Thursday, December 26, 2013

Cold Quiz

We had a white Christmas, and even a scrooge like me about winter will admit that a snowfall like this—a real, Wisconsin snow covering—makes for a pretty idyllic scene. Here is the from view from my parents' front porch in the woods this morning, only an hour and twenty minutes away from our condo in Chicago, but a world away into something worthy of Currier and Ives.


Gorgeous, right? Yeah, I agree. I chuckled yesterday on the ride from my cousin's big Italian afternoon feast to my in-laws gift opening/dinner feast thinking about how the road conditions would have shut down Northern Virginia/Washington, DC (where we lived for nearly a decade) for a week. Here, the ride was holiday business as usual, taking our time and enjoying the views on our way. Wisconsinites don't stop for snow.

All this glorious scenary aside, it is cold here. Very cold. No-joke cold. And yet, just like in their response to snow, folks who live in the Great Lakes region soldier on in the cold, bundling up and going about their daily errands. 

Can you be too brave about bad weather? I suppose being content with your cirumstances is the best approach for maintaining mental health, but in the past week, I have discovered three clues that might help all of determine that we might be in too cold of a climate. I don't want to go too Jeff Foxworthy, but here is one northerners' version of his famous schtick:

1) If, by Christmas, it has already been so cold (in the single digits for several days) that when you attend an outdoor event in 36 degree weather, it feels warm, you probably live in too cold a climate.

2) If your parents' new washing machine is delivered the day after Christmas, and the delivery person says, "You need to wait several hours before running this. The manufacturer ships this with some water inside, and it may have frozen solid on the way here," you probably live in too cold a climate.

3) If you are watching the news and hear about an exploratory cruise to Antarctica that has been trapped in the ice, in temperatures "that feel as low as nine degrees," and you realize, "it is often colder than nine degrees here, and no one is coming in an ice-breaking vessel to save me," you probably live in too cold a climate.

Have more? I'd love to hear them.

Stay warm out there, friends.

1 comment:

  1. During huge holiday dinners where people bring food items that need to stay cold you put them in the closed garage, you might live in too cold a climate. But don't put the wine and champagne bottles on the front porch! They'll get too cold and explode.

    You know if you live in too cold a climate when your hair dryer is at the ready to unfreeze the water pipes in the kitchen.

    You know if you live in too cold a climate when you have to plug in your car to heat the engine block BEFORE you start it.

    My brother went to the record breaking Bills game in 1994 where the wind chill was -32. He brought a thermos of the hottest chocolate he could make. It froze solid before the end of the first half.

    My husband was stationed at Minot in North Dakota, working security on the runways overnight. He decided to dump out his coffee by rolling down the window and pouring it out. It froze before it hit the ground. It was about -60.

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