I realize it is so very Minnesotan to talk about the weather, but I am going to anyway. I woke up this morning and my car had been outside all night. I got ready for work and headed outside. OUCH! It was REALLY cold. My car said it was 0 degrees.

It snowed over the weekend and that made the roads a little interesting. The roads were manageable and luckily I wasn’t one of the five or six cars I saw in the ditch on the way home from Owatonna on Saturday.

The snow is one thing. The cold is something else. Growing up I was far too cool to wear a hat or heavy jacket. Did the cold really not bother me? Maybe I just grew up to become a wimp. I used to think there was no difference between 20 degrees and 0 degrees. That is simply not the case. 20 degrees difference is 20 degrees. The difference between 80 degrees and 60 degrees is the same difference in 20 and 0. In other words, 20 is manageable and 0 is not.

It is amazing what we get used to over time. At one time power locks / windows were an “option” when buying a car. Do they still make windows that need to manually lowered and raised? Another thing I have relied on is heated seats and a heated steering wheel. My last car had a heated steering wheel and that became a necessity when I bought this car a few years ago. If I were 12, I would probably roll the windows down. Today, when I walked outside and felt the cold, I quickly started my car and let it warm up for 10 minutes before driving to work (turning the seats and steering wheel heat on as well).

I have lived in Minnesota my whole life. I think it is harder for me to deal with the cold now than it was in elementary school. It starts to warm up in April, right? That’s only four months (and counting) away.

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