Minimor and Taz.....I can empathize a little, from my younger days. Minnesota = snow, ice, and wind blowing the little Chevy hatchback across icy lanes of traffic. My dad laughing as he left for a business trip to Anchorage, Alaska about, "it being colder here then it will be there AND I put a screw in the thermostat to keep you from turning it up *smirk*". (Had he not said that, I wouldn't have known. Don'cha know I took it out??
)
Also, the mountains in Nez Perce National Forest, Elk City Idaho. Back then we got snow, and lots of it, along with the cold. We lived way back in and had to travel down to the ranger station to catch the school bus. In winter we rode the snow machines. Like any kids, we looked for ways to skip school so ran to eagerly check the thermometers every day. If it was -30, we didn't have to go!! Too cold to risk the wind chill. Sounds like we'd have spent more days OUT of school than in this year.
Do you all get any sort of Chinook warm-up around this time of year? We'd get one mid-January or so. You know the one, where it gets up into the low 30's with a mild temperate breeze for a week or so? The one that makes you wear a T-shirt on top while you dance in the sunshine--even though from the waist down you're still dressed in full winter gear? (Ohhhhh....those snow boots with the warm felt lining...clunky as all get out!) The Chinook breeze that melts some old, grungy icicles, and replaces them with diamond drops and raises your hopes that winter WILL end...................eventually?
Yes, though I love the North sooo much more than being here, I just can't handle the winter anymore. I, too, have become a weather wimp.
Please forgive me.