cold!

Well, things have warmed up a bit. When we checked the weather today at about 8:30, it showed the current temp here was 25 below, with a wind chill of 45 below. Now weatherunderground.com shows our temperature at two below with a windchill of "only" minus 25!

I had to laugh at my Aunt Carole's comment on my previous post...I was going to respond to it there but thought I'd do it as part of this blog. She said when the tires of your car freeze to the ground, you KNOW it's cold. One of the things I'm still trying to get used to living in MN during the winter is that you have to plug your vehicles in overnight so they can start the next day (definitely if you park outside, occasionally if you park in a garage, depending on how cold it gets). My California Saturn does not come equipped with an "engine plug," so there is often a period of a few weeks each winter when we cannot drive it at all.

You also know it's cold outside when you see the following report on the news -- the other night in the Twin Cities (3.5 hours south, usually about 10 degrees warmer than here), it was so cold already that there were big problems trying to put out a huge building fire -- the water kept freezing in the hoses! And what water did come out turned to ice well before it could even get on the fire. THAT'S when you know it's cold outside!

They also showed a science experiment a few times last year on the news. When the temperature gets low enough (for some reason, I'm thinking -10 or so), if you take a warm bowl of water outside and immediately throw it up in the air, it appears to shower sparks -- it doesn't really, it's just the warm water immediately turning to ice and falling down as shards of ice.

No one has yet taken me up on my offer to come and visit....