It’s the first official day after vacation.  I rolled out of bed at 6 this morning - a little less than exuberant from my 4 hours of sleep.  Thankfully the day started slowly, and I wasn’t inundated with phone calls and meetings.

The funny thing is: I feel more relaxed than I have in months.  This vacation may go down as the “most needed vacation”, and it worked wonders.

And as much as I loved the cold weather, it’s nice to be back to an open sunroof in my car.

Har, maties. Yesterday’s weather was just a warm up for ye sissies and complainers. This morning is the real thing - well into the “minuses” on both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.

Let me be unequivocally clear about these temperatures: this is fucking cold by anyone’s definition. Mel in northern Iowa Idaho will agree with me on this. The only people who don’t think this is frigid-ass cold are Eskimos - and even they would be putting a second pair of socks on in this weather.

The funny thing is - I’ll be doing the first leg of my journey home in this freezing weather. My car has never seen air this cold, and I’m sure it’s in the garage right now hoping that it’ll get to slumber through this. No such luck … and our adventure of driving through the snow on summer tires will continue, alas.

This is for my Southern friends.

THIS is what cold looks like.

Thank you.

There’s a few things I forgot about after 6 years in the South.

One of them is cold.  I’m not talking about the pleasant “my-it’s-refreshingly-cool-out” kind of cold.  I’m talking about the “holy-shit-I’m-going-to-freeze-my-nuts-off” cold.

Sydney had to go for a 5:00 pee, so I put her leash on, threw a housecoat over my pajamas and took her out into the driveway to do her business.  And gosh, if it wasn’t absolutely frigid out.  The temperature is probably around the -8 Celsius mark (that’s roughly 17 degrees Fahrenheit for the ‘yanks), so it’s not even really cold yet, but it sure felt that way to my prissy Southern sensibilities.

There’s a few subtle reminders that Jack Frost is right around the corner - even in this fair part of North Carolina.

• If I leave my car outside for the night, there’s the audible sound of cold windshield wipers scraping over a very thin layer of frost on the glass.
• When I take Sydney for a walk in the morning, the first breath of “outside” air has that crisp, invigorating feeling like no other.  It’s a feeling I knew all too well in Calgary, starting in early September and persisting until May.
• The days are getting shorter.  Daylight savings time really put a cramp on that; the sun is well into its descent on my drive home.  Again, this was even more notable in Calgary, where sunset during this time of the year comes at around 4:45 PM, and the sun doesn’t peek back up until about 9:30 AM.  (for those of you not from Raleigh, sunset is currently 5:10 PM and sunrise is around 6:45 AM)

The funny thing is, I still *really* look forward to this time of the year.  Autumn is the most liminal season for me; much more than a simple metaphor for dying leaves and the first snowfalls.  Autumn marks the last full season in the calendar year, and the first semester in the traditional school year.  It’s a remarkable confabulation of holidays; Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving and Christmas at the tail-end, with Veterans Day (Remembrance Day for my fellow Canucks) and Hanukkah thrown in for good measure.  (OK, I know some of these are technically “winter” holidays, but they’re close enough - and we *are* talking about liminality, right?)

Good day, eh?