Winter Has Arrived...

...and with its arrival the days have started to get longer, a little bit more sunshine, or at least more daylight, each day now - winter through the spring. That is a good thing. Of course there is also the cold, the bitter cold, the winds, the sleet, the snow, and the snowmen. How did that song go, something to the effect:

'...the weather outside is frightful
but the fire inside is delightful...' 

And that is the way I suppose I will look at it until the weather warms up on its own in the spring (or sooner if global warming clobbers us and the polar bears). Of course, I will look at it that way so long as i can pay the bills for my home heating oil. I just paid about $400 bucks for about a hundred gallons of oil. That hurts when you consider there are almost sure to be at least 3 more months of oil bills at least as high as that and probably higher because sooner or later it really will feel like winter and get cold, the more oil used for more heat. Oh well, I must admit, it is rather delightful to come in from the cold to a nice warm home and my wife keeps the thermostat set at about 62. Still, when you come in from a really cold day, it feels toasty inside if the heat was on recently even when set that low.

Despite the cold and the fact that cold and my bones no longer agree with one another, I love it. Maybe that is because a god amount of winter assures a good amount of spring and that a good amount of summer and that a good balance of the fall. I do love the four seasons, especially the changing of the seasons as we have it here in NY. When I lived in southern California for four years, we had it hot from about March through the ass end of October, then it was cool with a few really cold days thrown it. Well, that is if you can consider 35 to 40 degrees really cold and I guess you can consider those temps as just that when it used to hit in the hundred and tens rather frequently in the four really hot months. Seems that your blood thins out and anything under 50 to 60 degrees is cold. It took me about 4 or 5 years to adjust to NY temps when I moved back up this way.

Enough of my rambling. Enjoy the first day of winter and the days of it yet to come. If you like the cold, then this is your season. If you do not look forward to the cold and the snow then think of it this way - the days are getting longer.

All the best,
Glenn B