Walking in a Winter Wonderland

New thing that I learned:  Polar bear cubs are born with no sense of sight.

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I haven't really been walking.  Mostly I've been shoveling snow.

This week has been all about snow and cold.  I've still played poker, and I'm still about even for the month.  But snow shoveling has been the daily priority.

I live in Michigan, just a few miles from Lake Michigan.  They could change the city name to Lake Effect and it would be appropriate.  A couple days ago I got up, turned on the Weather Channel, and the temperature was 3 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of -3F.  That's been about an average day this week.  It was a little warmer yesterday, but every day for the last five or so, I've put on several layers of clothes and shoved snow.  Then I get up the next day, it's still cold, and the places that I shoveled are filled in.  We also do some shoveling for my mother-in-law and a sick neighbor, so that's a fair amount of shoveling.

If you follow this blog you know that I sometimes struggle to keep control of my schedule.  But when nature weighs in, that's something I can't control, so I just do what I have to do.  When I hear all the talk about global warming (or is it "climate change" now?), I think about weeks like this one.

We humans think that we have a big effect on the climate, but the truth is that no matter what we do, one act of God can, in just a few minutes, change our lives.  A 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded planes all over Europe for several weeks.  Volcanologists believe that sooner or later there will be another eruption in Iceland which will make the last one look like child's play,*

*http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008648.html