January

There's nothing worse than depressing snow, at least as far as weather is concerned. In early December, the first snow is a thing of celebration, jubilee, festivities! It means that Christmas is closing in. It's happy snow. Once Christmas is over, the snow stays fairly cheerful for about a week. Then, just after New Year's Day, it resorts to a sad, selfish, and unreliable mood. With no more holiday to look forward to, the snow quickly becomes an inconvenient hassle and a dirty, gray, wizened atmosphere settles over everything. It melts, refreezes into deadly ice, then melts, refreezes into even deadlier ice, and so on. Then, out of the CLEAR BLUE (or rather, sooty gray--I haven't seen clear blue skies in far too long) fresh, clean snow starts to blizzard around. Things begin to look a little bit nicer, the new snow disguising the blackened ice, but it doesn't hold the same excitement as it did before. It's merely an unexpected cover-up. Tomorrow afternoon, it'll get just warm enough to liquify some of this precipitation, and then tomorrow night, the biting cold will sweep through and turn everything to slick, hidden, cunning ice.

Boo on January. It's crampin' my style, Lyle.