Wednesday… 12 days to Christmas
Dec 13th 2006PeterLife on hold!
And with that in mind, I thought I would bring a little festive decoration to the blog! I hope you like it.
There is some other good news too – yesterday was the earliest sunset of the year, and from today, the evenings start getting lighter! Yes it is true! Although the shortest day is December 22nd, the combination of the elliptical orbit of the earth round the sun and the 23 1/2 degree tilt of the earth’s plane of rotation with the orbital plane mean that earliest sunset and latest sunrise do not coincide on the shortest day. However the bad news is that although the evenings start getting lighter, the mornings continue to get darker at a faster rate until around the shortest day. Sunrise contines to be later until the end of December when sunrise starts getting earlier again.
A similar effect occurs in June at the longest day, but because the earth is further from the sun, the effect is less pronounced and latest sunset/earliest sunrise are much closer to the longest day.
Education lesson over for the day! I am still waiting to hear when the PET scan will be, and I suspect I may need sedation or a strong pain killer so I can lie in the machine. I am still suffering from various aches and pains, and sleeping sitting upright doesn’t make for a good night’s sleep. I think I have caught a bit of a cold too – there have been a couple of nasty bugs going round, but I hope I can shake that off by Christmas.
No visible signs of the GvHd yet, but it is still a bit early, but there are some more donor lymphocytes waiting, if required!
So onwards and upwards!
(Just heard – the PET scan is tomorrow, and we a looking at ways of overcoming the pain problem)
5 Responses to “Wednesday… 12 days to Christmas”
Frances on 13 Dec 2006 at 12:02 pm #
Another potential Trivial Pursuit partner I see!
Best of luck tomorrow. We’ll cross everything here.
Love
Frances
Richard on 13 Dec 2006 at 7:45 pm #
Well crossing aside, what a change? Very good 🙂
If the days get longer, therefore more Sun, why is it colder after Christmas?
I am off to Nottingham tomorrow to gen up on silly answers, thank you Frances, no really to pick up younger daughter.
One way to get rid of the pain problem is to block silly contributors. Err perhaps not.
Good luck tomorrow.
RicXarX
Liz on 13 Dec 2006 at 9:54 pm #
Actually, I always thought that the shortest day was the 21st!
Will be thinking about you tomorrow and praying that you get some good results.
Lots of love,
Liz
Peter on 14 Dec 2006 at 9:16 am #
Liz – It is! (well, it varies between the 21st and 22nd) but that is not the day of earliest sunset or latest sunrise!
Richard on 14 Dec 2006 at 4:36 pm #
Well, that is what making my Armillary so hard: If you take a picture of the sun each day when your clock says noon (not at local solar noon) the sun is not always in the same place in the sky. It moves east and west because of the variation in the length of the solar day, and it moves north and south with the change of the seasons. The combination of these motions traces out a figure-eight shape called the analemma which you can see pictured on some globes.
Hope and trust all went well.
DxxX