"go outside when no one else wants to"

This morning was a comedy! All you can do is laugh, when it gets this bad. It snowed for the first time this year yesterday, and was nice and chilly when we left for work at 6am.

I finally bought new winter boots yesterday - they're not the trendy yet functional fashion accessories that I was looking for, but they're good to -40, and had a slogan something like "go outside when no one else wants to", so I settled. Not that I necessarily want to go outside when everyone else has the good sense to stay put. The boots are more practical than my Keens, and I didn't have to buy the matching mini-van.

My down coat doesn't fit anymore, so I've been dreading the real cold this winter. A friend loaned me a lined rain coat, and I borrowed Dearly Beloved's fleece jacket to go under it.
And then, like the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow man from Ghostbusters, I became ballooned into something horrifically comic and ridiculously dangerous. I was a sight for sore eyes as I trudged out of the igloo and hopped onto the dogsled this morning.

From inside my windproof cocoon I watched the "normals" around me with leather jackets and running shoes, sucking on cigarettes to keep warm. I wished, once-again, to be one of them (minus the cigarettes - yuk!).