At least you don't have to shovel it

It is...not warm. Actual temperature minus nine when I got up this morning. Wind chills south of twenty below zero. Yet because there is only a wind chill advisory, not a wind chill warning, the kids are expected to go to school.

//old geezer comments alert//

When I was kid, we didn't have all the fancy advisories and warnings. The weather people were able to tell you the actual temperature, but it was up to you to realize that the "feels like" temperature was "too damn cold".

We wore big, clunky boots with two pairs of socks and carried our inside shoes to school in plaid "shoe bags". A coat with a hood pulled up over your stocking hat and one or two scarves wrapped around your face, plus mittens worn over gloves (the mittens kept from being lost by virtue of being attached to one another by a string that ran up one sleeve, over your shoulders and down the other arm) completed the ensemble.

Oh - and snow pants, those puffy, hard to get on and off, rubberized exterior, instruments of torture.

And we walked to school. Recess was rarely indoors (what teacher wants to be trapped all day in a classroom with thirty stir-crazy elementary age kids? At least letting us out into the cold kept us quiet when we came inside...until we thawed out again).

//old geezer comments off//

On the plus side, it is magnificent sleeping weather. The getting out of bed part, not so great.

My office at work is at the very end of the steam heat run; it gets little heat at the best of times. There is nothing but open air under the concrete floors - our office sits mostly over a street level open parking area. It's almost as much work to dress for a day in the office as it was to put on all the outside clothes when I was a kid.

This too, shall pass. The local weather gurus keep putting up graphics that say "X days until spring" or "Y days until Opening Day", as if nature will flip off the switch on the freeze pop machine on that day. We in Wisconsin know better.

(As an aside, the station that monitors the cyclical weather pattern known as the LRC claims we may be at risk for the cold portion of this year's cycle recurring in mid May - and giving us a possible late frost)

Now excuse me, I have to go get another cup of hot coffee.