Winter survival guide

It's not the bane of my existence (that honor is reserved for raisins) or my nemesis (that would be mushrooms), but Winter and I are not friends. More like acquaintances who run in the same circles and are therefore forced to tolerate each other. So I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed this past weekend in all its blizzardy coldness. Maybe one day I will grow to love Winter. And maybe it will rain donuts. Until then, here are some of the ways I'm trying to make Winter more awesome...

*Pajama parties. It's the next best thing to hibernation. Stay inside, put on your hippo pajama pants (if you don't already have these, definitely buy some pajama pants with hippos on them), snuggle under the covers and watch movies (this weekend I watched Beginners, loved it and now I totally want a dog with subtitles). Bonus if you have appetizers for dinner.

*Get outside and run. Saturday morning I ran about 12 miles with the Relentless Forward Progress-ers. Somehow running made the snow collecting on my eyebrows and my frozen scarf seem funny instead of annoying. I imagine this is how people who are more coordinated than I am feel about skiing and snowboarding. Or maybe it's simply that doing something I love in the company of friends makes for a good time regardless of the weather.

*Try something new. I spend more time indoors during the winter and tend to get restless if I'm unoccupied for too long, so it's a good time to try out new hobbies. This weekend I started learning how to play Magic cards and watched an entire football game (ok, so I was also reading during the game, but I watched most of it). I've never really been into sports, but it was a really exciting playoff game and I fell in love with the 49ers because of their dancing. I would totally watch more football if the players did more pre-huddle and post-touchdown dances.

*Shovel. At first shoveling seems like such a pain, but when I get out there and do it, I find it strangely enjoyable. I make up little shoveling games for myself or count how many shovelfuls of snow are in my driveway. I get a bit of exercise and it's sort of meditative in a way.

*Keep calm and carry on. My mom and I went to see Casar Millan at the Auditorium Theater. I've never watched the Dog Whisperer, but my mom loves it and I got her tickets for her birthday. Cesar was so much funnier than I was expecting and it was more like stand-up than dog training. He kept talking about having a calm, confident energy, which sounds like good advice for life in general.

Lyric of the moment: "Oh, this is how it starts, lightning strikes the heart. It goes off like a gun, brighter than the sun. Oh we could be the stars, falling from the sky, shining how we want, brighter than the sun..."