Folks have been asking me this: just how cold is it in Austria in deep winter? Well, this morning, it’s -14C, that’s 8F, for those of you in the Fahrenheit zone. Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk and when we got to J’s mom’s house, the thermometer was reading -5C. As the numbers go, that’s not really that cold, but it felt much colder. I was wearing long underwear under my jeans, my Sorrel boots, a hat, scarf, and gloves, of course, and my big down coat on top of my sweatshirt and I was cold enough to want to pull my hood up just to keep the heat in. Mostly, my legs were cold. This is the kind of weather you want one of those bunny suits in. This is that famous borderline “it’s too cold to ski in” weather.
The snow has pretty much stopped and the cloud cover is starting to burn off. Yesterday, because it looked like the sun might come out, I wandered out on the balcony to see if it was worth getting bundled up to go out for a ski. I was out there for less than a minute before going back inside to play my uke and make tea.
Today, it looks like the sun is really going to come out and it’s so dry that it might be bearable. I can’t get over how it can be -14C but if there’s no wind and you’ve warmed up, it can feel like a summer day. Okay, that’s a total exaggeration, but still, there are times when I’ve parked myself on a bench that the locals have thoughtfully placed in a sunny protected corner and thought, hmmm, I could read my book out here.
While I’m housebound, I’ve been preoccupying myself with a handful of things. I’m still working on the Hieronymus Bosch Comic Book. There are a few new scans posted here. I’m spending a little time most mornings doing “real” work for the folks in Florida that have contracted me to help with their user interface. I’ve been tracking some freaky news items about politics in Europe. I practice yoga. I cook. Sometimes, I even wash the dishes when I’m done.
I’ve also been squandering a ton of time on the Internet, most recently looking at this stuff. I can’t explain why I find it so compelling, after all, they’re people I don’t know and places I can’t recognize, but they’re so specific because they’re photographs. In my head I can come up with all kinds of fiction about who these people are and what was important to them and why, all of a sudden, their pictures didn’t matter anymore.
Looking at this stuff has led me to think about the effect digital media has on the experience of stumbling across a history that isn’t yours. Sometimes you find something weird and delightful and personal on the web, but I think there’s something that’s lost from the process of discovery. I once left a book on an airplane and when I got it back, maybe a week later on the return run, it contained a turn of the century photo of three little girls in matching white dresses. Finding that picture felt different than randomly clicking links, though I do think you can turn up some fine things on the web. Maybe sites like Timetales and Object Not Found are a compromise on that experience.
On Fridays, J. finishes work early. We have plans to ski this afternoon, but if it’s too cold, we might make a run down to Graz. I feel cabin fever setting in and it would do me good to get out of town for a couple of hours.