Andrea and I just shovelled the front drive of the Shugart residence. It's been snowing all day and it's about -8 outside, but with wind chill it feels more like -19. When I first stepped outside the house I thought "Well, that doesn't feel too bad", but a few seconds of just being in temperatures of -19 rapidly disabused me of that idea. The wind whips snow against your cheeks, your fingers start to go numb (despite the gloves), and after a rather pathetic ten minutes I scurried back inside. Then the blood started rushing back to my fingertips and that really, really hurt. Of course, my wife, being somewhat more used to these conditions, carried on. She's a tough one.

The thing is, even -19 isn't that cold. Right now in Calgary it's -26 without wind chill. Up north it's more like -33. With wind chill it can get down to -55. I just don't know how people can cope.

Before I left England I was re-reading an account of the battle of Stalingrad in WW2, which is probably the high point of collective human misery. Those guys were fighting in temperatures of -30 for several months, and they were doing it without modern clothing, without warm houses to rush back to, and with millions of people shooting and launching mortars at them. Sheesh. And I thought this was bad...