Tag Cold

Springing up all over

Michael 6 Comments

This is it, today is the day, the day we’ve all been waiting … okay I’m not going to do that again. I have no idea what you’re waiting for but indeed, today is the day I have been waiting for, for today, at 5:24 this afternoon (per the Old Farmer’s Almanac), winter turns to spring!

As far as winters go, this has been the mildest winter I can recall, and I recall a lot of winters.  But it started output terribly cold, super cold, super terribly cold even, and I never got over the coldness of those first few days of Winter 2022-2023 even when some of the days in February approached and in at least one case exceeded 70°F. I think it might be because in between those 70° days there was always a 30° day. Do you know what that’s like? Well if you lived within 10 or 12 miles of me you do. Anything outside that radius and you were having you own weird winter weather that may or may not have had daily 40° temperature swings.

Of course that was only in February. In March, it has been just plain cold. It snowed the past two days. It snowed 4 days out of the past 7. The temperature hasn’t been above freezing since Friday afternoon. I’m done with this. Today I fully expect at 5:24 this afternoon to hear birds singing, see flowers blooming, and watch trees leaf out before my very eyes. If that doesn’t happen, I want to know right now, who to go to for a refund. The old Old Farmer’s Almanac never let me done before. I expect it to not let me down now.

I do hope I haven’t led you to believe that I’m being unreasonable about this. I think as I get older, and Heaven knows, I’ve gotten older(!), I’ve grown less tolerant of cold, but more less tolerant of these crazy temperature swings. I’m sure I would have been not as disconcerted with this winter if it had just stayed being winter for it’s duration, or maybe a gradual and slight warming as we approached this year’s vernal equinox. (Good word, no?) Rumor has it, La Niña, the lesser famous but more troublesome Pacific wind current, is, after three years, winding down. Those who know say this has been a major contributor to the weird weather patterns we’ve been experiencing. (Please note, I said weird weather patterns, not concerning climate conditions – there is a difference.) If we get a year of neutral weather influences we might see seasons that actual look like Currier and Ives envisioned and that would be okey dokey with me. But for now, I’ll settle for birds singing, flowers blooming, and leaves once again covering those bare branches, sometime later today.

So then, what is the day we’ve all been waiting for. Altogether now – TODAY! Thank you very much. I knew I could count on you.

Anything worth having takes effort. With trust in the process what is worth having can be yours. In the latest Uplift!we explore why making a good life is like making good pizza!

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Hats Off to You!

Michael 2 Comments

Earlier today I was driving to a morning appointment, stopped at a traffic light, looked over to the car next to me, and noticed the driver was wearing a hat. That was not unusual. It was early, the sun was not yet up, and the temperature was well below freezing. Very well below freezing. A hat was a good idea. I had a hat on. Everybody was who was anybody had a hat and was wearing it. Then for some odd reason I flashed back to a time 19 years ago when I was driving my boss to the train station, we were stopped at a traffic light, she looked over to the car next to us, notice the drive was wearing a hat, and commented “I can’t trust someone who wears a hat while driving.” I didn’t understand it but I also didn’t ask for an explanation. I considered it a positive that the station was just a block away and any inquiry might have been misinterpreted as a request for conversation thus delaying the drop off. Not to mention my solitude.

If anything, I think trust should be withheld from someone who doesn’t know enough to keep his or her head covered in 20° weather. That’s in F degrees. In C degrees that would be, umm, let’s see (20-32)*5/9 = -6.6666666666666, that would be like really cold. Why wouldn’t you wear a hat? Generally in those circumstances most of the rest of your body is covered. Shoes, sock, pants, shirt, sweater, jacket, muffler, gloves, ear muffs. Yep. It’s all covered. If you’re still cold you probably aren’t wearing a hat. Put a hat on! They are also practical in cold, wet, windy, hot, sunny, or arid weather (and there aren’t many other weathers).

