weather – Dickens of a Blog

Snow Days to Kick off the Year

On 2026-01-06

It started as the wettest snow I have ever seen. I struggle, a bit, to explain it. You hear “wet snow” and you might think something like “wintry mix” but that’s not a good explanation. Think snow. Run-of-the-mill white stuff falling from the heavens. Only wet. Moving like clumpy rain.

I’m sure in the vast volumes of weather descriptions, there are words for it. Thompson’s Snow or Merriweather Flakes or some such. I could look it up but as for now, I’ll just call it Merriweather. Sounds, appropriately for this blog, Dickensian.

The above photo I took around 18:20 on 2025-01-02, a Friday, putting it at one of my first photos of the year. It is a mediocre-sliding-to-terrible photo in most metrics, but I feel it captures the essence of Merriweather Flake.

By Saturday (3 Jan), it turned into more legit snow. Here’s a photo of B and our two tuxedo cats enjoying the first or second aftermath. [Photo by Kaz]

The sun was at least partially out in this photo and the snow had stopped. It returned later that day. Then a very bright moon came out (not pictured). Then the snow returned. Then it cleared.

That was the pattern for several days. Remember how I have talked about there’s a stretch of woods we have to walk through to get to civilization? Here’s what that looked like on Sunday (and, presumably, today) [photo by Kaz]:

For those paying attention, this means B is now in the select group of people who can say they had to walk through the dark and snowy woods [sunrise is currently after her school day starts] just to get to school. There’s even an uphill, there.

A bit back, I talked about how often it rains during sunshine, here (The Devil Has a Lot of Fairs in Grimbergen + Pooping on a Train a Decade Ago). I can now attest that it also snows in the sunshine. This is around 08:30 this morning (2026-01-06):

You have to have faith there is snow in that picture. There is. Much like the last time I was talking about it, you also have to have some faith there’s sunlight in that picture.

Shortly after, the snow ate the sun and it degraded to this:

And now, circa 14:50, the sun has again taken the lead:

We are expecting more snow and, this time, a proper wintry mix over the next several days.

I’m Southern US enough that I’m still mostly fascinated by the snow. There is the downside that my post-injury stability is so low that I pretty much cannot step foot outside while there’s any chance of icy or slippery terrain so I’ve been largely stuck indoors since Friday night with only short excursions.

That is kind of ok. I just get to be the creepy guy staring out the window as folks walk by…

I just appreciate someone finally wrote an ode to Belgian Weather

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-11-30

In Grimbergen, Humor, Music, Music Video

We are are at the time of year where the forecast in Grimbergen is permanent stuck on two alerts: “It may rain in a few hours” and “Rain may cease in a few hours.” With apologies to Mitch Hedberg, it used to be raining. It still is, but it used to, too.

Brandon Jamar Scott’s new song [Part of his Trailer Park Alien Universe], I feel, encapsulates this.

NOTE: if the “69 News” and the title of the song being wet doesn’t give you a heads up, let me just say the humor is raunchy. A wee bit. Beetje. Etc etc.

It’s a catchy song. And maybe one day we will get justice and get the missing piece of the Universe back, which was struck on grounds of Nintendo declaring it…canon.

[Photos] (double) Rainbow Over De Abdij van Grimbergen

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-11-17

In Grimbergen, Photos

While I was writing the previous post (Foggy Night in Grimbergen), I looked out the window and saw a double rainbow to the west. Feeling I only had a few seconds to make it count, I headed outside and scooted over until I found the angle for which I was looking. To capture a rainbow over De Abdij van Grimbergen.

Unfortunately, my phone does not do well with the zoom and I still haven’t unpacked my better camera. Unzoomed, it looks more like…

Because it was actually a double rainbow.

Neat-o. Even if my photo quality sucks, it’s still a fun shot.

Right after I took the shot I had to scoot back up the road and inside because we were getting another Devil’s Fair. Then it just turned into outright rain for several minutes.

Foggy Night in Grimbergen

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-11-17

In Belgium, Daily Life, Grimbergen, Photos

This is actually from a couple of nights ago. When I took the photos, I was shutting down for the night [basically]. Then, yesterday, I spent a fair chunk of the day wrapping up the Dragon Quest 1-2 HD-2D Remake [which is a crazy title to type out]. So while these lose some immediacy, and it is currently kind of sunny but with the threat of rain, I still wanted to share them.

This past Saturday night [2025-11-15, ~20:00] a heavy fog rolled into Grimbergen. We have had a few foggy days since moving here, a couple of foggy nights, but this was by far the strongest.

