It's all relative.

The last couple of days have been cold down here in Florida–record cold–42 degrees cold. Now our northern readers are going to say, "That ain't cold for December. What a wuss."  There was a time I would have agreed with them. We left Minnesota on the boat on October 29th, 2003. It was colder than 42 degrees at the time. If you check out this picture of our boat you'll see the ice stalagmite on the dock.

And it was damn cold on the Mississippi at that time of the year.

But for some reason that cold didn't bother me. Hell, I'd weathered -20 degree temps in a log cabin.

I guess my blood has thinned over the four years I've lived in Ft. Lauderdale. Mary and I go to the beach every Monday for coffee and muffins. I decided that I'd be damned if I'd give up my beach day just because it was 42 degrees. In fact, I suggested to Mary that we should take it a little further and go early enough to watch the sunrise.

Now I'll admit I prefer the beach and the rising sun to frozen water pipes and icy roads, but I was still freezing on Monday.

So if you're out there thinking that 42 degrees is nothing, just remember, cold, like a lot of things, is all relative to your experience.

By the way, as we sat at the beach a photographer for the Sun-Sentinel wandered by and took a very nice picture that appeared on the front page of Tuesday's paper and if you want to check it out here's a link to that picture. http://tinyurl.com/23cohhx