Packin' Cold

The duck pond -- actually a wide spot in Johnson Creek. Dunno if you could skate on it, but it is frozen over completely. (Update: Friday -- you can skate on it . Three or four kids and two adults were doing so when I drove by there earlier.)

Jude and Layla looking for the ducks, who have left the building ...

Corgis, like German Shepherd Dogs and some others, are double-coated. This makes for dust bunnies the size of real bunnies in the hall corners when they shed, which they do several times a year. They are supposedly all-weather critters, but they prefer cold to heat. A hot summer day, mostly black fur, I have to take a water bottle if we walk more than few blocks. So a brisk stroll in the warming morning cold today-- already up to 18º F., practically summer -- not a problem.

Dogs can get frostbite on their ears, which are a little less insulated, but I figure that if my bare face isn't freezing, the dogs are good.

Mostly in winter, the weather is mild here in the Willamette Valley. Gets to freezing at night, warms up during the day. I can get by with a couple of layers and a light jacket, thin football gloves, maybe a hat.

Now and then we get stretches were it gets cold and stays below freezing for a few days, and we are in one of those now. Not talking Dakotas or Minnesota or even Chicago. (I was in Chicago one Christmas years ago and saw blowing snow stick to the face of a stop sign, followed by a cold snap and a wind off the lake that took the thermometer below zero and turned your head right around. I was not prepared for that -- nor to be literally pushed backward on an icy sidewalk by that lake-wind. Not my kind of town, Chicago.)

I have a heavy, hooded jacket and gloves and watch caps and they will keep me toasty in weather as cold as it's gotten around here. If the wind is blowing, I might have to put a muffler over my face, but even in the teens or single-digits, if it's still out, as it it now, it's certainly doable for a twenty-minute walk with the dogs.

Still cold for a Louisiana cracker, though.