The Eyes Have It

It's cold out here. Probably the coldest it's been since we've lived in Colorado. Besides the normal indicators that it's stinkin' cold outside...like the weather service, my indoor/outdoor weather indicator (pictured here), and the news...there are a few other indicators of how severely cold it is. For instance, when I left work yesterday and was walking to the light rail station, it was snowing. I looked up at one point and a giant snowflake hit me directly in the eye. Rather than melt, it froze to my eyeball surface and completely covered my pupil, which made it hard to see. It took several minutes and lots of blinking to finally remove the frozen snowflake from my eyeball. It was a weird sensation. This morning when I was getting ready for work, I checked my indoor/outdoor temperature gauge and it said that it was -37 outside. I took a picture of it, so that everyone would believe me. I had trouble believing it myself. Until I went outside, that is. I was mostly toasty warm in my jacket, gloves, headphone earmuffs, and other cold weather gear. In fact, today was the first time since I've lived in Colorado that I actually wore thermals under my dress pants. But, it helped keep my legs much, much warmer. The areas that didn't fare well were my face and eyes. In fact, at one point as I was walking in to work this morning my eyes were watering due to the wind-chill and I blinked my eyes....and couldn't reopen them because they had frozen shut. I had to rub them with my scarf to get them to reopen. That was just plain wrong. But, I eventually made it to my office and went to the bathroom where there is a heated hand blower and I blew my face until it was thawed out. It's a comfortable 71 degrees in my office, but outside it's still -8 degrees. It might reach 1 degree today as a high according to the news. Might. Crazy cold!