Living in a northerly climate can be a real hassle, especially when you need to get up extra early when it's minus 15 f out to snowblow and scrape your windshield. However, there is nothing else like gliding along a back country mountain trail on skiis after a snowstorm, with a brilliant blue sky, and the trees laden with white snow. I love the winter with all it's aggrivations, and couldn't live in an area with no winters. To enjoy winter, you need to be active in it.

All this cold (and snow) is certainly making everyone I know here in NYC quite depressed -- actually, more so than normal. If I could retire now (sheesh, I technically have another 33 more years to go ), I would split my time between the Amalfi Coast in Italy and somewhere in the Carib. like the B.V.Is or US V.Is.

These replies are great. For those of you who love winter and it seems that most that do have a passion for the winter sports, that's fantastic, and certainly you are lucky to be where you LOVE to be. Especially Montana!!

I guess I wonder most about those that are truly miserable in it and haven't found a way to get where they feel the climate matches their desires for home base. I know, I know, family, job, etc., but it seems that some that have commented seem relatively young. (20's?) I listened to my dad complain vigorously about the Detroit area winter weather for forty years. He finally decided to move to Venice, FL. He lived the last three years of his life loving not being in winter and saying how he wished he had done it much sooner.

BTW my ideal weather is most certainly not southwest FL. The summers are really oppressive and last for six months. I loved the SF Bay area, but this I'll take any day over returning to winters.

WAAAAAAaaaaaa!!!didn't anyone care for that poem?

LOVed the poem..lol...but this is the worst winter and I'm getting too old to put up with frigid weather.. I will not move to "G-d's waiting room" where the medical care leaves much to be desired.. I'll stay up north and plan my winter trip (just came back) from the Caribbean and plan one for the summer....but not hot and humid weather where the Floridians leave to visit relatives up north.. We New Englanders are a hardly lot...I think..

OK, so North Carolina had a killer ice storm Dec. 02 and has had 4 snowfalls this year. But the daffodil shoots are sitting happily in the snow, and we are supposed to have temps in the high 50s by the weekend. DH's next job might take us back north, and much as I love the midAtlantic and/or New England, I've gotten right spoilt by the North Carolina climate. Some of you will still be dealing with winter 4 weeks from now, but we'll have flowers out and trees in bud and maybe the occasional 65-70 degree sunny day. Who needs Flappida, where summer seethes on for months and months ("gods waiting room," ha!)? Even though I'm getting cabin fever just a bit this week, I know that it's not going to go on forever, so I'm happy to enjoy a few days of the pretty white stuff -- we don't get an entire Slush Season the way Boston and NYC do.

God's waiting room is so old and overused.

I feel sorry for all of you in Florida.

"where the medical care leaves much to be desired.. "

The hospitals are awful here in Florida. There are cemetaries right next to them so nobody has far to go. I see old people everywhere I go -- and dead people too. And in the summers, it's so awful, I just melt. And all the upscale jews are on the east coast, all the boring midwesterners are on the west coast, and there's nothing but African-Americans and hispanics in between.

So please stay where you are. Whatever you have to go through it's much worse down here. Please --- just STAY AWAY!!!! You will only be unhappy in this god forsaken cowtown of a state.

I HATE THE MIDWEST!!!! Too damn cold for me. Wish hubby would transfer back to TX . Don't care if it is hot..just hate hate hate the cold.

TandooriGirl you crack me up!

Both my sister and my brother in law are MDs in Miami so the post got under my skin.

Thank goodness the malpractice insurance is paid.

I guess we need to run this post in the summer for all those people who made the mistake of moving here. Then they can bitch and moan about how much better it was in the Northeast. I still can't figure out what it is they're shopping for that they can't find here. I'd die for a Whole Foods store in my neighborhood, too but I have no complaints with Publix. Has anyone ever gone to Fairway in NY? What a dump.

