What's the Difference Between Ignorance and Apathy?

I don't know and I don't care.

That's about how I've been feeling lately. The weather here is finally getting to me. Yes, it is winter, and nothing we've experienced is out of character for winter in Boulder. But normally in Boulder (at least in recent winters), after the bad weather we get plenty of nice days to remind of us why we live here.

I'm not going to blame the extreme weather on global warming. You just can't say that a long-term statistical trend is responsible for any single event. Nor am I going to pine for the upcoming warm days when global warming makes weeks of snow seem like the good cold days.

Maybe it's just cabin fever. The medical term is Seasonal Affective Disorder. But whatever it is, these days it's been easy to get riled up but hard to use that indignation constructively (like, for example, ranting on this blog). Really, complaining about people that drink too much water? I really have to get a life.

If you don't live in Colorado, here's what it's been like. Every week another snowstorm. Two inches or two feet, but enough to cement down what is already there. A warm up of a couple days, to give you hope for seeing the ground. Then another storm. Major wind storms. Frigid temperatures. Sometimes all at the same time. And always, just in time for the weekend/holiday.

The city doesn't plow residential streets, and my car is parked at the curb. As in long-term parking. There are several inches of packed, slick, rutted, bumpy snow/ice in both directions on the street, even if I dug my way out of the snow blocking me in.

So that leaves walking, the bus, or begging my wife for a ride in her more practical vehicle. Ok, I can do that, I'm an environmentally-minded kind of guy. I walk to the city rec center, which is maybe a mile from home. The other evening on my way there, I slipped on a patch of black ice on the sidewalk in front of a neighbor's house. Badly shaken and with a very sore knee, I hobbled to the rec center, thinking I'd feel better if I got in the pool.

Of course, as soon as I walked in the door, one of the clerks rushed me into the back out of the sight of the kids in the lobby. With the blood dripping down my face, he told me I had to take the bus to the emergency room for stitches. Yeah, what fun!

I don't blame my neighbor and don't worry I'm not suing anybody. People are keeping up with the shoveling as well as they can. I calculated (can anybody say "nerd"?) that for every foot of snow I shovel I move literally a ton of the white stuff from our driveway and sidewalk to the ever-growing piles adjacent to them. What is that, six or eight tons of snow so far this winter? And we haven't even hit our snowy months yet.

I'm not complaining about the weather, just about my reaction to it. But maybe some day soon, by the time I stop limping and the scar on my face starts to fade, I'll actually see the ground and street near our house.

Here's what's gonna happen. In a couple of weeks we head off for a week in sunny Puerto Rico. What do you want to bet that it will finally be nice that whole week, and dump another foot the same day we get back?