You know you live north of the 45th...

when your conversation about the weather for the first week of March goes like this:

"Well, it's supposed to be in the low 20's today and tomorrow. Then it gets cold."

I think Mother Nature is just being clever. She's keeping it a cold now so that when it gets up to 36 or so in a couple of weeks for Easter and spring break we'll all be dancing around going "heat wave"!

Just FYI, current temp (according to Weather Bug) is -0.4. I love it when they give us percents. Because, you know, that .4 is so important. *grin*

I will point out that the sun is shining, though. That means, since it is March, even if the air temp doesn't get within 10 degrees of freezing, the snow and ice will still melt.

Our local Dairy Queen is seasonal and closes over winter -- there is no indoor seating and they don't serve burgers. However, it opened this past Saturday and has been doing a brisk business every day. Yesterday, Myr and Z walked from school to my work and stopped at the DQ to have a sundae despite the fact that it didn't get above 20 yesterday. We were there on Sunday and we parked the car in the sun and sat in there and ate our ice cream. It was great.

I, however, am not walking to and from work. The fact that the sun melts everything but the air temp is still significantly below freezing means that there are rivers and pools of ice scattered across the sidewalks and in the driveways. The streets themselves are pretty good but it's still treacherous. It is especially bad over the snow pack that has accumulated and in the low lying sidewalks surrounded by 3 foot snowbanks.

I don't mind the snow -- which will be with us easily into April -- but ice and I don't get along all that well.

Thank you, Brett!

Brett Favre has announced that he is retiring -- or as the headline reads Favre Has Decided to Call it a Career.

Now, I'm a huge Packer fan and love Brett, and as much as I will miss him playing, I'm pleased that he can walk away from it all while he still can walk away. There is more to life than football -- even when football is your life and passion.

What I really love about all this, is the timing: Brett's retirement will mean there is something in the news other than the election. Don't get me wrong, choosing a candidate is important, but I don't live in the states voting -- I, in fact, cast my vote last month. It's all out of my hands. I'd much rather spend my time debating the pros and cons of Favre's retirement, talking about his famous (and infamous) plays, and predicting the future chances of a title coming back to Green Bay.

Now when I'm looking for a little distraction from work, I can surf over to the sports news and enjoy the heated debate of "who's history's best quarterback" or "is Brett retiring because the Packer's couldn't get Moss or because he's tired of the long, cold Green Bay winters"? Lord knows that's much more entertaining than the faux "cowboy high-noon showdown" that the news is hyping for the election.

ETA: Of course, even the sports news sites have link sidebars that connect to the political news. Now, I just have to learn not to click on the links, right? But sometimes you just have to read the article to how many cowboy/country cliches the writers can work into the story...