I grew up in Southern California. If you didn’t like the weather, 1) you were crazy 2) you moved. There are seasons there but they are not like seasons in more temperate parts of the world.

When I moved to North Carolina, I started hearing this expression, “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes”. After five months in Denmark, I realize that this expression is used everywhere. Except in Denmark you have to wait longer than five minutes…

We went from hail and snow a little over a week ago to 70F and sun. Apparently there is another expression about April weather here (although when I tell other Danes about it they have no idea what I am talking about)- it goes, “April weather is like teenage girls- it is not to be trusted”. Aside from the weirdly sexist overtone, the expression was not wrong with respect to the weather.

This may seem a bit unrelated but bear with me….

I have said for a long time that being a scientist is a lot like being a stand-up comedian. Both jobs require a certain about of self-delusion to be successful. But maybe being a scientist also requires a really short memory for pain. Everyone forget pain relatively quickly. There are many evolutionary arguments for this- namely that if you want more than one child, you better forget how much it hurt to have the first one.

Things vary for me on a weekly basis at the moment. Some weeks are overwhelming and it seems like there will never be enough hours in the day; it seems like there will never be a break again. These weeks feel like freak April hailstorms. They are cold and miserable and make no sense. But wait a little while and things seem better, like 70F and 16 hours of sun, and it is hard to remember why the last week was so difficult.