Not quite ready for all the time summer time, and maybe never. I'm not in snow
here in Sonoma County and it's sposed to rain (mostly) until 2/26, already had 7 inches since Sunday, (still prefered to snow) Where IS my scuba gear?
My highs will be 58 and lows 50.
Then me thinks the sun will arrive until June when the fog comes back every day at 4PM (then I can drive 15 mins. and be out of my valley)and one must don sweatshirts on the 4th of July-still 'tis pretty good! Not to hot, not to cold.
A couple of days in Aug-Sept. of 98 degrees
and the same in Dec-Feb of lows below 30
Viva la fireplace!
Just enough seasons for me, I get golden-red grapevines in the Fall, water falls in the winter and spring and
California poppies in the summer. I love to wear both sweaters and shorts. The annual moving of the closet winter to summer clothes is a chore that makes me smile!(and there's always a "crossover section" somewhere in the middle)
I may be home!
R5

go travel, my brother-in-law is a prof at the U of Miami(Endocrimolgy














Go travel, my brother-in-law is a prof at the U of Miami (endocrinology)

Well, today on the Jacksonville television news, they asked that anyone who saw a snow flurry, please take a digital photograph and send it in!
Funny, they never said that in NYC

I like snow-I like to watch it fall, but I got tired of it interfering with life, getting snowbound, slipping and sliding, lakes of slush on each corner, trying to walk Pup in snow-which he thought was grand, You can eat it!!

A warm place is not a bad place to be and just think of all those cold places we can travel to for a break from all this tiresome sunshine and blue skies~

It isn't just Florida that has hospitals with cemetaries next door, why is that? How depressing for the patient!

Jaye: i'm one of those who's truly miserable during the winter. and yes i'm stuck here for job, family, etc...
i have warned my truly wonderful husband that i will leave him without hesitation for florida (when we're retired; we're in our mid-30s) if he chooses not to retire there with me.
thank goodness, i've noticed more and more whining on his part when he has to shovel and the temperature gets REALLY cold...despite him being the true irish new yorker that he is!

I love the change of Seasons, though I hate the cold, It's nature really showing off her magnificent range.

My parents live in central Florida (north of Orlando but not The Villages) and their medical care is excellent. IMHO, moving to Florida has added years, maybe even decades, to their lives. They moved from Pennsylvania several years ago after looking around and realizing that all their friends had either gone to Florida or were dead. They have a perfectly nice house ($135k for a 2 bed/2 bath plus den and screened porch single level home) in a gated community. They take part in lots of activities (bowling, card games, etc.) as well as swimming and working out at the community's health club. For only $80 a month, both the community association fee and the "heavy lifting" of property maintenance (mowing the lawn, weeding, etc., etc.) are taken care of. They have lovely neigbhors and everyone is willing to help out when someone travels--keeping an eye on the house, looking after pets, etc., so they have a great sense of freedom.
The summer heat is bad, but it's still bearable in the morning and evenings. They just stay inside during the middle of the day or go somewhere like the mall or movie theatre.
Personally, I am quite happy they moved to Florida. They are enjoying a very comfortable retirement and their community is so pretty (but not expensive) with its flowers, small lakes and bird life, that it's always a pleasure to visit.

Don't listen to any of these preachers. Florida is not the place to move to. Stay in the northeast. That's where all the smart people are, we're all idiots down here. You will spend the rest of your life with people who are low class and ignorant. What's a little snow when you can feel superior that you've made the most important decision of your life, to stay where you are.

Please, listen to me. I know from whence I speak. Er, write. I think it's the water -- once you drink it you'll be like the rest of them. Er, us.

Heed my caution. Stay away from Florida. We don't even know how to vote here -- and look who's our governor if you don't believe me. See! What literate populous, other than California, would have elected a moron -- only Florida.

Every winter I question my sanity.I live in a pretty,picturesque suburb 1/2 from Manhattan.My property taxes are $13,000 a year on a very modest house.I continually question myself on just why I continue to live here.I hate the snow!We certainly get the heat and humidity here in the summer too,the only difference,in my older house,we have no a/c.I'm seriously thinking of making that big leap down south soon.

WOW! T-girl, you sure have drunk alot of that water!