Has anybody seen Noah?

I think I may need to borrow his Ark. It's another day of 'real Irish weather' and it's making me happy that my office sits way up on a hill at the back of campus (considering the walk up the hill to get here, it's about the ONLY time I'm happy it's way up here).

Of all of the good reasons to move to Ireland, I would say that the weather would not be one of them. I was fortunate enough to have the nicest summer in over a decade as a bit of a 'Welcome to Ireland' gift. It was sunny and in the 70's for most of the summer and even broke into the 80's a couple of times. For all of the complaining people do about the weather over here, you would have thought they would be happy to see the heat and sunshine. Not so. They moaned and groaned about the heat and wanted to know when it was going to cool down. I had to smile, knowing that in a month's time they would be moaning and groaning about the cold and rain and wondering aloud when it would warm up. :-)

I suppose everyone has to have something to complain about and, to be fair, it's one of the few things the Irish bother about. Rightly so in the winter. It's dreary and cloudy and cold even when it's not actually raining. I'm going to miss winter in New England. Not the icy roads and winter driving conditions, but the snow when it sparkles in the sun after a fresh fall and the warm, sunny days on the slopes. Then again I'm close enough I may just have to plan a ski weekend in the Alps to get away from the rain. (Close proximity to great vacation spots is one of those things that outweigh the weather here!)

Another bonus to the rainy weather is the rainbows. I have seen more rainbows in the 5 months that I've been here than I did my entire life at home. Full rainbows, double rainbows, bright rianbows... not the barely there, 'was that really a rainbow?' sitings from home. The weather here changes quickly. It can be sunny when you get up and head to work, look like you're in the middle of a hurricane by 10am tea, and then feel like a sunny day in late August by lunch time (which is at 1pm over here, by the way). It makes for a lot of sunshowers - perfect weather for rainbows. Yes, I know I sound like a little kid going on about rainbows but they're impressive when they're so bright and fill the entire sky!

Unfortunately, the quick-changing weather also makes it very hard to predict an accurate forecast. I had to laugh when I first came over and listened to the morning radio shows giving the weather forecast. They wouldn't even predict the whole day. They'd forecast to lunch. If you go to the local version of weather.com you can get about a 3 day outlook. That's stretching it for accuracy, although they've been pretty good lately. It's not like living in the Northeast where you can get a 10-day outlook or watch the doppler online to see when a storm is going to hit or when it's about to head out. You just have to suck it up and never leave home without an umbrella and/or rainjacket.

But seriously - has anybody seen Noah??? ;-)