Funny how the weather can dominate your mood. I always thought that I was just naturally an on-edge person. Turns out it's the weather. Really.

I come from a place where the wind blows. Constantly. Or almost constantly. It can blow for weeks on end. And with it, comes horizontal rain. Or sleet. Or snow. And it wil make you kind of edgy.

Now I live in a place which doesn't know what it means for the wind to blow. Where storms are declared when someone sneezes. And where the trees are wimps, as I have noted before. And it's affecting my mood.

At first, I didn't notice it. Then, I thought that it was just the change in my daily schedule. Plus the fact that I am now alone so much during the day, when I used to be constantly surrounded by people. I figured being a mid-level manager had just been so stressful. Managing people and all that.

But on the other hand, hardly meeting another person your whole working day for weeks and months on end should be taxing as well. Right? I should be climbing the walls by now. Out of loneliness. And why has that not happened? Why am I actually feeling the opposite? Albeit somewhat lonely, I am quite relaxed, bordering on easygoing. Maybe it helps to use instant messaging, e-mail and the phone a lot. But there is something more to it. What?

Well, "it's the weather, stupid". I just got off the phone with an array of people back home. Where the wind is blowing. Where they have been issuing real storm alerts. For weeks. And every, single person I spoke with has that edge now in their voice. The one I remember feeling. A lot. They all seem to be in a bad, some even miserable, mood.

Really. Horizontal precipitation wil do that to you.

And so I am fasting. For no particular reason. No religious urges. Nothing like that.

Nope. Just supporting my wife in her fast. Basically. And no, her fast doesn't have a higher purpose, either. She just wanted to try this one year. And we quickly discovered that we can't be eating different foods, so I decided to do this with her, if she did it again.

This is the third time we do this. And this time around, the last day of the fast will be on Good Friday. Interestingly.

Do you suppose we might become legitimate Christians by picking up the traditions and habits, one by one?

How do I manage to muck up my back every, single, year? It's always around the same time as well. "Spring" means "back-aches" in my world. Oh, you do not have that problem? But how can that be? I was sure that it is some sort of a law of nature.

Actually, I know exactly what it is. This is the time when I have stopped my physical inactivity period, which goes from when I stop biking (or what ever I do during a particular summer) and until I am skiing quite a lot. Which happens to be in feb-march. Last year it got so bad that I had it MRI-ed. Turns out that the pillow-thing between two discs in my back may be beginning to deflate. Or shrink. Or whatever those pads do. So a nerve might be starting to get pinched between the two adjacent disks.

But there's an upside to all of this: After a few weeks of not-so-good pain in my back, it usually gets better again. All by itself. And by then it will be time to go biking again. Yippeeeeeeeee!

Until then, there's always ibufen.