Chilly Out

When I lived in Southern Florida I would sometimes be deceived by the beautiful morning. The sun was up, the birds were singing in the orange trees in the backyard. A family of geckos that had sneaked into the house and was doing push-ups on the living room wall. To this California boy it looked like a day of paradise. Then I opened the front door and walked out into the sauna. My freshly ironed shirt went limp. My face and arms were instantly covered in a thin sheen of moisture. I remembered I was in Florida and there was 98 percent humidity.

For years I thought that was the most deceptive climate I would ever encounter. Then we moved to Illinois. This morning, this was the view from the front window:

The sun was out in full brilliant force; the sky was clear and blue. There was no sign of wind. It looked like a beautiful day, a great day to take Eliza out and make snow angels. Then I noticed a thin ribbon of ice along the bottom of the window, where we sometimes get a little condensation. We've never had ice on the inside of our fairly new double-pane windows before. I checked the temperature. It was -12 degrees Farenheit. Yikes! No snow angels after all.

When I finally thought of getting a picture it was 10am and the sun had been up for three hours, warming us up considerably, all the way from -12 to