Welcome back to real winter.
As we huddle from the elements, those of us without long memories are kind of taken aback by the intensity of our current cold snap. It is kind of depressing seeing a week of minus double digit temperatures, combined with a continuing string of light flurries. What ever happened to those recent winters when there was just scant traces of snow on the ground?
Call it the Shovel Blues, or the anti warm up your car movement, it's conditions like this which serve as a stark reminder that winter usually is not a lot of fun.
Now I'm not talking about the winter activities we thrive on. Nothing is more warming than a hack-weight takeout with the hammer in the final end. Everyone gets heated up when watching a breakaway and having your home team player snap a shot off the post and in behind the goaltender. A walk on the treadmill is like a walk on the beach if you have a good enough imagination.
When I'm saying that winter isn't fun, I'm talking about the cold-to-the-bone winter that makes everything outdoors a chore. That walk with the dog around the block is more like a forced military march. You can't run the garbage to the back alley in your slippers when you delay getting ready for garbage pick-up, cause you probably can't negotiate the snowdrifts.
And our compassion goes out to those that do have to be out during the cold, but those very same people would be the first to tell you to toughen up because it's not so cold.
Still, those newspaper carriers, postal workers, garbage men, oilfield workers and cattlemen deserve a few warm thoughts sent their way.
I guess maybe winter would seem a little more bearable if we could all just take a snow day, huddle under the blankets with a cup of hot chocolate, and read a good book.
But we'd still have to walk the dog.