The lights outside our house were pretty clear, but also clearly fog wrapped. The intensity, though, was apparent in the way that we could see no lights [well, one made it through] across the field. There’s a street across the way and we can normally see the houses fairly clearly, including their lights. And there is the abbey (Abdij van Grimbergen) which can be spotted from a distance and is brightly lit. It was also lost into the dark. This latter bit was probably the most unnerving.

After noticing it, the fog kept building up over the next hour or so and in that way that you can hear shouts and barks and and a few other sharp noises, only those tended to make it out of the dark. It was a wonderfully spooky effect. One slightly lost as the lights of Vilvoorde caused the sky to redden noticeably to the east, but glowing red fog on one side is a sight in itself.

Around 22:00 or so, it had dissipated enough that you could see more nearby lights. The next day it was back to being rainy with just smaller patches of fog.

The Devil Has a Lot of Fairs in Grimbergen + Pooping on a Train a Decade Ago

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-28

In Belgium, Daily Life, Memories, Words

We seem to get a lot of sunshowers [LGT: Wikipedia] here in Grimbergen, BE. The weather mix where it is raining while sunny.

Back in Alabama, I feel like you’d maybe see it once or twice a year. In Belgium, I’ve already seen a good dozen times over the three months I’ve been here. I have no idea if it is normal, or if I have some magic touch. Though, since the Flemish word for it seems to be Duiveltjeskermis (Devil’s Fair), “magic touch” might have a cursed connotation there.

You can probably not see much rain in either photo. Consider this something like a trust fall.

It’s also non-Summer Belgium, so you can barely see any sun. So it goes…

Three fun facts in which one is a follow-up of another:

(1) I had the window open [obv] in that second photo and while taking the picture, noticed the wind had shifted enough that it was starting to blow rain inside. Before I could shut the window, a quantity of rain poured all over my radiator, electric cords, power bank, and so forth. I had to rapidly shut everything down and unplug stuff while still covered in rain water.

(2) Whenever I see sunshowers, the Southern US phrase “The devil is beating his wife” pops in my head, which is frankly some Punch and Judy-level nonsense.

(3) Only that specific phrase doesn’t. My brain loves to say “God is beating His wife.” Which is potentially more blasphemous, though I’d argue that the extra-Biblical depiction of “The Devil” is plenty enough to go around to start.

Anyhow, the linked Wikipedia article has lots of fun phrases. My second most used, after “X is beating his Y” is “fox wedding” because I’m a weeb at heart.

I did have to check, though, because I was sure I had blogged about this before. Which I have. Though it seems like the actual discussion was on my old Livejournal, which has gone the way of Punch’s baby.

BONUS PHOTO: Pooping on a Train a Decade Ago

Ten years ago, today, Kaz and I were on our way to Providence, RI¹. It was a nice trip. Since one part was visiting H.P. Lovecraft’s graveside, I might post during spooky week.

That photo shows our toilet in our compartment. If you notice, it is right up against the seat. Meaning either you had to sit next to the person pooping or you had to sit across and stare them in the eyes. Good times.

That’s not even the worst “toilet business on a train story” I have. The worst was on a trip back from New Orleans when I was trying to pee. I was standing because I was not trusting the cleanliness of the shared seat. The train took a corner at speed which caused me to slip a bit and, well…

Sorry, Amtrak folk who had to wipe that down. I did do my best but it was a bit past what you could accomplish with train-quality toilet paper.

You can go ahead and put the “whoops” GIF here, too.

The photo was tagged by Google as being exactly a decade ago. It might have been the day before, since I would have had to get to a good connection to upload it. ↩︎

Photo: Absolute Unit of a Slug

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-21

In Belgium, Discoveries, Photos

After this morning’s rainy walk, there was a lot of waiting out the rain to finish. Got in my work out. Showered. Ate “second breakfast” [read: a banana]. Drank tea. Did some online errands.

Finally, got a slight break before what looks like round 4 or 5 hits, and so went outside to pick up a couple of things that had gotten blown around a bit like the bucket we use to our restafval¹ and just checking the outside plants. Remember, one of the previous storms took out our granny statue.

Anyhow, while knocking water out of buckets and such, I saw this absolute unit of a slug:

I would guess around 10-12cm. Not the chubbiest I have seen but still an impressive chad.

Translation: residual waste. In Grimbergen, we divide our waste up into various types. PMD [Plastic, Metal, Drink Cartons]; P&K [Paper and Paper Cartons]; GFT & SH [Food Waste and Clippings (groenteafval, fruitafval, tuinafval, en snoeihout, to explain the acronym); Glass [not including beer/beverage bottles, which we return to stores]; Bulky items [grofvuil]; and Small Hazardous Items [klein gevaarlijk afval]. Restafval is essentially everything else. ↩︎

Rainy Walk to the Bus

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-21

In Belgium, Daily Life

Dear Space Pilgrims,

I will see yesterday-Doug’s Still Getting Used to Dark Mornings and raise him with this morning’s rainy walk to the bus.

