Frickin' Freezin

This morning was so cold. Why didn't anybody warn me in advance about this snow and arctic wind? Just last week, I was walking around just fine, without even having to wear a light jacket, and thinking about washing my car. All of a sudden, I can't even run from my car in the parking lot to the entrance at work today, without having to stop and check to see whether my ears are still attached to my body, or if they froze, cracked off and blew away.

I dread cold weather because it gets harder to wake up in the morning, and then I feel so much lazier when it comes to leaving the house, working out, and just about everything else in general. I'm the kind of person who likes to use these kinds of things as an excuse to avoid doing all kinds of stuff:

"Hmmm.... I should probably go to Jewel and buy some food. Nah, it's too cold, screw it."

"The oil in my car needs to be changed. Nah, it's too cold, screw it."

"I gotta do some laundry soon. Nah, it's too cold, screw it."

One thing that the cold weather might actually push me to do is to get a remote starter for my car. I've been thinking about doing it for a long time (even back when I first got the Maxima), but obviously never followed through. Now, I think I could really use a remote starter to warm up my car in the morning while I eat, or after work while I walk through the parking lot, so I don't have to get in and wait so long for it to heat up. If anyone out there is knowledgeable about remote starters, would like to recommend a certain model to me, and/or help me install it, let me know!

Of course, a good thing that comes with the drop in temperature is the Christmas season. I'm a huge sucker for everything having to do with Christmas. People who have read my blog last year around this time would know this, as I wrote a whole thing on the best Christmas songs, movies, etc., and changed all the colors of this site to shades of red and green. I still haven't gotten around to fixing my archives and stuff, but maybe after writing this I will try to work on my template and find last year's entries.

For me, the Christmas season this year officially started last Friday night. Every day for the past 7 months, I've driven past the intersection on the way to/from work where NW Hwy and Hicks split off, and the area looks pretty boring, nothing special. But coming home late that night from the city, I was so surprised to see that same intersection lit up by all these Christmas lights, strung around all the bushes and trees by the street. I didn't even notice there were bushes and trees there before, but I guess I'm just not too observant about that kind of stuff. Anyways, it looked really cool, and instantly put me in the happy Christmas mood. Props to Palatine township.

This was followed up on Sunday after church, when me and my sister watched one of our favorite all-time movies playing on WGN, Home Alone. Later that day, I noticed that it was on TBS Superstation too. I just love that movie so much, it brings back all these great memories and feelings, especially associated with Christmastime. So if the lights on the trees and stuff weren't enough, watching Home Alone definitely left no further doubt in my mind that Christmas season was here.

In the meantime, it seems that Thanksgiving has been forgotten for the moment. But I know that I won't forget it later this week, when I get to enjoy a much needed long weekend. That's the cool part I realized about Thanksgiving since I started working, is that most of us (sorry P) have a built-in thing to be thankful for. That is, getting the day(s) off for the holiday. Hopefully, I will also find myself thankful for Ahman Green running me out to a huge early lead in one of the Thursday NFL games.

As for the snow, well, I hope it won't affect me as much this year, since I don't have to commute from Darien anymore. Although, now I park outside in the driveway, so that could suck. Either way, I'm pretty sure I'd rather see snow covering the ground, than this "light flurries with no accumulation" BS. The way I see it, if it's gonna snow, and wind is gonna blast it in my face, it better at least look nice and wintery outside.

To sum up:
- It's frickin freezing
- Cold weather makes me lazy
- I need a remote starter
- At least it's Christmas season
- I love Christmas season
- But don't forget about Thanksgiving
- Snow a lot, or not at all

*****

Update: I fixed the archives, and the links to my Christmas entries from last year are as follows:

Christmas DBA Nominations

DBA Winners

While looking for these posts, I discovered a cool feature in the new Blogger interface that lets you search for posts containing certain words. I didn't know you could do that, it would've saved me some time trying to find those Christmas blogs in all the weeks before Christmas (it turns out that I posted them the week of Christmas, how wacky).