter to come. The last two winters here in Britain have been much colder, with more snow for longer than we have been used to for many years. I am awaiting what happens this winter to see if there is a trend emerging towards more extreme conditions. Three in a row could begin to look like an emerging pattern. I don't relish the thought of another hard winter at all. But what will be, will be.

Ann, I am delighted that you you picked up on those two words in particular. I wondered if you might. I am pretty sure they are both of Norse origin. And yes, indeed, as a term of endearment, we do often refer to young children as 'bairns'. Ghyll can also be spelled as 'gill' and is used to describe a very narrow, steep-sided valley, smaller than a dale. I'm not sure of it's origin, but is there an Old Norse word something like 'gjel'?

I am glad you liked the photo of the rainbow, I was so pleased I figured out how to attach it in my post. I have been quite inspired by both your postings; reading about your garden Orin and following your wonderful pictorial decriptions of your various outings Ann. Looking forward to reading more . .