January 21, 2007
The Day Hell Froze Over
When I moved from Idaho to Arizona I did so for a couple of reasons. First was the great job offer I received from Motorola. Second was the fact that I hated the cold. It wasn’t just me though it was my whole family. When winter weather begins in mid-October and continues through April that is just too much. And believe me when I tell you that there is nothing worse than waking from a dead sleep to the sound of the snow plow coming down your street. You know that you have approximately 16 minutes from the time the plow passes your house until you have to have the piled snow moved from in front of your driveway. If you miss this window of opportunity you will be left with a pile of snow that may last until Memorial Day. People sometimes ask me how I can stand to live somewhere that reaches over 120 degrees in the summer. It really isn’t so bad. I keep a pair of oven mitts in my car so that I don’t burn my fingers on the steering wheel and then I just crank the air conditioning until I cool off. I would much rather do that than have to continually wear 27 layers of clothing just to go out and pick up the newspaper. I admit, I am a total wimp when it comes to cold. I just can’t stand the fact that parts of my body could become frozen solid and break off. There is something just not right about that. For the past week though it has been unseasonably cold in Arizona. By unseasonably cold I mean frigid by my standards. The high temperatures hovered in the forties and the lows were below freezing. Finally the unimaginable occurred. Last night I stood at the window wrapped in a blanket staring at the clouds when the rain began to freeze and turn to snow. I stood there in disbelief at what I was seeing. I never thought it was possible that I would have to endure the sight of snow again and yet here it was. Before I moved here I had asked the realtor if it ever snowed and he told me, “It would be a cold day in hell before it snowed in Phoenix.” Well here we are and it made me start to wonder, what other events I should expect now that hell had frozen over.
