Cold Enough

For those who have been waiting for statistics: it has been 13 days, 312 hours of below freezing temperatures in this fair city. A lot of the time lately has been below zero. A favorite weather site reports current temperature at -1 F. But it's what is expected here on the tundra. The winter solstice is less than six days away and is scheduled for 11:47 a.m. CST on December 21. So there is not much light around here either. Today supplied 8 hours and 48 minutes of daylight here.

The snow yesterday left the streets looking like the below snapshot. I took it on my street, but on the sunny north side this afternoon before the fickle sun took an early powder. The city promises to do some more plowing later in the week to clean up the less than adequate (for a snow emergency) snowfall. There will be no tagging or towing. It must be time for the Christmas spirit to break out.



My tennis schedule has been sparse this week - a fluke of the schedule maker. I last played on Saturday and won't be back on the court until Thursday night at Wooddale. The time off seems to be helping the healing of the aches and pains, but I miss the activity. So much so that I hiked around Lake Como yesterday afternoon in the relatively balmy 12 degrees at the time. It wasn't too bad, because I was dressed for success, and I was commiserating with PP, who is still working outside with chainsaw in hand. Her chemical hand and toe warmers are apparently doing their magic.

I end with a photo from the archives, from a much warmer day when orange flowers were out in force. A little color this time of year is good for the attitude. (I'm using this photo for computer wall paper for a while.)