It's after midnight and it's cold outside.

Again it's after midnight, again I don't know what to post, and again I'm just going to start writing and see what comes out.

It's not that I'm not thinking anything.  It's that I just don't know what (of all I'm thinking) I should write down.

It's cold outside.  The type of bone chilling cold that freezes skin in minutes, makes sound travel faster, and makes people stay inside.  Not even cars like this kind of cold, and they demand to be warmed up before being driven.  They make funny noises when started, and need to be plugged in overnight.

It's hard to explain this type of cold to people who have never felt it.  Actually it's hard to explain winter to people who never felt it.  Things like whore frost, plugging in cars, snow, shovelling, and icey roads are hard to explain.

It's also hard to acclimatize to this cold.  I once worked for a man from Sudan, who had never known this type of cold until he got here.  He liked to keep the thermostat way higher than anybody else, even in the summertime when everybody else was using air conditioning.  He hated the ice, and fell almost every day.  "Snow I can take", he would say "Ice.  I don't know how you people walk on it."

It takes a different kind of walking on ice.  You have to shuffle your feet, moving them carefully over each spot on the ground, while looking for snow or traction in the ice to walk on.  You also have to learn how to fall.  Don't just fall.  Look for a snowy place to aim yourself and fall there.  It's softer that way.

It's not that cold all winter long.  Sometimes it's comfortable.  One those days everybody talks about how nice the weather is, and people walk around with their jackets undone.

But on other days...  Day's like today.  It's way to cold to go outside for anything other than a necessity.  All unnecessary trips are cancelled, nobody goes for a walk or a jog outside, and nobody goes to the store just for a snake.  If you have all you need in the house, you don't worry about getting anything extra.

How cold is it you ask?  Well it was -31 C (-29.2 F) without windchill today.  Overnight it might get worse.  By Wednesday it's suppose to warm up to -14 C (+6.8 F), which to us, at this time of year is down right balmy.