Totally not recent photo of the day:

Alpine Veronica flowers in the spring, generally. It's not spring now.

I don't know if you've heard, but it's winter here.



Bah.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's not unusual for it to be wintery in mid-November in Alberta. What is unusual, though, is for it to happen in a day. That's right, one day. One day it was something like 9C for a high, and the next, if I'm remembering right, the high was -12C.

Yes, that's a minus.

This week I decided to take Monday off because the fall of the Remembrance Day stat on Tuesday (and I seriously didn't realise that Remembrance Day isn't yet a national stat. Really, Canada?) made for an easy long weekend for a part-timer like me. The weather hit on the weekend, though, and decided that I was staying home anyway because it was too cold for me to be able to clear the 10 cm of snow from my car.

I am not making this up.

I had to get out Wednesday, unfortunately, because some stupid person delayed getting her driver's licence renewed until just a couple of days before her birthday. So, rather than face -- at best -- a fine or -- at worst -- redoing my driver's test after all of these years, I sucked it up, cleared the car, went to the registry, got a really bad toque-head photo taken... and then went right back home because the headache from the cold had set in and I couldn't face doing anything else.

I did manage to make it to work yesterday afternoon. On my own, even. Made me feel like garbage, but I did it. Today? Early program, expected morning temperature of -28C. Yes, seriously. Wheat took pity on me and said that he'd pick me up (thank you, and did I mention thank you?). It didn't get quite as cold as all that (only -21C, I think, when we left), but I'd've still had to scrape the windshield and that would have done it for my hands for a while.

Just so you know, being allergic to the cold isn't the best life choice in Alberta. Not that it was a choice or anything, but still.

Aaanyway, there's how things stand. They're saying that it's supposed to start warming up tomorrow, so hopefully that will give me a chance to get into Dad's and give him his birthday present (happy birthday today, Dad). Which is... ummm... probably peanuts for his bird feeder. Yeah, the crap weather meant that I didn't get my last-minute shopping done, so he'll be getting something from our bookstore. He's ok with that, though. It's not the first time.



Later, then. Assuming that I survive until the next time I'm at a computer and don't get lost in a snowbank somewhere.