Irrelevant Cheetah

It’s cold today.

For those of you just joining us, this blog is brought to you from the frozen heart of the Arctic – Alaska. Try to keep up, okay?

So, as I was saying: it’s cold. When I left for work this morning, it was -5 degrees outside. Yes, that’s five degrees below zero. Or, to put it another way, thirty-seven degrees below the point at which water freezes.

When it gets this cold, the candle flames freeze, and you have to break them off and warm them up in your hands before they begin to burn.

When it gets this cold, the frost that collects on your windshield overnight mutates. It becomes atomically inseparable from the glass, and laughs derisively at any attempts to remove it via ice scraper, ice pick or flame thrower. The only way to remove this mutant frost is to turn your defrost on ‘high’ and wait for your engine to reach normal operating temperature, which at this ambient temperature takes roughly twenty minutes. Of course, the drive to work takes about eighteen minutes. This means that you will be unable to see out of any of your car windows until it is no longer necessary to do so.

Needless to say, when I stepped outside to start my car this morning, I shook my fists at the sky and cursed the cold, bitter, unforgiving darkness. Then I whimpered and came back inside to stick my hands into the refrigerator to warm them up. I had to be careful because my ears had frozen, and if I had tapped them, they would have broken off like crackers.

So those of you complaining about having to put on a sweater because it dipped below 50? I hate you. Nothing personal – I just hope you end up being allergic to that wool sweater and itch a lot.