Note, these pictures are a bit blurred out because of, you know, rain. It was relatively impossible to actually wipe the moisture off the lens without adding additional moisture. Take them as mood pieces, if you will.

My weather app keeps insisting it’s going to stop raining, soon. It has been doing such since around 20:00 last night.

The above is actually waiting at the bus stop for B’s bus.

Here is the walk through the woods between our house and the bus stop:

Yes, I’m taking the piss just a little. No, that’s not just a black PNG like last time. It’s a photo I took, in the rain, of some very dark woods. Toss in the sound of crackling branches and running water and not being able to see a dang thing.

If there were ghosts there, I probably would have spotted them. An unearthly glow would have been welcome.

This is the last one where coming out of the woods into a rain-drenched, leaf-strewn street makes an interesting juxtaposition where nature ends and my ability to see began…

I should probably get a better camera for taking dark, rainy photos. I have a feeling I am about to see a lot of them.

A Day in the Life: #17665

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-09

In Coding, Daily Life, Exercise

While I would call the current sky approaching noon as “Mostly Just Gray,” there have been a few moments where a color apparently called “blue” and an object that Wikipedia tells me is “the sun” have been visible. Such wonders!

It is actually supposed to be sunny and clear in Grimbergen this weekend, but also the temperature is going to drop again. Win some. Lose some.

One Hour Workout Results

See what it looks like when I use a flash to illuminate the darkness? At least it doesn’t look like I’m working out in the unlit part of the backrooms this time.

Went ahead after yesterday’s post and decided to push it up to a full hour and a bit more speed while retaining the resistance. Final result was around 28km. At an average of speed of…well, I’ll let you math nerds solve that.

I’m not 100% I can keep it up on a daily basis because it definitely flexes the leg a lot but it is also not that difficult. I was more concerned about having to pee starting around the 40 minute mark and just how numb my ass got sitting on the metal seat that long. Tomorrow’s a different day but if I am not overly sore or having trouble with mobility after today I might give it a try.

Dickens of a Blog Reclamation Continues Apace

I have been working on the tech behind fixing up as much of the older Dickens of a Blog as best as I can. The Poetry section is “working complete” which is to say that I have cleared out around half the poems and focused on highlighting the ones I really like, and gotten all of those updated, but there are no doubt others that can be linked.

I’ve been using a mix of WinSCP and Notepad++ to do a lot of heavy lifting. I can copy and paste chunks of HTML and CSS into the backend and then do some document wide find+replace actions to reaching a decently stable point.

I finished up a rewrite of “8 Space” this morning and for now I think I’ll take mostly a break for the day. Give myself something to look at that isn’t just more HTML and terminals.

Having that focus on a single aspect for a couple of days has helped me to figure out the mechanics a lot and I hope I can do a lot more in a shorter time in the future. And if I have to go and do more fixes in the future, the layout should be stabilized enough that I have a better chance of just automating it.

“Mail Bag” Maybe Incoming

I have a small stack of deliveries I’ve gotten recently and wanted to give a shout out to some of them but I need to figure out exactly how I want to do that. I think I’ll divide them up and give myself space to go through more of them one at a time. Or just skip it. I don’t know.

I really need to shower. I still am covered in an hour’s worth of sweat.

Also, look at my hair just give up on me. That’s one way to get out of having curly hair.

Storm Amy and a Photo: Headless Granny

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-05

In Daily Life, Photos

Turns out that all that “bluster” I was talking about yesterday was Storm Amy. Which tracks in retrospect. We were mostly lucky. It hit some areas a lot harder than it hit us.

I feel like I should have been aware of that but I have not yet trained The Algorithm™ to actually tell me important news for the area. Instead, I get opinion pieces about rowdy youth on e-scooters. I’m going to go and find some actual local news sources and stop trusting the modern equivalent of drunken oracles.

Shortly after I took the photos of the leaves, another round of wind and rain hit — including some sleet — and this time the wind was strong enough that it knocked over our ceramic statue of “Granny.”

A neighbor back in Huntsville had gifted it to us because we have a statue of a creepy doll and I think she thought we liked such front garden kitsch. Which, in her defense, we kind of do.

Alas, Grandpa [not pictured] is a widower now.

Photo(s): Leaves after the Storm

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-04

In Creativity, Photos

A bit of an addendum to the last post, after several rainy and very windy hours we now get mostly sunny day which is still quite windy. Doing a quick run around the house to check for damage, caught a fun effect where leaves blown about by the morning bluster had caught up on the cement and caused a kind of “attractor” force to protect the water from the sun and the wind and evaporation so there are these little micro-puddles around them.