I was not expecting to see 16° on the old weather widget when I stumbled into the kitchen this morning.

Six-fuggin’-teen? On April 5? Was Dante right? Hell is cold? Can we crank up the heat a smidgen, please, Beelzebub, you old devil? I know, I know, I’ve been bad, but shit, if I wanted to freeze my huevos off before coffee I’d still be doing my sinning in that hillside hacienda outside Weirdcliffe, where I had a stove, ax, and woodpile.

Still, could be worse. I spoke with Consigliere Pelkey yesterday and he said that I-80 was closed between Laramie and Cheyenne due to vile weather, th’owin’ a hitch inta his gitalong as regards a doctor’s appointment in the capital city.

My old Bicycle Retailer comrade Steve Frothingham checked in from the People’s Republic of Boul-Daire to report that it was “puking snow” in his neck of the Woke Woods.

We passed a few pleasant moments discussing jurisprudence and journalism in Manhattan and agreed that if a courtroom artist were required we wanted Ralph Steadman, since S. Clay Wilson is unavailable, being dead.

Today, meanwhile, rather than skulk around indoors and risk absorbing some news, I decided to motor around and about The Duck! City, scratch a few chores off the to-do list, wait for the desert to assert itself.

By midafternoon, the temperature finally inched into the low 40s, and I finally ventured out for a leisurely 5K on the trails, though asthma and allergies (juniper, poplar, elm, etc.) had me sounding like a secondhand accordion in the mitts of an unruly middle-schooler with a tin ear.

Tonight the wizards are calling for another hard freeze. I didn’t hear them calling yesterday, but I’ve heard them this time and unplugged the two hoses I use to water the trees.

“These temperatures are cold enough to kill most early season vegetation,” says the National Weather Service.

Good. Maybe they’ll croak the junipers, poplars, and elms. A man needs some breathing room.