Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Hell is freezing over...as we speak


For those of you who have never visited Chicago in January and February, keep it that way! Run/fly/drive/crawl/crab walk/skip the other direction (preferably south)! If you haven't heard the news lately, the Midwest is in the middle of a very deep freeze. They say it's the coldest it's been for 20 years, but I feel like we deal with this every year. The high tomorrow is...get this...NEGATIVE 4. Huh? Really? I didn't even know that was a temperature. On top of that, the windchill is supposed to be in the NEGATIVE 30s. My sister, who lives in the upper peninsula of Michigan, has it much worse. But, really, once you dive below 5-10 degrees above zero, it's hard to even tell anymore.

Tonight I went to take the trash out to the alley, and I opted to brave the cold, with no coat and just a pair of gloves. I mean it's only about 80 feet away from my back kitchen door. No big deal. However, as it figures, my sweater got caught on the metal latch for the gate leading out there, and I spent way too long trying to get it unhooked without ripping it. And I thought my ears and fingers were going to crack off and fall onto the ground right before my eyes.

All of this cold and the City sending us notifications to stay inside! Don't go out in the cold! Warming shelters are available! CTA buses are sitting idling as mobile warming shelters! And what do I see on my way home tonight? A guy wearing SHORTS. Don't worry, he had on a normal Columbia coat. But shorts? I mean that's extreme. An extreme idiot, of course. Then he had the nerve to stand next to me and keep sniffing and snorting his nose every 5 seconds. No sympathy here. If you are wearing shorts in a deep freeze like this, you probably don't deserve to be in the gene pool.

So what does one do in the City during this awful cold? I'll tell you. You wear a TON of layers. You plan your errand running down to the second. Every second counts. You also do a lot of reading indoors. You do a lot of Facebooking. You drink a lot of tea and hot chocolate. You cut out every possible excess that would require going outside: taking out the trash, going to the gym, going to the grocery store. Hell, if I had a fire in my apartment tonight, I doubt I would even go outside.

Anyway, who's ready for June? Anybody?

3 comments:

Subway Gal said...

I think reading that post made me even colder than I already am, sitting in my apartment with no heat because building management NEVER turns on the heat when we actually need it.

Kimberly Augustin said...

i just had to say this post made me literally laugh out loud. no one knows what cold is until you spend a winter in the windy city! haha :)

Red from Ktown said...

Hell, wasn't it weird when it got to 25 that we were unzipping our coats!!??