Brrrrrr! It’s cold outside. Or, only 90 more days till baseball Opening Day

As I write this, it’s 10 degrees outside, with the potential to rise to 14 degrees. Wind chill will create conditions that supposedly will make it feel more like 1 or 2 degrees temperature.

Rocco, Carmelo cope w/ winter weather

In short, this lull of a week between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays is friggin’ freezing. This week during which many people will look for any excuse they can find to get out of work is provided with a perfect excuse by Mother Nature.

IT’S COLD OUTSIDE!!!

There’s no reason why human beings should be outdoors if they can possibly avoid it. The perfect time to do as little as is humanly possible.

For some people, it’s the perfect excuse to contemplate finding some other region of the globe to live in – some place where the idea of the temperatures ever dropping below 32 degrees (the official standard point at which water freezes into ice) is just a bad nightmare.

I’m not necessarily talking about some place with sunshine and perpetual 70 degree temperatures. Just some place where taking the dogs out for a walk doesn’t put one at risk for hypothermia.

Even he's shivering

I BRING UP that example because I often do wind up taking my father’s pair of dogs (a Standard Poodle and a mixed-breed Golden Retriever/Poodle) out for their daily walk.

While I have noticed they still get excited at the thought of being able to go outside, all it takes is one blast of the Arctic-like air for them to immediately change their minds.

I’m amused at how quickly the dogs (Rocco and Carmelo) are now capable of doing their “business” before they suddenly give every indication that they want to go back inside. Back home. No more of this aimless wandering that they usually do because “it’s outside.”

It makes me wonder if dogs can have more sense than people, or at least some individuals, based on their public behavior.

With holidays over, we do countdown to spring

YES, I FEEL the cold temperatures, just as much as anybody else. Even my neighbor with the elaborately-decorated front yard came up with something appropriate -- an inflatable snowman that shivers because it's so cold!

Yet I have to confess something – maybe it’s evidence that I’m losing it. But I don’t feel the urge to want to flee Chicago, or the Midwestern U.S., just because it’s cold outside!

I still remember one December I spent in Florida just over three decades ago – the idea of a swimming pool at that time of year just seemed strange. And listening to the locals complain about the cold because for a couple of days the temperatures dipped into the mid-30s?

It elicited the same reaction I get whenever I hear reports of snowfall in the Southern U.S. bringing daily life to a standstill – What a bunch of wimps!!!

IT’S COLD OUTSIDE; I’ll be the first to admit it. But it truly is part of the natural cycle of life on this planet to have the seasons. Finding a place where it never freezes is the extreme of life – just as a place like Antarctica is the opposite end (a land of perpetual winter).

We’re in the cycle of life – about to end the current calendar year. And for what it’s worth, we’ve passed the point where the days are getting shorter and the sun sets about 4:30 p.m. Minute by minute, we’re getting extra daylight and moving toward the time period in which we’ll have the mild temperatures that make life truly sweet and pleasant.

Besides, if we’re to be totally honest, we’ve managed to avoid the most annoying part of winter weather – the slop of snowfall. That downpour we got on Sunday (a.k.a., Christmas Eve) was over by day’s end and wasn’t that hard to clean up.

It won't be long before springtime returns, even to Chicago

It added to the winter ambiance that we’ll be able to remember fondly come May. Besides, it’s only 90 more days ‘til Opening Day for Major League Baseball – a thought to keep in mind if the wintry weather conditions become too unbearable.

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EXTRA: More homeless in Chicago?

A Chicago spring. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

I realize that homeless people begging for spare change is a part of the urban landscape, and the idea of someone destitute enough to beg juxtaposed with the wealth of the Loop isn’t at all odd.

Yet I couldn’t help but notice one woman who on Saturday chose a very prominent place to set up shop and request money from people – State and Madison.

YES, STATE STREET and Madison Street – that point from which Chicago’s street grid originates. The point from which it spreads in all directions (albeit the easternmost stretch is only a couple of blocks away before one runs into Lake Michigan).

I was in downtown Chicago Saturday afternoon, and couldn’t help but notice the many people seeking my change. Including one couple whose cardboard sign billed them as a father and daughter both in need of money for a meal.

