American vacation 2012 photos

[mount_oregano]

After a slight delay (blame the day job), here are some photos from my vacation August 24 to September 9 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois. Above, the view from my hotel room in Chicago at Chicon 7 in the Hyatt Regency. More photos here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151090701588611.444578.537088610&type=1

— Sue Burke

Comments

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

I've never been to Milwaukee. The Botanical Gardens in Chicago are also nice, though ;o)

[pagadan.livejournal.com]

The angel photo reminds me of this quote from a Dr. Who fan--When I was new to Who, I wasn't afraid of statues.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Mwahahaha!

[pagadan.livejournal.com]

Love the weeping angel! Funny!!

[pagadan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the photo. I haven't been to Milwaukee or Chicago in many years, and I miss the snow and the autumn leaves.

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

Not much snow or autumn leaves here in Madrid, either, and I miss the leaves.

[pagadan.livejournal.com]

Ah, no autumn leaves there, huh. Btw, did you ever get any rain from any of those storms in the Atlantic?

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

It's a Mediterranean climate, more or less, here in Madrid. Cool damp winters, hot dry summers. Springtime is nice. But the growing season pretty much ends by July, so there's not much fall as a distinct season, and since there's no hard freeze, the trees don't have to loose their leaves. A few imported trees in gardens from other climates do, but the native trees don't do much showy -- mostly oaks and pines. In fact, the weather is so mild that in sheltered places, palm trees grow here in the city, and they're green year-round.

In 2005, western Spain got downpours and flash floods from the remains of Hurricane Wilma, but normally hurricanes only go from east to west. In the summer, the weather tends to arrive from the south, that is from the Sahara, hot and dry. In the winter, it can come from the north, that is, the Atlantic, and that's when most of the rain usually falls. But weather patterns have been weird lately.

[pagadan.livejournal.com]

So, you're sort of going into winter now? You can see that I don't have a handle on other country's seasons. Btw,I saw on the noon weather that Nadine might be heading towards Portugal and Spain--according to the weatherman. It's been all over, and the spaghetti models disagree; the other day it looked like a demented cat was playing with a ball of yarn. Here we have a stalled cold front, which just gives us rain--no cold yet. But we finally got a good rain yesterday--almost two inches, but that was from tropical moisture coming up from the south--not the cold front...

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

No, we're just on a slow slide out of summer. Today's high was 88 degrees, no rain, and it should stay hot until Monday. That's a little warmer than usual, but still typical. Good harvest weather, if there were a good harvest.

But we've been in a drought too long, so the harvest is down by as much as one-third for some crops. Nadine would be welcome, but I checked. It's stalled, and may be as likely to hit Africa as us.

[pagadan.livejournal.com]

Drat!

A slow slide out of summer describes central Florida pretty well. We should get some real cold fronts in October and November though; that's when we might get more rain too.