You’ve just gotta love the holiday spirit, don’t you? The purchasing of gifts for your friends and family, the delightful flow of eggnog as you divulge secrets from your childhood past that you wouldn’t dare tell your dog sober, and the beautiful descent of thousands of tiny snowflakes falling from the sky – each a little more different than the last – and ultimately all of them piling together to form an impassable mountain of ice and snow, that of which the Abominable Snowman himself couldn’t imagine traversing without a week’s worth of supplies and that pair of monogrammed earmuffs his Mother made for him when he but a wee snow beast. Yeah, of all the fun and magic that winter presents us with, the dealings with snow and its removal on a grand scale are likely at the bottom of most lists, and it’s because of this that during these months I offer up my most humble and sympathetic words…

“Ha ha!”

That’s right, I may get taunts and jeers all summer long as wave after wave of hurricane-y goodness floods over my Floridian home, but it’s all worth it when we get into the winter months and I imagine my homeland up in Northern Michigan, quaint as it may very well be, buried up to its proverbial neck in that cold and unyielding white gold! And don’t get me wrong, from the perspective of the skier or the snowmobiler or the snowman aficionado, having every perceivable inch of the countryside dusted with a hefty, six-foot “massacre” of snow sounds perfectly wonderful – the more the merrier, right? But alas, when factoring together my lack of enough coordination to watch skiing on television, much less stand up on a pair of skis myself, an absence of any inking of an ambition whatsoever to ride a deathtrap flying at 80mph across a landscape covered with all sorts of trees and other large obstacles for me to run into, and finally an unspeakable occurrence that we’ll only refer to as “The Naked Snowman Incident of ‘96” and leave it at that, and without further a due, you have a good summary of exactly why I moved from the snow-laden region of Northern Michigan down to the sunny, snow-free land that is Florida.

Also, did I mention that I never really cared much for shoveling the stuff, either? I guess one would probably just go ahead and assume that, but I figured as long as we were on the topic…

But anyways, needless to say quite a few people seem to be jealous when I tell them that thanks to living in Florida, I no longer have to own such items as snow shovels and ice scrapers and long-sleeve shirts. Ok, well maybe that’s pushing it just a bit – I do admittedly have a couple of long-sleeve shirts in my closet that come out during those bitterly-cold times when it gets down into the low 60’s, but you can sure bet that my snowsuits and thermal underwear weren’t exactly at the top of my list when I started packing my belongings three years ago! In fact, I think my Mom even has some of those winter-type clothes that I used to wear during these times when I still lived at home. She occasionally tells me that she’s holding them for the next time I come up to visit during the wintertime, however I just don’t have the heart to tell her that a) that ain’t gonna happen as long as it continues to stay seventy or eighty degrees warmer down here than it is up there; and b) I’m not exactly as skinny as I used to be when I wedged myself into those thermal undies back in the day!

So for the time being I think I’ll be just as happy keeping on down here in the Sunshine State, soaking up the rays while everyone up north is soaking up the…well, actually you won’t be soaking up much of anything for a while because it’s pretty much all frozen right now, but you get the figure of speech nonetheless! And remember, you’re always more than welcome to stop by for a little vacation if those blustery winters prove to be too much for you this holiday season. Just don’t forget to pack a couple of long-sleeve shirts – it gets cold down in these parts in the winter, too!