How's the weather?

The question that comes up most frequently about life here is ‘what’s the weather like?’ As one commenter asked in reference to the last entry, ‘is it weird celebrating Christmas where it’s warm?’

To answer the first question, here’s a picture I took last week from the sofa:


(I wrote a long time ago about our sofa-buying adventure, here’s the final product):

Part of why it's so easy to skip Christmas this year is the weather. In a cold, gray climate, I need the lights, the evergreen tree and cozy traditions to cheer me up. Out here, there are trees in bloom and green all around me. Decorating for Christmas seems like unnecessary work.

Basically, at some point during the day the temperature warms up to the 60’s while at night it dips into the 30's or 40's. I get hostile about turning the heat on. One: it will warm up at some point. Two: all the windows are single panes. The insufficient insulation drives me crazy. As a result, most of the time inside our apartment, my hands are numb. For some odd reason, Muttola seems to really like basking in the sun once it peeks over the edge of the balcony. Obviously, there’s no correlation.