Gordon,

So it's not enough that the poor animals stuck in factory farms are tortured every seconds of their lives up to their awful death but hey let's blame them also for pollution. Anything except blaming us, right? We sure do not want to put the blame where it belongs or worst dare say that human beings are not awesome.

Today it is 40 F degrees and so far this morning it is cloudy - which is an improvement after 3 days of snow last week! I'm in The Netherlands.

So far today it's windy, cloudy and rainy with occasional snow. Yesterday was the same. And the day before. But all that was better than Saturday's hurricane. (We only caught the edge of it and yet had winds up to 90 mph.) I'm still in Norway.

Gosh, Mona! I just looked up the Norwegian weather site (I have family in Oslo, so I have the website on speed-dial, in a manner of speaking) and it looks rough up around Narvik, which I guess is where you are. Good luck!

In Central Virginia it began raining last night and during the night early morning the temperature dropped. There is ice on the grass, deck, and I would guess the sidewalk too. I hope it warms up some because I do need to go out.

Yesterday it was mostly sunny and windy off/on.

It was calm at night.

It was calm when I went to bed.

It was mostly sunny and windy when I got up.

Yesterday it was partly cloudy and windy on/off.

It was windy off/on during the night.

It was windy when I went to bed.

It was mostly sunny and windy when I got up.

Gordon, we were well south of Narvik, which is why we only got the fringes of Ole. And why we stayed in sheltered Molde rather than head into the open sea or on to Svolvaer since the Lofoten Islands were really hammered by the storm.

We're currently avoiding a force 10 or so gale. (It has been a very unfortunate trip!) The captain decided not to sail through it to Kirkenes, as the route is very open. We've come to Alta to wait until we can pick up the schedule. They've sent a busload of people off on an 8-hour trip to Kirkenes in order to make flights tomorrow morning. Sure glad I'm not one of them.

But in Alta it is calm and the temperature isn't much below freezing. Unfortunately, that's because it's cloudy.

Crikey, Mona! And also Yikes! My wife is always after me to go on a cruise with her, but I've always resisted - and now I know why! Whew. I hitched up around that part of Norway when I was young (celebrated my 24th birthday in August 1963 with a token dip in the sea at Narvik), and it was pretty cold then, in summertime. You must feel as though you've been hi-jacked onto an Arctic Convoy. I've just found Alta on Google Maps, and it looks nice and sheltered in there. Yes, it would have been very exposed going around the north to Kirkenes; and good luck to those people on the bus. Why did they go, I wonder. Unless Kirkenes has improved a heck of a lot since '63, I wouldn't have bothered! All the best to you.

No way I would have gone at this time of year. We enjoyed our stop in Bergen and that area but we were there in July.