and how does one face the the coldest day chicago has seen in seven years?

start by staying in bed with the cat an extra half hour, listening to NPR's every five minutes extreme cold weather (-29 windchill) warning. they say the key to avoiding frostbite is layers: we begin with long underwear, tops and bottoms, and over that the fleese-lined pants canvas pants, a long-sleeved shirt and cotton sweater. then the regular socks topped by the polar fleese socks. hiking boots, polar fleese jacket and mittens. scarf wrapped meticulously so that it overlaps the collar and the double-thick polar fleese hat, covering the nose and mouth loosely, so that the only exposed skin is the eyes and bridge of the nose. knee-length down parka goes over the top of everything, and the hood drawn tight to prevent any cold-air gaps between scarf and collar. i look like a thumb with legs walking down the street.

i swear this will be the last entry about the weather. well, no, actually, i can't promise that.

if it's going to be cold, i prefer snow. as lauren has pointed out, it only takes 10 minutes for new york snow to get dirty and ugly. chicago snow seems to retain the fluffy white picturesqueness a bit longer thanks to the extreme cold - nothing that falls out of the sky is going to melt until at least april, possibly may, and the snow does great things for chicago architecture - highlighting all of the little decorative railings, ledges, gargoyles - the stuff that no one bothers to put on buildings these days. i'm not such a fan, however, of the part where the sidewalk snow turns into an inch-thick dark brown sludge that is, in my father's words, "slicker than snot." it's like walking on a oil spill. like rollerblading, i fully expect to acquire specially developed glute muscles from the effort required to remain vertical on this stuff.

in the poker game of misfortune, we acknowledge lmo's apartment fire with our own living room ceiling, which drips, peels and bulges with un-diagnoseable pipe leakage, causing our manager to threaten Brazil-like reconstruction and the seizure of our living room, and we raise her one late-night trip to the emergency veterinary hospital.

at 2 am on a sunday night, the hospital waiting room was filled with pet owners whose pets had eaten mouse poison, paperclips, polarfleese. there were no kitty flues or kennel coughs, just grotesque emergencies of the intestinal track. one doctor poked his head out of the operatory to explain to the parents of a constipated cat that, "we're doing the plumbing now," indicating the angry snarls from within. a nervous poodle paced the waiting room while her seven puppies had traces of rat poison pumped from their stomachs. much to my relief, zeke hadn't tied his intestines into knots around a twist tie, but instead had spontaneously developed a urinary tract infection. $226 + cab fare (bless you, cab driver who didn't refuse to pick us up with our cat in tow) later, all was set right with a dose of antibiotics. if you've never seen a cat growl and hiss at his own genitals, well, it's one of the stranger sights i've seen.

ah, so this is what they mean by chicago winter. it was a lovely -8 degrees out this afternoon. the extreme cold engenders this feeling of camaraderie among chicago residents, a sort of we're-all-in-it-together look of sympathy that strangers give one another on train platforms. they wear those big, furry russian hats with the ear flaps without the slightest trace of irony, ski mitts and fur-trimmed hoods. in our drafty 19th century apartment building, the cold creeps in under the windows, rolls off the wide windowsills and creeps along the wooden floors like an invisible fog. the radiators puff, clank and hiss, a comforting sound, and the steam on the inside of the windows has frozen to a thick, sparkly frost. the static electricity in the air has reached new levels; zeke sits on my lap and wags his tail against my polar-fleece pants and it makes all the fur stick straight out. i pet him and the electric shock runs out the bottom of his paws and zaps me through my clothes. even neighborhood errands like going to the bank and getting groceries become herculean tasks. to make matters worse, weather.com is taunting me with photos of arizona. i'll bet if i were in florida i'd get pictures of vail, colorado…to put things in perspective, tho, i hated the 108 degree humid summer days chicago offered up last august even more than this. i didn't come to chicago expecting to like the weather – and i don't. but i like almost everything else, so it's not too bad a trade.

over at the last embassy, enjelani is closing up shop. metameat is on hiatus and ihateyoutoonces has been silent for weeks. is the blog dead? have we outgrown it? worked out our early-twenty-something growing pains in public, and are now busy with the details of the lives we've created?

ever since i was a kid, i've had this narrator stuck in my head, this extra voice that put a quick spin on everything i was thinking, seeing, doing - the blog was just the first way i found of working that narrator out of my head and into a format where i don't just look like i'm mumbling to myself. so slithy tove isn't folding yet, anyway - i've just had a lot on my mind and it's been hard to focus my thoughts into anything coherent for a while.

christmas was: recovering from the flu (the kind that makes you lie on the couch and moan softly for about five days and wonder why you didn't get a flu shot like your mother told you to), then watching it snow and snow and snow in a cabin in the idaho mountains. snow shoeing, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, bickering with my brothers in the usual fashion. below is a picture of Henri, our little christmas miracle, whom we rescued from the animal shelter on Christmas Eve. at 12 weeks old, he's as fearless and plucky as can be, and weights about half a pound - all fur, claws and a purr. it's hard to keep track of what day it is, tho, on vacation up there, and life didn't seem to come back into focus until i got back to chicago earlier this week. new years was simple but pleasant - a couple of friends over for fondue for dinner, then a swank party full of Improv Olympic actors - the dress-up-and-drink-champagne sort of party that makes the new year seem glamorous, but i'm terrible at parties where i know no one. me and andy:

me: hey, look, there's that guy we saw do that skit about D&D a few weeks ago
andy: oh yeah, he was really good
me: yeah, we thought he had a suspiciously accurate knowledge of D&D, remember?
andy: hehe. i'm going to go introduce myself.
me: uh, i dunno. he's chatting up that pretty blonde. should we really butt in and accuse him of being a D&D geek?
andy: yeah, that is kinda a cock-block, isn't it?

eventually we got around to the other side of the room and found a way to introduce ourselves. the actor in question did confess a childhood penchant for gaming, which in turn forced us to admit our own nerdly histories. the beautiful blonde turned out to be his wife, who tried valiantly to make polite small talk with me, which i am very bad at. i retreated to a corner and pet the dog wearing a ballerina outfit. she looked out of place, too.

new years resolutions:

stop working through my lunch hour. it doesn't really save me money, it just makes me tired, cranky, and more likely to buy junk food.

stop biting my cheeks, tongue, lips. find a new nervous habit if necessary, but kick this one. working at a dentist's office can really reform a girl.

extend my ban on animal-tested beauty products to the animals i eat, as well. this wishy-washy vegetarianism just makes me feel guilty and crave bacon. better to stick to meat that wasn't tortured or stuffed full of hormones and antibiotics. plus, being vegetarian when i'm eating out means that i don't have to be all paranoid about whether restaurants handle meat products safely.

eat more super cancer-fighting fruits and veggies. that whole five-a-day thing is a lot harder than it sounds. veggie go limp in my fridge so easily, and chicago in winter isn't exactly chock full of farmer's markets selling fresh produce.