Snow Update

Wow, my last post was ages ago. Sorry to leave everyone (all 2 of you!) hanging with such a boring entry about my rental woes. (The problem still hasn't been fixed, by the way; I am putting a complaint in writing... right before I skip town for the holidays.) Anyway, since I only have a couple of minutes today, I'll just touch upon winter 2006.

Winter?
It has been a very warm winter, with high temperatures ranging from mid-30s to mid-60s. We had our first dusting of snow late December 7 into the morning, but by noon it had all but melted away. It's strange to see photographs of places like Montana that are having a real winter, while we here in the greater Lowell area are still basking in comfortably cool temperatures.

Do I mind? Yes and no. I think this weather is perfect, and if I didn't have a sneaking suspicion that the warmth was due to a massive environmental problem, I would be especially pleased. But it is the middle of December, and having heard so much about this "white Christmas" hoopla, I want to have a bloody white Christmas, damn it! If I wanted a temperate, snowless Christmas, I'd have moved to Georgia.

Don't get me wrong; I'm glad that I can still wear skirts (as I have been since about March), and I never enjoyed excavating my car from the heaps of snow, but there should be snow on the ground. According to the 10-Day Forecast on Weather.com, we're looking at rain, not snow, for Christmas.

Advice
As mentioned in a previous post, winter brings heaps of unexpected, unwanted advice from people. Don't be fooled into thinking that unseasonably warm weather will hold back those comments.

My Sagely Advice
At this time of year, the sun sets a little after 4:00pm. This means that you begin to lose sunlight at about 2:00pm. If you enjoy that big mass of incandescent gas in the sky, plan your day between the hours of 7:00am and 4:00pm. Include a trip to your local hardware store to pick up those nifty lightbulbs that are supposed to imitate sunlight. I can't say they make me feel any better about living in so much darkness, but hey, it might help.

Another thing to keep in mind is that 30 degrees in the sun is not the same as 30 degrees in the shade or at night. Keep that in mind if it's going to be cloudy or if you have to be somewhere beyond 4pm in winter.

Now I'm off to a holiday party that I'm not entirely excited about, but hey... Free food and possible alcohol. How can I say no?

---