September 10, 2008 Time and Temperature

I have a new toy: an indoor-outdoor thermometer. I’m still figuring out how to get the outdoor part set up, since all of my windows have screens nailed in, but hopefully it’ll soon be up and going.

I’d thought that I wanted this, both as an environmental scientist and because I’ve been curious, but I’m now thinking that it might just depress me. Right now, it’s 11am on a sunny day in early September, and it’s 61.7° in my bedroom.

I’ve enjoyed feeling the fall tang in the air – and it makes me happy that fall is actually coming in September, instead of, say, December (as it did when I lived in Houston), but I admit to being a little apprehensive about winter. If it’s already chilly now, January and February are going to be cooold. Which I knew. Everyone I talk to says that Berberville gets really stinkin’ cold in the wintertime.

One of the clichés of Morocco is that it’s a cold country with a hot sun. And like many clichés, it’s based in truth. There’s so little humidity that the difference between sunlight and shade is huge. It can be HOT in direct sunlight, but chilly in a patch of shade a foot away. And my big cement house with the small windows doesn’t get a lot of direct sunlight. I do have a skylight, which I’m very grateful for (except when it rains, because it leaks like crazy), but the thick glass lets in more light than heat.

Well, I’ll now be able to quantify my coldness. Instead of just thinking, wow it’s chilly in here (as I thought an hour ago), now I know it’s sixty degrees indoors. OK, 62. :)

What I’m trying to remember now is why I thought it would be good to know this…