New meaning to cold!!

When I was in college I can remember this kind of cold, but today and yesterday give new meaning to cold. Today it is Bone chilling, freeze the snot in your nose, take your breath away, frost bite your face cold. Last night in 40 mile an hour winds and temperature of -2 degrees MJ and I drove from our old home town of Bourbonnais, to my parents house. This is normally an hour drive, but it took us an hour and a half due to the wind and blowing snow. On the way I had to get gas, because it is bad to leave small amounts of gas in your tank with weather this cold, so we filled up. When I got out at the gas station I could not believe it. With no hat and no gloves the wind just went right through your clothes to the core. It was crazy. Then we drove to my parents house and pulled my car into the garage to unload all of our stuff. That was the easy part. We figured it would be best to keep my car in the garage, but it would be a tight squeeze length wise for my car to fit and the garage door to shut properly. This is when I screwed up. I went to the back of my car to remove the receiver hitch because it sticks out and we needed all the room we could get. So I knelt down and pulled the pin off the hitch and removed the receiver thinking nothing of it. About that time my Dad says, "you should have gloves on to do that." And as I am saying, "Why it is no big deal?" I can feel my fingers that are touching the metal receiver begin to burn. I threw the receiver into the back of my car, thank the good Lord the back door was open, and could not believe the burning in my fingers. Imagine holding a hot curling iron with your first three fingers and your thumb, and the burning feeling that would follow your reckless actions. Well I had that for a good 45 minutes after recklessly grabbing a metal object that had a temperature below zero.

Anyway, we made record time to chicago, 15 hours. We left Childress at 6:30pm Friday and arrived at our destination in Illinois at 9:30 am the next morning. It was a good trip overall. The pictures are of the ice left behind from the Storm Thursday night and Friday morning here, pretty awesome.

It is good to be home, MJ and I are about to go enjoy having every store imaginable within 15 minutes of here. In other words we going out. Unfortunately, the temperature is still -2, but the wind has gone down a bit.

Take care and have a Merry CHRISTmas.