Some people say there’s no palpable difference between a Chicago winter, an Iowa winter, and a Minneapolis winter; others say there’s a huge one. I guess I’ll find out. So far, one difference is that I can’t remember the last time in Iowa or Chicago that it snowed this early in the year and actually stuck. When it began snowing last night, I dismissed it as that first-of-the-year, wet and insubstantial snow that doesn’t accumulate. But when I woke up this morning and the snow was still there, I must say I was impressed.

Ordinarily I’d say something flippant about how blogging about the weather is lame, but this might be an exception. After all, it’s not just any weather; it’s snow. And yes, we take it for granted, but maybe we shouldn’t. After all, a lot of people, our government included, took hurricanes for granted until Labor Day weekend.

Last night I went to hear Andrew DJ, and then gave Karen a ride home. She grew up in LA, and last night was her first snow. She certainly wasn’t taking it for granted. And even while she was freaking out about the lunar, desolate quality that downtown Minneapolis suddenly had, and I was struggling to unlock my car doors and hoping they weren’t frozen shut, we both conceded, once we got in the car and I turned it around and piloted us towards the Hennepin Ave Bridge, that there was a solid beauty to our surroundings just then. It’s not a beautiful day the way LA has beautiful days, she said. It’s a kind of fucked-up beauty. I had to agree.

There’s a wind rattling the loose fixtures on the house’s exterior. My bedroom’s former status as a porch has never been more apparent. I dug out my space heater, and I’m going to go get plastic sheeting for the windows. In a day’s time, it went from unseasonably warm hoodie weather to this. I must applaud the first snowfall of the year for not fucking around.