Why I love Cleveland in the wintertime

The last snow we got was one of the rare ones where the flakes come down individually and look like something other than a syrupless Slurpee on the lawn. This morning the snow had stopped and the sun had come out, but the last of the snow was still drifting down from the tree branches when the wind blew. It was like living in a snowglobe - the air and ground just sparkled.

On the living room window sill:

Where else can you play in the snow in your pajamas?

The last time I remember seeing this type of snow was in 1996, when Jason and I were living in Pittsburgh for six weeks to train for our first "real" jobs. The day we decided to go to the outdoor ice skating rink after work was the day it decided to dump 3 or 4 inches of individual flakes on us, mostly while we were skating. You could you catch snowflakes on your gloves and examine them closely before they melted, plus it was snowing so fast that it was collecting on the ice. It was deep enough in places that you couldn't see the blades on the skates - just people gliding on top of the snow using only the soles of their ugly boots.

I seem to remember that I had a cold and could barely breathe, at least one of us fell down and got soaked with melted snow, the drive back to our apartment was hellacious, and we were probably freezing our butts off the entire time, but it was still a magical night, one that I'll remember forever as one of the best.