Entered on 2001-08-22 at 7:44 a.m..
All�s quite on the home front�
Yep things are pretty quiet around here. All of the coops and summer interns have returned from whence they came. So now the office which used to hold four of us no houses only me. Its rather sad, but at least I don�t have to fight anyone over environmental controls. In our case our big temperature controller is the door. It is about 8-10 degrees warmer inside our office than in the hallway, so by opening the door we could cool the office down quite a bit. Fortunately for me since opening the door also allowed others to see just how much �work� we were doing, it usually stayed pretty closed. Now with the boys (I worked with three other guys) gone, the room isn�t quite a comfortable as it used to be. I have to make due under a fleece blanket.
If you haven�t guessed yet, it is a well-established fact that upon my arrival in England I will begin to freeze, and I don�t expect to thaw out until I visit Spain or Italy. I looked up the average weather for Cranfield yesterday just to see how frozen I was going to be. Thankfully I didn't find any references to mean temperature, but I did find sunrise and sunset times for the entire year. Somehow the concept of daylight savings time is lost on the island. The extremes go from December 21 where the sun rises at 8:09 and sets at 3:54 to June 21 where the sun rises at 3:43 and sets at 8:27. In fact for the entire month of June the sun rises before 4am. Good grief.
Not that this is unexpected considering how far north Cranfield is. For those of you who are curious, Cranfield is located at right around 52 degrees north latitude. That is roughly inline with the upper portion of Newfoundland, and well above the continental United States. To see it in map form click here. Type in "MK43 OAL" in the post code spot. I tried to provide a direct link but it didn't work. If you zoom out a few times, you can see its rather in the middle of nowhere, by British standards.
Just as an aside to Becca. First, I'm really jealous of your page. Is Irwin doing willing to help others? Second, I don�t really care about a Rhodes scholarship, but for some reason it seems to be plaging Jason and Dan. It must be a politician thing.