I hate this time of year. In most places, it's still considered late fall, but here in the prairie wasteland of Edmonton the cold wind has already brought with it enough snow to make me shovel the walks three times in as many days.

But snow isn't the issue. It's the wetness in the air, making moderately cold temperatures like seven below feel a lot worse. It's the kind of cold that can force a way through three layers of clothing like an armor-piercing round and make even mitten-covered fingers numb within minutes. It's the kind of cold you can only shake from your bones with a hot shower. And that's not even the worst part.

The worst part is that all the color has been drained out of the world. Everything looks like a picture taken with grainy, washed-out film. The autumn leaves that gleamed like gold and bronze in the trees are gone, covered by a sickly-white shroud of snow that has none of the picturesque brilliance it will have in January, when the bright cold sun catches a thousand points on its clean crystalline surface. The sky is a blank gray slate, the streets a slushy brown mess. Cars hiss and splash in a slippery procession along roads divided more by general consensus than the painted lines hidden somewhere beneath the slush. The people in them are all impatient to get indoors, to eat warm dinners and drink hot coffee and watch the weatherman chirp about cold fronts and regions of low pressure and five-day forecasts. They dread the coming cold but they can't wait for it, because even twenty-seven below is preferable to this shitforsaken time of year.