Yet something about the woman at State and Madison, with her sign and her plastic bag containing her possessions and using the signpost to lean up against while she hoped for some change just somehow seemed wrong.

While some people on Saturday were all obsessed with whether or not Hillary Clinton could keep her campaign wishes alive (apparently, she did), I somehow suspect there are others to whom it literally won’t matter who wins the primary and general election to be held later this year.

THEY ALREADY HAVE sunk to the bottom, and who knows if they’ll ever be able to climb back up in life.

Before you say that’s not of your concern, keep in mind that our society as a whole isn’t any stronger than its weakest link.

This woman reminded me of one I encountered about a month ago – when I was in the Loop to meet up with some old friends for lunch at the Berghoff restaurant. When she hit me up for money for food, I would have felt like a complete dirtbag if I had walked right on by to eat well.

I wound up giving her a $10 bill, and still remember the glee she expressed because that would be enough money to get her a pizza. I haven’t seen that woman since, but I hope she enjoyed that bit of mozzarella with sauce.

AS FOR MY encounter on Saturday, I couldn’t help but reach into my pocket for spare change. She seemed pleased with the roughly $1.50 I tossed into her can before snapping the above photograph.

An image of Chicago I wish I could say was a rare one, or one I wouldn’t see often enough in the future!

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Spring time in Chicago? More like a twisted Midwestern winter wonderland!

On the fourth day of spring time, my true love gave to me, four sloppy inches of snow.

Only in Chicago could something like that be taken literally, and not be the least bit of a surprise.

FOR IT’S TRUE. The spring equinox came on Friday. We’re literally out of the winter season. Spring training baseball in Arizona is well underway. The sloppy, slushy snowfall that can cause massive traffic headaches ought to be behind us.

Yet on Monday, we got hit with anywhere from two to five inches of snow – depending on where in metro Chicago one lives. The further north toward the Illinois/Wisconsin border, the heavier the snowfall!

The four-inch figure comes from what was measured at O’Hare International Airport, where some 250 flights scheduled for Monday morning had to be cancelled and delays ran as long as 90 minutes in length.

All of the Streets and Sanitation Department’s trucks had plows attached and were out working to try to keep the streets cleared. Illinois Department of Transportation officials were doing the same on the interstate highways – although that didn’t prevent an auto accident from occurring this morning that involved the official motorcade of Gov. Bruce Rauner.

THE CAR THAT the governor was riding in was not hit. But it seems that one of the vehicles carrying his security team struck another car, with the sloppy road conditions being blamed.

A police officer was taken to an area hospital, although was treated and released. No major injuries involved, which is fortunate.

Now two months ago, none of this would have been the least bit interesting (well maybe the gubernatorial motorcade in an accident would have gotten a brief mention). But the rest of this would have been chalked up to “winter as usual” in the great Midwestern U.S.

But this is springtime. We’re supposed to be past this.

EVEN THOUGH I realize that the National Weather Service records indicate that Chicago has been hit with snowfall as late as May 11, and that the latest snowfall of an inch or more of the not-so-fluffy stuff came on May 4 (back in 1907, for those who are interested).

But it was still a depressing jolt to wake up Monday morning, flip on a television set tuned to The Weather Channel and see that they felt the most intriguing meteorological event in the United States was a live shot of the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago River so we could see the snow falling on the city.

Made worse by the fact that when I looked out the window, I saw heavy snowfall burying my neighborhood to the point where I couldn’t see any street.

Fortunately for me, the places I had to go to on Monday were for things happening in late afternoon.

BY THAT TIME, the snow had long stopped falling. In fact, by about 1 p.m., the streets had sort of been cleared – although it was quite obvious that a layer of grayish slop still remained on top of the pavement.

Keep in mind that this came just days after the Chicago winter weather season officially ended with temperatures routinely getting into the 50-degree range, and one day when I was seriously overdressed in a sweatshirt because the temperature got up to the low 70s.

Which the weather forecasts indicate is likely to return within days. Supposedly by Wednesday, we’re going to have sunshine and temperatures in the low 60s. Just envision the mess from the melt we’ll face by then!

I understand its worse further northwest (I have aunts in the greater Minneapolis area got whacked this weekend with harsher snowfall). But it makes me wonder what we could have done to offend Mother Nature so bad – or is it all her idea of a sick joke?

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