Not a Rhetorical Question

That lovely warm winter I was bragging about just a couple days ago?

Yeah, that’s over.

The snow slunk in yesterday afternoon. The cold came with it. As in, two days ago, I was running around without a jacket. Today, I had to take the Wrangler into town because there was no way my wife’s car was going to make it to Whole Foods to pick up the New Year’s oysters and the tenderloin for the carpaccio.

I wore two pair of socks, waterproof winter hiking boots, long underwear, heavyweight jeans, a long-sleeved henley, a flannel shirt, a down ski jacket zipped up to the chin, glove liners, ski gloves, ear muffs and a hat. Long before I got back home — this was only an 80 minute trip, 20 spent indoors — my fingers and toes literally ached with the cold.

OK, I was so cold partly because the Wrangler has an unlined canvas top, so you couldn’t heat the thing if you set fire to it. But the sun was out and I was protected from the wind. In other words, that’s just how damn cold it was without shade or wind — and with the Jeep’s meager heater doing what it could.

May we please go back to the global warmening now?