I'd rather stay in bed

Winter has arrived. Well, our version of it anyway. You hearty folks who live anywhere north of here would call it fall or spring but it is winter to us. Yesterday morning at 7 AM, it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7.2 Celsius... which really sounds cold) when I went out to play golf.

I knew it was going to be cold so I layered up; long pants, thermal undershirt, polo shirt, sweater, and fleece jacket. Why layer up? Because it is better than a just a heavy jacket and because you can unlayer as the weather warms up a bit. Which it does here. By 11:30 it was around 70F (21C) when the round was over so I had shed the jacket and was ready for a bowl of chili.

Like I said, you likely think we're wimps here. Which is true when it comes to cool weather. But if we liked cool weather, we wouldn't be living down here. I have said it before; winter is when the temperatures drop below 70 degrees. I cannot deal with it.

I was not always this way. After all, I was born out on Long Island in New York state. The first 9 and a half years of my life were spent there. But I never liked the cold even then. When my parents moved us to Florida in 1956, I learned what environment human beings (at least this one) belonged in. We do not have natural fur coats (well, most of us anyway), we invented clothes to take the place of natural fur. And clothes are wonderful things, they can be taken off when not needed.

I have heard people say they would rather have cold then heat; that you can always add clothing but you can only take so much of it off. Sure... in public. Let those people move to Canada, Alaska, Montana, Minnesota, and Maine. I prefer to swelter. I got nothing against naked... in front of a fan blowing over a tub of ice.