stand up, hold on, and swear you won't let go

Winter has at last descended upon Boston, and its come swiftly and without remorse, angry at having been held back too long by bouts of unseasonable warmth and drizzling Autumnal rain in place of snow. The weather service would have me believe that the high today will be in the low twenties, with a wind chill dropping us down into the mid-teens. But weather.com tells me that its currently 11 degrees Fahrenheit, and that it "feels like" -3. That's more in synch with what I experienced walking to and from the train this morning; a bitter cold that bites viciously when the wind gusts, regardless of how warmly you're dressed, reminding you that no sensible person would be out in weather like this.

It won't last. Despite its outrage and ferocity Winter doesn't have staying power this year; current predictions hold that temperatures will be up above freezing tomorrow, and though there's precipitation expected on Friday no one can say whether it will come in the form of snow or rain. Which is good really, because I seem to have a minor cold, and its hard enough to drag myself from bed without the prospect of facing icy bone-chilling winds when I set foot outside. Also I continue to wrestle with my roommates for control of our thermostat. Both of their bedrooms have separate heating zones, so they can be heated up even when the heat in the house is turned down, provided it is not turned off entirely. Whereas my room doesn't even have storm windows, and is typically five to ten degrees colder than the rest of the house. On multiple occasions I've had the audacity to notch the main thermostat up as high as 66 or even 68 degrees only to have it turned down again as soon as my back was turned. There's nothing quite like waking up to discover that moving even a fraction of an inch in either direction will give you chills as it transports your body out of the pocket of body heat you've created for yourself, into territory where everything around you, even the blanket in which you're wrapped, is damnably cold.

Sorry if I seem downbeat. I have half a cold, and I'm stuck in the doldrums of no new television. Heroes won't return for another couple of weeks, and the Torchwood finale kind of, well, sucked. Things have gotten so dire that I've picked up Ugly Betty as a filler. I've watched all the back episodes and added it to the Tivo season passes. I didn't mean to pick up another entirely girly fixation, but, well, there you have it.