A Brief Note about the Weather

It's January.  It's cold.  Up to 3 degrees, as a matter of fact.  Birds are falling out of the sky and shattering like feathery popsicles.  You can stick a fork in my foot and I wouldn't feel a thing. Numb, in other words.  It's so cold, the flags on every flagpole in Maine are frozen in mid-wave. On the other hand, I heard about a house-fire where the flames froze solid. Instead of dousing the fire with water, the firemen chipped away at it with little icepicks. They gathered up the broken shards and brought them indoors to let them thaw in mugs and make hot tea. Very efficient of them. What I mean is to say is, it's dang cold out there.