it's about 9 in the morning right now and it's -16 celsius outside. that's right. that is very cold. the top temperature today is supposed to be -6 celsius. it is very very cold. it's painfully cold. i have red blotches on my face from the cold, which i acquired walking home from work yesterday evening. i look diseased. must make an emergency trip to my local skincare place and see if they can help out. eugh.

i was feeling springing yesterday morning and went for a run. ran to smugglers mountain, walked up it, ran down. it was very cold. i wore my new snow/ice trainer attachments. they're great but no one ever tells you how much noise they make. CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH. honestly, it was driving me nuts. anyway, did i mention that it was bloody freezing? truly. half way up the mountain i noticed that i had ice flakes on my back and i'm thinking, 'where did that snow come from? what did i brush up against with snow on it? i don't remember brushing up against anything'. and then five minutes later i realised - ice crystals were forming on my clothing where the moisture from my body was coming through the fabric. that's right. i was freezing. it was that goddamn cold. i had frost all over my back and on the backs of my mittens. on the way down the mountain i passed a man with frost coating his moustache. eugh. i have never been so cold in my entire life. i am not going out again until i have some warmer running gear.

ah, tales from the land of coat check. the other night i had a girl whose friend had made off with her coat and left her stranded in the club with nothing to keep her warm outside but the clothes she was wearing - a knee length skirt, boots and a white singlet. she looked pretty wretched and we felt sorry for her having to make her way home through the snow in just a singlet so we offered her a leftover coat on the condition that she bring it back the next night. we gave her a men's forest green polar fleece, kind of ugly. she puts it on, looks at it and then says, do you have anything better?' oh, well, not really - we already flogged all the chanel and fendi coats. pff. so then she decided that it was so ugly that she'd rather not wear it at all and just go the way she was. in a singlet. in the snow. of course. heaven forbid that she should look like a big dag and that anyone in the world who happened to be out and about at 2:00am on a snowy night in aspen should see her wearing such an atrocity. hmmm.

sad but true, my friends.

it is so cold at the moment that it hurts to breathe. if you breath through your nose it kills your sinuses. if you breath through your mouth it destoys your throat. i have a ewwy cough and half a voice this morning because i couldn't stand the pain in my nasal cavity. ah, but the snow is so pretty. a-a-a-a-ah. cough. hack. urrk.

am grateful now to have scarf, hat, mittens and earmuffs. all extremely useful. those are the sort of items that i always thought were a bit frivolous. you know, nice looking accessories. it is so cold that these things actually make a difference. they are very important. i would not leave the house without them. not at all. shiver.

i got a $100 tip while coatchecking the other night. that was nice.