Sometimes I feel like I have spent my whole life living in the wrong place. New England, upstate New York, the upper midwest, and Virginia. I have never enjoyed cold, wintery weather, and, in fact, I do not think that it is particularly conducive to human habitation. I believe that we were meant to live in warm, sunny places. I am especially sensitive to arguments like these when I wake up and see temperatures outside below 0oC. The ground is covered with snow or ice, there is a thick layer of frost on my car windows, the world is less friendly and open as everyone is bundled in layers of synthetic Gortex. Every breath that we take burns our nose and lungs, our joints hurt, our nose runs, our fingers swell. I come across the occasional nut-job that tells me they actually enjoy the cold weather, they could not imagine living in a place without clear, distinct seasons. Even on the most frigid, demoralizing days, I have known folks who will wear nothing but light-weight jackets. I knew a guy from California when I went to school in New York who wore short pants all year round. I felt then that there was something horribly wrong with that one. I believe that we should be able to live in a climate where we can lick metal poles any time that we like, any day of the year without negative ramifications. We should be able to pee out-of-doors without leaving behind sullied, yellow precipitation (that spells out D-A-N). This is America, we're supposed to be the greatest nation on earth. We should be able to come up with at least some solution.
