Simplicity

I know I've said it before on this blog, but honestly, I'll take the cold at this time of the year compared to all the snow they're getting "down south." Although I enjoyed reading in the Globe and Mail on Saturday that Toronto and Montreal are both on the verge of setting snow fall record. Toronto is at 178 cm; the record is 207. Montreal is at 317 cm with the record being 383 cm. I don't have the exact number in front of me, but Ottawa is apparently near its record, which is over 400 cm.

And part of me can't help but feel those are pretty wussy records. Then again, I survived the great, unending snow fall of 2000-2001, when St. John's and area got something around 660 cm of snow in one winter. I remember trying to drive in from Clarenville to St. John's one weekend and seeing a particular outcrop about an hour outside of town that was impassible. A DRL bus was buried under 10 feet snow.

Still, it sounds like a bad winter all the way around in the rest of Canada. And yeah, the cold sucks. Never kid yourself that -50 is a breeze to deal with. And there are going to be days in April when Toronto is going to be 20 C and it's going to be -20 C up here and the bay will be frozen solid. But man, it's just the cold you have to deal with up here. No slush. No spending hours leaning on a shovel digging out. Even a blizzard up here normally only gets 5 cm of snow. No worrying about being killed by maniac drivers when you're trying to walk on streets because the sidewalks can't be cleared (Maniac snowmobile drivers is another matter).

Yeah, there's something to be said on weekends like this for the simplicity of just plain cold.

Tomorrow, the big curling news.

Last Five
1. Maneater - Hall & Oates
2. Lilly Bolero/The White Cockade - The Chieftains
3. Best for the best - Josh Ritter
4. You look so fine - Garbage*
5. Trust me - The Fray