Channeling the Cold

For the record, it was -22 degrees at our house this morning. Yesterday the high was -2. My favorite weather site, the WGN Weather Blog, has had all kinds of fun weather stats lately:

• Yesterday was the first day in 13 years that the high did not break zero in Chicago.
• It was colder in Chicago yesterday than it was at the North Pole (8 degrees).
• As of January 12th, we've already received a full winter's worth of snow (and we're only halfway through the meteorological winter).

We also learned that schools around here do indeed close due to the cold. Most schools were closed yesterday and today thanks to extreme wind chills of -40.

On an unrelated note, I've discovered a whole batch of cable channels that I didn't know we got. My favorites so far are Toon Disney and History International. Toon Disney has all kinds of cool animated shows like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, and The Jackie Chan Adventures. It's being re-branded next month as Disney XD, which will basically be "Disney for boys," while the Disney Channel will remain "Disney for girls". Hopefully they'll keep all the animated comic book fun.

History International has had some interesting shows, too, ranging from the German Autobahn, to what our society learned from the Victorians and the Tudors, to a documentary called "How William Shatner Changed the World" hosted, of course, by William Shatner.