Why I Live Here

Lileks sums it up:

"Let me put it this way: after three months of very hot weather, I don’t think one becomes overcome with a sense of emptiness and depression. Three months of cold that makes your lungs ache and your fingers go dead is like being beaten with a cloth-covered mallet once every hour. The despair of February is a hundred times worse than the inconvenience of the afternoon sun broiling the parking lot you’re crossing on your way to an air-conditioned place."

Or even the inconvenience of four months of crossing that broiling hot parking lot, if you must know. Hot weather makes you itchy, it makes you miss the cool breeze at sunset and the chill in the morning air when you go out to get in your car. But it never, ever matches the hopelessness you feel when the ice is so thick on the windshield at 6:30am that you break yet-another ice scraper, and you huddle in the dark in your cold car waiting for the defroster to do its job. Sweat and sunshine can get old, but they are always preferable to the defeat of yet another snowstorm, and it's April already.

Here's to 19 years in Texas. I'll be leaving shortly after Hell freezes over - or the Rio Grande, whichever comes first.