It's cold here in Southwestern Montana today. Not the sort of "Gosh, it's chilly. I think I'll put on a hat today!" cold but the "Will my fingers ever actually get warm? How long is it going to take for my nose hairs to thaw?" kind of cold that takes your breath away when you've gotten soft and spoiled from too many years of global warming winters and time away from Montana. The high for today is forecast at -2 degrees F. For my international readers, that's 254 degrees Kelvin. (Or -19 Celsius.)
There's a sense of moral superiority that goes along with winter cold in Montana, a feeling that only the heartiest, bravest, and strongest will be able to endure such conditions. The wind chill tonight in Livingston is supposed to get to -31, and I can tell you that the prospect is filling many longtime Montanans with a sort of clandestine glee. Oh, you'll hear them complain about it, but secretly they are thinking, "Now THIS is a winter!"
The only bad thing, really, is that it is gorgeously sunny here, with all kinds of pristine snow lying about, waiting to be jumped in. But if I let Connery loose in it, we would be MomNBabyCicles in about 30 seconds, so we're stuck just looking at it and feeling increasingly stir-crazy.