Hats are also very accurate predictors of intelligence. Take the average no neck who wears his baseball cap backwards in blazing sun while simultaneously frantically shielding his eyes from the sun’s blaze. Not the type you want you want procreating. Baseball hats, like all other articles of clothing known to man, woman, or undecided are intended to be worn “not backwards.” Except for baseball catchers and then only during the defensive half innings of a game.

casablancaI think hats are fine. Yes it could be construed as shallow and unduly concentrating on appearances, but in my opinion there aren’t many people whose looks couldn’t be improved by covering parts of their heads.

There just aren’t many situations when a hat could not be stylish, practical, and appropriate. That’s provided you are outside of course. Hats really don’t belong on heads inside buildings except at hockey games where one always needs a hat at hand in the event of a hat trick and where better to keep a hat on hand than on one’s head. But that’s a special exception. Otherwise, and I’m talking to you men and others identifying as men, please identify with common courtesy and undoff those chapeaux à l’intérieur.

If you are wearing a hat, and you’re not indoors unless it’s a hockey game, you have my vote of confidence and trust. (But I might have to question why you’re reading this post at a hockey game). In a word, hats are cool. So be cool. And stay warm.

 

Proper Attire Required

Michael Leave a comment

Around our parts it’s been a mild winter.  Not much snow, some pretty cold nights but always rebounding during the day.  At then, on February 2, Punxsutawney Phil called for 6 more weeks of winter.  “Six more?” people questioned, “We haven’t seen 6 yet.”

Be careful who you tick off.  Since then we’ve had lows in the teens, wind chills on the other side of zero, and snow enough to break out the snow-blower without fear of ridicule form the neighborhood distributor of testosterone.

There’s something about cold weather that we don’t understand.  It seems to encourage some people to dress as inappropriately as one possibly can.  Everybody in a cold weather climate has managed to run across the one mucho-macho sort who feels that cold weather is no reason for him to deviate from his usual wardrobe of shorts and work boots.  But we’re not talking about him.  Truth be told, we’d prefer not to even think about him.  No, there are others out there who have had the logic portion of their brains suffer from an unexpected frost.

Last Friday night we were waiting for a table at a local restaurant.  Regular readers know we don’t wait long for food.  If we’re told it will be anything longer than a 15 minute wait we consider how much we really want to eat from that menu that evening.  So the fact that we were waiting for a table tells you that we weren’t there long.  Yet in the few minutes that we were standing off to the side of the hostess stand we saw a couple come in that bore watching.  For frostbite.  One-half of the two was wearing a sweatshirt.  The other half, just a shirt shirt.  Did we mention that the outdoor temperature displayed on our dash was 26 degrees, that the snow was wet and cold when it fell, and that where there was not salt there was ice when we parked in the same lot they just came in from? 

The next morning after the temperature dropped another 10 degrees and the sky dropped another 2 inches of snow we were driving through the parking lot of one of the nearby shopping centers and had stopped at a crosswalk while a young man walked by wearing an open hoodie.  Six storefronts down at another crosswalk we paused while another man crossed the other way wearing a football jersey while holding hands with a pre-school version of himself who was wearing a leather jacket bearing the same football team’s logo.  Inside the stores we saw as many wind breakers, sweaters, and an occasional scarf over a light jacket as we did hats, gloves, and toasty wool coats.   This all came after we dropped off She of We’s car for service where a young lady sat in the customer’s lounge wearing only a short raincoat.

Perhaps we unnecessarily marvel at the way some people dress.  Yes, it was only 16 degrees but that was outside.  Inside the stores and restaurants and garages the temperatures were in a well-controlled 68 to 72 degree range.  Yes, outside the snow had fallen and some squalls continued to pass through.  But that was outside.  All of the merchants’ roofs were intact, their insides were dry, and not even fake snow covered any displays. 

And it’s not like we walk to many stores any more.  We don’t ride in open carriages or on run in on horseback.  We get to them in our heated cars with our temperature specific climate systems sitting in our heated seats and holding onto our heated steering wheels.  But boy we still feel bad when we see the abandoned car on the side of the road with its flashers blinking on and off, and hope they didn’t have to wait long for help in this weather.

And if they did, we hope they weren’t cold while they waited.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?