Slow down, you move too fast …

   Is the fast pace of your life getting you down? Are you looking for ways to s-l-o-w   d-o-w-n?  Well, look no further.  Here are a couple of suggestions:

You can watch Wedginald ripen. Wedginald is a large cheddar cheese, living and ripening at a cheese place in England, courtesy of  West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers.

You can watch this very, very slow process in real time on a Webcam called cheddarvision.tv.  Currently, Wedginald (the winning name) is 209 days old. If you are more a fast lane kind of person, you can watch a one minute time lapse video showing the first three months of the maturing process on YouTube. (The credits take up a lot of the minute.)

  If you prefer, you can watch paint dry, or watch grass grow. Or you can join the Cloud Appreciation Society and hone your cloudspotter skills. (Pictured here is the cloud of the month for July, 2007, a fumulous.) The caption reads:

Cloudspotting is not an activity to be rushed. Most clouds appear to move at a more sedate pace than we do down on the ground and so one has to slow down to watch them develop. It is this requirement to wind down that makes cloud gazing so relaxing. What better expression of the change in pace that comes with a bit of meteorological meditation than this cloud in the shape of a snail, emerging from the fog over Newport in Wales, UK?

I also like last December’s choice, the Altostratus/Altocumulus/Altowhateveritis.