Fringe Benefits

I was asked yet again yesterday if I missed Bermuda, and while I am itching to get on the move again, I was almost a little surprised that my answer was still a quick "no, not really."  I mean, I loved and still love Bermy, I would kinda like to make my way back there one day again, but I was and am still ready for that next adventure.  And until then, here I am, in snowy Saskatchewan.

So snow, obviously, comes with subzero temperatures.  It is a balmy -11C as I type this, a big improvement on the -24C that I started my day out in yesterday.  I won't say I like the cold.  But I will say I am surprised that some old Canadian tendencies have been resurfacing.  "I mean, it doesn't FEEL like -24," my friend Monique said while we navigated through some drifts from the car to the chosen breakfast stop.  "No, it's really not that bad," I heard myself say, and I meant it.  Heck, the -7 day I didn't even bother wearing a jacket while I wandered around outside taking pictures.

There are a few positives about winter in Canada.  The snow can be pretty, as you will hopefully agree after the recent snow and frost picture blogs.  Palmetto bugs, aka cockroaches, do not like the climate and I haven't been frightened half to death by a bug since coming back to Canada.  Except for when the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of actually seeing them in Bermuda makes me just randomly fear seeing them here, despite the logistical impossibility of that happening.  White Christmases are kinda nice.  Fireplaces are nice.  If you don't have one of those, I noticed "Fireplace TV" was on cable tonight (for those of you unfamiliar, this is a channel that is simply an ongoing feed of a fireplace burning and crackling to sooth you into thinking you have one...not sure if that's just a Canadian thing or if all cold places have this channel).

The best thing about Canadian winter, today at least, is the decreased hours of daylight.  Normally this a bit of a bummer, and of course it is terrible for vitamin D levels which has dozens of health implications.  The bonus is that I, not being a morning person, rarely enjoy the glory of a sunrise.  But in winter, I can be treated to scenes like this at the kinder, gentler hour of 0830 am rather than the insanely early summer sunrises.  Nice golden, crisp, bug free sunrises.  I can live with that for today.