Daylight Savings Time ended, the juncos showed up, and now we’ve had a week of hard frosts overnight and mostly twenty-degree days. I guess it’s time to admit winter has started. There was even a white rime on the ground this morning, but no way was I going outside to get a picture.
You’ll have to settle for these collards and leeks, still hanging tough despite the cold. They even bounce back a little on milder days. Looks like I’ll have greens for a while yet, but it looks like it may be getting too late to pull more leeks.
Brr.
Writing Every Day 
So I was laid off in Spring 2002. Then, late in October, I got a call from the HR director, She was asking me, “Why aren’t you in the office? You need to be on a plane to Denver tomorrow morning!” That was just about the most hilarious moment of my career.
Naturally I found myself on a plane to Denver the next morning, then in a rental car driving 70 miles to a small town in Colorado.
It started to rain. I switched on the windshield wipers. They didn’t work. The drops weren’t being removed from the windshield. It took me ten minutes or so to realize that it wasn’t the fault of the wipers. The drops were hitting the windshield and instantly freezing and sticking. SURPRISE! I’d just never had any experience with solid water in the wild before. I had a lot of fun walking around the town late that night while it was snowing. Let me tell you: snow is slippery! Another surprise! And you can’t see farther than a couple of feet when it’s snowing at night!
Which brings me back to topic. Other worlds will have strange outdoor physical conditions that will hit explorers with a “SUPRISE!”
Hal Clement wrote a bunch of books like that. The one you’ll remember is “Mission of Gravity.” He also wrote one in which nonhuman explorers come to Earth, “Iceworld.” I’ll recommend these two. Read ’em. You’ll like ’em.
I also liked “The Nitrogen Fix.” This is a story of Earth made strange, and of extraterrestrial explorers both. You might like this one.
Ben Bova wrote a bunch of books about exploration of the solar system. I didn’t like them so much. Too grown up for my tastes, to the point that the characters in the books are weird.
Then there’s Robert L. Forward. I like what I’ve read, but that’s been a limited selection since the library doesn’t buy everything, you know. I know you’ve read “Dragon’s Egg.” You’ll like most of the others.