A Midwestern, Mid-winter Daydream...

Is it just me, or is this winter dragging by at a snail's pace?

And is it just me, or does it feel more like winter - a winter of old - than it has in a while?

I've never jumped into the global warming debate too readily. Never been a fan of Al Gore, and when he began to spearhead the global warming movement, it left a bad taste in my mouth. That being said, I've hardly been able to argue with his inconvenient truth. I've been watching the evidence play out right before my eyes for the last fifteen years:

The winters just don't feel the same as they used to.

They're shorter, and they're warmer. What's causing this, exactly, I don't pretend to know (or be totally convinced of). I just know that the change is there.

In my mind, the last winter that felt like winter was 1995/1996. It was brutal in these parts. Snowstorm after snowstorm barrelled in from the west or swooped down from Canada throughout January and February. Long stretches of days failed to crack positive digits in terms of temperature. It started early that year I remember, snow on the ground in October, and stuck around well into spring, hitting us one last time in late April (as in, the last week of...) with a blizzard that would have done January proud. I spent a lot of that winter standing on the hood of my car, shoveling snow.

The winters before - '94/'95 and '93/'94 - were bastards too. And though it wasn't the worst, '96/'97 brought with it a typical blast of cold and snow.

But after '97, things started to change. We had an El Nino year, then a La Nina (which I don't pretend to understand, but resulted in two crazily warm holiday seasons), then began the half-baked winters that have defined the last decade: snowless (if not downright warm) Halloweens, dry hunting seasons leading in to rust-colored Thanksgivings. The first significant snowfall usually happens around the first of December, and 40 degree days puncuate most of that month with a sense of purpose they never enjoyed in the past. After the holidays, winter arrives, but the cold isn't quite as cold, doesn't last quite as long. The 'January thaw' has some muscle nowadays, some staying power, and there are more 20 and 30 degree days all around, and far fewer knock-down, drag-out blizzards. There are, in fact, long stretches with no precipitation at all. This means not a lot of snowpack to insultate crops and basements, and no flooded rivers and swollen cricks in the spring.

This has become the norm in the Midwest in the last decade. Irrefutable evidence that something is changing, or has changed. Anyone who fails to recognize this is fooling himself.

This year feels different though - feels more like winter. We've gotten a lot of snow here (kicked off by a monster blizzard in mid-December), and it's been pretty damn cold. It's felt dark and snowy and boxed in, the way it used to.

And I gotta be honest, it has sucked out loud.

I hate winter.

I suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), and when it's bitterly cold as it is today(currently -7 degrees...at noon) I ask myself, why do I live here? Why does anybody choose to live in this shit?

It's 72 degrees at this very moment in Key West. I could be sitting outside pecking away at this post, hoisting my feet up on the chair opposite me, sipping my coffee for enjoyment not warmth and emotional sustenance, throwing my head back in deference to the sun.

I hold no illusions as to what life there or anywhere warm would be like. No island breeze paradise...it would still be day-to-day life. I'd still have to work, I'd still have bills to pay. There would still be hardship and regret. But man, there'd be no frostbite, no cold toes and runny nose...no 20 below mornings...no dark, joyless afternoons spent 'digging out'.

So why am I enduring day-to-day life here, I ask myself, when I could enduring it there.

Because we really are slave to our circumstances.

People I know say they'd miss the seasons if they lived somewhere tropical or sub-tropical, the 'changing of the guard' that helps punctuate the passage of time. Blah...I used to be on board with that sentiment, but no longer. I have two goals in life now: 1) my big road trip. 2) to land somewhere warm someday; to live out my golden years (at least) in golden spaces; to replace the holiday dinner of turkey and stuffing and cocoa with one of fresh crab and Coronas.

Sometimes my westbound thoughts turn southbound.

Superbowl a tough call this year...

This year's Superbowl matchup has me in a bit of a quandary.

I'm from Wisconsin. Lived here all my life; live here still, and will for the forseeable future. I grew up surrounded by 'green and gold' and TitleTown legend and lore, and as a result have always been, in some measure, a Green Bay Packers fan - out of obligation (and logic) if nothing else. Through the Lynn Dickey years, through Majkowski 'Magic', the advent of the Cheesehead, the (now-tainted) Favre dynasty...all of it as integral to who I was, how I identified myself, as anything.

But I've always been just a little bit more of a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, since the days of Terry Bradshaw and the 'steel curtain.' I don't know how or why it happened, but sometime during my stint as the quintessential tagalong to my older brother and his friends, as they vociferously, sometimes violently, staked their allegiance to either the Packers or the Minnesota Vikings (or at least another division rival), Pittsburgh became my team...in as far as I've followed football, that is; which, admittedly, until the last couple of years, was not nearly as closely as baseball.

That is a whole other blog post: my shift as I age from baseball to football. Suffice to say I have found a new passion for the gridiron of late, come to recognize more than I ever did before (or thought I would) the various physical talents of the game's players, coordinative talents of its coaches, and the drama that is, or can be, created when two teams collide.

But in any case, it's been Pittsburgh for me since Jimmy Carter was president. Maybe Charlie Daniels had something to do with it. No joke. It's entirely possible that his song In America was shrieking tinnily from the AM radio in my dad's store back then...the line, 'just go and lay your hand, on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan/and I think you're gonna finally understand' provoking something in me.

But now, the quandary: Green Bay or Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh or Green Bay? Head or heart? It's a toughie, but I think I have to follow my heart on this one. It's the Pittsburgh logo that adorns the wallpaper of my phone, after all (I don't think I've ever sported the Packers logo, or colors, on anything (sure as hell never donned a Cheesehead...sober). The crafty little bead lizard my son made for me when he was 10, which still hangs from my rearview mirror, is made of black and yellow beads, not green and yellow.

It's Pittsburgh I have stood by in lean times, like last year, when they started to fall apart in November and faded from reality before Christmas after a solid first half of the season.

It's Pittsburgh I have stood by in spite of Ben Roethlisberger's scandalous off-season behavior, for which, I got to be honest, I don't think he should be allowed to play. Seriously. (That too is a whole other post.)

And it's Pittsburgh I will stand by tomorrow morning, even if Aaron Rodgers and crew find a way to pick apart the 21st century steel curtain.

I predict a low scoring game...decided perhaps by a field goal...Pittsburgh victorious.



UPDATE (2/6/11): *sigh...*...at least it was close.