Today, our car froze shut.
Not just jiggle-the-lock-a-little-and-it’ll-be-fine frozen. I’m talking ninth-circle-of-hell frozen.
Struggling through the bone-cutting wind to purchase something involving de-icing technology from the farther-away-than-I-remembered local Walmart, and listening to my good-intentioned wife insist that the level of cold we were experiencing was not really all that cold compared to winters in Vladivostok, I thought about it:
I live in a place where your car freezes shut.
And that led me to the next thought, which was
I live in a place where, if I took off my winter coat and stood around for about an hour, I’m pretty sure I would die.
In the end, we had to wait for the rays of the sun to slowly traverse the parking lot and reach our car door and warm it up enough to unlock. So I’m ready for summer now. How much longer is it again?
by 
Yeah… the thing is, in Michigan, we get a few of these days every year. In, say, Iowa, Wisconsin, or Minnesota, this kind of cold weather is solid, Dec through Jan at the minimum, often more. The magic of lake effect protects us from the worst of it.
Current conditions in Lincoln, NE: -13 (feels like -13). Now why do you suppose they had to schedule the sale of Girl Scout Cookies in January EVERY SINGLE YEAR when I was little? It’s 15 precious degrees in Comstock Park this morning, I plan to savor every one of them 🙂
Andy – do you remember the winter of 1997-98 when the wind chill dropped to -70 in Grand Rapids? Walking to class was brutal. I thought my ears were going to freeze off. I remember walking out of the cafeteria that winter and hitting a patch of ice. Fortunately, my backpack cushioned my fall. However, half of the cafeteria must of witnessed me trying desperately to keep from falling, only to see me hit the concrete hard.
WEAK! You are all weak. It was colder than this 7 of the 14 days Val and I spent with my parents; my aunt lives in Thief River Falls, MN, where according to today’s paper it should hit -30 by tonight.
And Vladi is warm because it’s on THE OCEAN, dingbat! But Irkutsk is actually also at 9 F right now – downright balmy.
(This snotty post brought to you courtesy of not having enough time to actually update one’s own blog)
Ed is right. I *hate* cold weather, but this is a great place to live. We do not live in fear of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, massive forest fires, mudslides, etc.. Sure, we have natural disasters but they are *rare*. We also do not have venomous snakes, scorpions, wild carnivores (capable of taking on a human), malaria-carrying mosquitos, or big, icky spiders that can kill us (the hard-to-find black widow spider notwithstanding). If, compared to other places to live, all I worry about is adding an extra blanket to my bed a few nights a year, why would I want to live anywhere else?