Baby it's fricking freezing outside

Absolute zero is defined as 459 degrees below zero, or 273 degrees below zero Celsius for you Canadians. It's not entirely certain whether there is such a thing as absolute zero, however, and according to my intense research scientists have yet to cool anything to that extent. Besides, that kind of a temperature would freeze a human being instantly, not to mention just about everything else.

So despite popular belief, our temperatures here did NOT fall that far below zero last night or today, even if the temperatures did freeze numerous chemicals while turning my Honda Civic into a superconductor. It just felt that way.

But that's the thing, isn't it? It may not have been so cold as to turn my various body parts into easily-shattered blocks of ice, but there were moments when I thought that would happen. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like for someone visiting from the South.

Sometimes I think temperatures are a totally useless measure of how cold it is. Two days ago, for instance, the thermometer reached the 40s, and most of us here in The Frozen North thought we were in heaven. At the grocery store that night on my way home I stood in line at the checkout counter next to a couple of nice young fellas wearing t-shirts and shorts -- college kids, of course. College kids are impervious to the cold.

Yet whenever people in Charleston, SC encountered 40-degree temperatures the entire population, including the college kids, would bundle themselves in parkas and long underwear for their trip to the nearest grocery store to empty its shelves of all the bread and milk and -- of all things -- chili ingredients. (Honestly, is that a Southern thing? Nobody up here scrambles for bread and milk in advance of bad weather. In fact, some people seem to relish going to the grocery store in the middle of a blizzard, a fact that probably kills more people around here than Roseanne Barr does singing the national anthem.)

To get the best idea of temperature tolerance, however, one must visit Myrtle Beach in the winter when the temperatures are in the high 50s or low 60s. Stop by the ocean at this time and you'll see some people swimming in the water, wearing bathing suits as if it was July. Others, meanwhile, are bundled up on the shore, assuming that they're outside at all.

The people who are bundled up are the locals. The swimmers? Canadians. (Seriously. Canadians DO make the area a wintertime destination. I'm not just making fun of them, at least not this time.)

Then there were the Floridians. When I moved to South Carolina I rightfully felt it would be warm. But then I encountered somebody who moved to that state from Florida looking forward to experiencing her first true "winter." Uh ... no. And when I was in Miami recently a local noted how the population tends to freak out whenever the mercury falls below 70.

And sometimes these different temperature tolerances happen in the same home. Whenever The Wife asks me whether it's cold outside, my response is usually something along the lines of "how the heck am I supposed to know? I'm not you." While I acquired a bit of weather wimpiness in the south The Wife was born with it. She has about a two-degree range of comfort -- 80 to 82. If it's any warmer she's too hot. Any cooler she's freezing and is scrambling for the nearest pair of thermal underpants. She's the only person I know who actively wears jackets in July. So whenever she asks me how cold it is I just tell her to go outside herself.

That's a much better thermometer, anyway.



Now it's time for you to warm up with a visit to humor-blogs.com. Oh, gosh, was that line lame. Feel free imagine yourself throwing rotten tomatoes at me over that stupid line.