and things went downhill from there

Folks here can sometimes be a bit callous when we hear about other cities having to deal with very cold weather. A few years ago, when Toronto was all over the national news when they were forecasting -18c or so, we had been largely ignored as we hunkered down for days in temperatures in the -30s. That's likely why somebody from a Winnipeg account tweeted "That's adorable" in response to a message from the city of Toronto, warning its citizens of the "dangerously cold" weather coming their way.

I mean, those _are_ dangerous temperatures - especially for some of the vulnerable among the population - but it's not like Toronto isn't a northern city that's ill-equipped to handle the occasional cold snap. They were acting like a drama queen who was being asked to put on a second layer before heading out.

On the other hand, while we might take delight in taking jabs at our northern neighbours, it's a different story when one looks at the weather new and see places like Amarillo and Forth Worth waking up to temperatures in the -18c to -21c range. The cities in that part of the country are _not_ equipped for these kinds of temperatures - especially if the cold settles in for any kind of stretch.

Our buildings are insulated to the point of being like that kid in Christmas Story who couldn't bend his arms from all the layers of clothes. We have trio-pane windows. Our water and sewage systems are buried deep under ground. On the other hand, these temperatures pose a real threat to the power and water infrastructure in some of those southern cities.

Hopefully it warms up again for you guys, so that we can go back to deriding you over complaining when it dips to 15c. Do whatever it takes to weather this: put painter's tape around the doors and windows. Leave a cold water tap running. Put on layers when you go out, and watch that the tip of your nose doesn't freeze (no, seriously, you can get frostbite there before you know its setting in).

Hang in there and stay warm.

Our garage windows always turn very pretty with the first deep cold snap of the year.

Unless things change dramatically over the next couple of days, we will have a white Christmas. Barely.

I went for a short walk today to grab some money from the bank up the street, and some lunch from the sub shop next to it. The side walks were treacherous, but the weather was glorious. There is a chill in the air, and a low, grey overcast that hints at snow. Not the cruel, blowing, dry snow that we usually get here, but the kind that makes you want to don a toque and gloves and run outside to catch some snowflake on your tongue.

This is the kind of winter that I enjoy.

On another wintry subject, I would swear that I started writing a Christmas story a few weeks back. I wanted to call it up and continue working on it today, but I can find neither whisker nor hair of it.

One more cat picture because I can.



Merry has built herself a fort, and given the weather we have been experiencing here lately, I don't think anybody out here would blame her. We are rounding out a week of unseasonably cold weather with another fair dump of snow (10cm overnight, with another 5cm expected over the course of the day). Though it started off promising, this has slowly morphed the winter that keeps on giving.

atara managed to find her noise-cancelling headphones while cleaning this weekend, and I made good use of them for the bus ride in. I caught the earlier bus because my usual one was showing as 10-minutes late on the schedule. We were making pretty decent time until a CN train blocked us for fifteen minutes. It was moving forward at a breakneck walking pace. I was half tempted to ask the driver to let me off the bus so that I could walk back, throw the angle cock and pull the pin a few cars back of the crossing. I suppose they would probably have noticed though when their rear end device suddenly stopped talking to them.

These noise-cancelling headphones helped a lot on the bus. While the ambient mechanical noises and conversation do not normally bother me, I was sitting in front of a couple 20-something girls whose idea of conversation was to natter inanely at the same time. Perhaps they have mastered the art of talking and listening at the same time, but it is just as likely that they were not actually talking to each other, and instead had phones pressed to their heads. I did not turn around to check.

The headphones gave me a wonderful sense of isolation, and let me settled down into a Zen-like state where I could stare out the window and watch the antics of the pedestrians. They were picking and slipping their way through the fresh snow, and though I am not a lip-reader, I am sure I saw a few blasphemies uttered. Other than looking cold and uncomfortable, the pedestrians also shared a nigh-universal expression of annoyance. This winter may end any time now, thank you.

The city owns the fountain and surrounding park in front of the building where I work. While the area usually serves as a hangout for vagrants and drug dealers, the city often hosts events there. During the summer they have a week-long music festival in the square, where local bands come and perform during the lunch hour. The folks who organize their winter events are not quite as well organized though.

Last winter they lined the area around the fountain with a dozen or so wooden boxes which they filled with packed snow. I don't know if they were supposed to be part of a snow sculpting project, but the boxes of snow sat untouched for months through a number of freeze and thaw cycles until spring finally came in earnest. After a couple days of rain the boxes disappeared, leaving several messy piles of slushy snow where they had been, and after another week the snow quietly disappeared in the night. If that had been the plan all along then I don't think the pay-off was worth the set-up. As art projects go, the result was rather anticlimactic.

It appears that last year's debacle was not enough to dissuade the committee from trying again this year. Back in November, or maybe early December I showed up for work one morning and noticed that the fountain had been roughly encircled by vertical cardboard cylinders. It looked like somebody had raided the bathroom of the titans and made off with the cardboard tubes from their toilet paper rolls. The cynical side of me thought, "Oh look, it's another ill-fated winter project by the city." On the other hand, one would assume that they learned from last year's mistake. I wondered if they were planning to fill them with snow or water, and that question was answered a week later when I spied one of the flower-watering trailers parked beside one of the tubes while a bored maintenance worker pumped green-tinged water out of a translucent plastic water tank into the tube.

I have always wondered about the water in those tanks. I have never been sure if green tinge in the water was due to algae, plant food, or just a trick of the light. Well the pictures below tell me that it's not just a trick of the light. A couple of weeks ago they removed the cardboard wrappings, leaving a group of green ice pillars circling the fountain.

( Icehenge )