Embrace the Winter!

According to the (increasingly not) intrepid CBC, as I type, current 'Twa conditions are:

-20C

Feels like: -31, Mostly Cloudy

Visibility: 10 Km; Sunrise: 7:39 AM; Sunset: 4:43 PM

Wind: NW 24 km/h
Humidity: 68%
Pressure: 101.6 kPa -21C

For those of you early moderns, -20C = -4F and -31C = -24F

So this is a "cold snap." My car is plowed in, Monty is visibly cutting back on his water intake in order to minimize his pee output (that dog is S.M.R.T.), and I'm trying to decide which room of my apartment to spend the rest of the day in so I can situate the space heater and hot water bottle. Another pressing decision? Which of my 3 pairs of long underwear are least soiled and can be worn again. E is off for the weekend visiting her brothers in the T.O. (Toronto to those of you cool people who live free of Canadianese), so the personal-presentability bar is low for now. I'll go with the black pair from Monday. And Wednesday.

This is no way to live!

Michel, gawdblesshim, has launched his new campaign to Embrace the Winter and I am doing my best to get pulled into the frosty spirit. Because, really, what else can be done? When the weather forecast gives you a shittily low number and then tells you hey! guess what! it will feel even lower and shittier, you have to fight back. You have to say, "Fuck you, Weatherperson. You don't know me, you don't how I'll feel."

Of course, Michel is talking all kinds of nonsense like going cross-country skiing at night in some park where they have huts containing strangers and warmth and fondue at appropriate ski-intervals. As a high-functioning agoraphobe, this doesn't seem like enough to get me out of my house at night, especially when I can make fondue at home. Cross-country skiing is basically like running for a long time (unfun) and if you do it more than 3 times you have to join a cult (so it's exactly like running).
But he did talk me into taking skating lessons together! Remember when I told that job committee that I would gladly join their faculty hockey team and would make an excellent goalie? I'm still relieved that oncampus interview didn't materialize because that was some breathtaking interview lying - I can't skate. Yep, yuk,yuk, they still let me have a passport blahblahblahgreatwhitenorthhorseshithahaCanadarahrahbeercommercial whatever, yes I grew up in Canada. I was made to take lessons as a seven-year-old and I remember thinking how completely and utterly skating BLEW because it was cold and made my feet hurt. Also, the skates my mother made me get were fucked up. I wanted hockey skates because hockey skates are black and awesome and look like something Darth Vader would wear. Instead, because I am a girl and girls don't play hockey (I remember this conversation vividly), she made me get figure skates.
Darth Vader would NEVER wear these. They are the polar opposite of badass. Also, they have picks at the front of the blade that can suddenly catch on the ice, causing the innocent newbie skater to be bitchslapped onto a frozen surface and left for dead. Seriously, what was my mother thinking?

Yeah, like that was gonna happen.

But now I'm an adult and while I'm in Adult Beginners skating classes where my classmates are immigrants from hot countries and/or emasculated businessmen who have to learn to skate in order to make the scene at the Canal this winter, my instructor might be registered in my Hist 1001A class, and we have to wear helmets at All Times Or Else, even though there's that -

my skates effing RULE:

Right?! Also they have that awesome Reebok technology where you can pump air into them for extra...air? and be badass that way as well.

Michel's skates are equally awesome and we rock the skating class pretty hard. So take that winter! Our second class is today and I'm super excited for it! Also, we go out for food afterwards and what could be better than that?

Infected with Winter Spirit, I tried to get Monty in the mood.



His word for Winter Spirit might be "Torture."

Perhaps when all is said and done both he and I might find that we just prefer to observe winter from afar but for now we're doing our best to make the most of it.