Made of awesome

Lionheart Majdic earns medal for bravery

I turned on the TV wednesday night just in time to see Petra Majdic fall into the ditch. It was a very nasty looking fall, and the commentators started talking about how she wouldn't be able to do the race, and what a pity it was for one of the main contestants to lose her chance like this.

As predicted, she didn't start as number three in the qualifying round, but towards the end, along she came with number three on her chest, starting last of all and powering past a number of healthy skiers. I immediately started rooting for her. You could see on her face that she was not at all well, but she just kept going.

I was very happy for her when she crossed the finish line third in the final, and teared up when she collapsed in a way I've never seen another skier do once she was done.

Gold with little diamonds on, indeed!

Geography matters

Today, I learned why the national newspapers and some major weather websites have a tendency to consistently predict temperatures well below what we actually get here in their forecasts for the week ahead.

It's because they get their data from England, which is based on temperatures in a 25 km grid of points.

The closest point to this town is about 20 km inland, in an area known to be a cold sink :)

(On monday, the forecast suggested around -20C here this weekend, 2C below the historical record of -18C. Instead, we're hovering around -10C.)