I stopped writing how blisteringly cold it's been each morning because it became very repetitive. So until you hear otherwise, it's fucking freezing here. Like, five-to-ten below zero in the morning, rising to possibly the double digits by mid-afternoon. And by mid-afternoon I mean one-thirty, as the sun still goes down freaking early. And double digits don't happen everyday, either.

Case in point the other day I had to run to Home Depot for work (don't ask). When I got out of the car in South Portland, I was like, "Man, it's warm out! Where's my fleece vest, I'm all over that instead of my coat!"

After buying the five pounds of plaster-of-paris (seriously, don't ask) I tripped back to work. On the drive I passed a bank or some-such with a thermometer sign out front. It read "6". As in six degrees. Fahrenheit.

Anyway, one of the benefits (or so I thought) of living in a snowy climate again was the general ease of keeping beer cold. Coors Light advertises as "The coldest tasting beer in the world"? Well, shoot, any beer kept outside in Maine in the winter is going to be pretty damned cold.

It's a good thing we have such a built-in refridgeration system, too. My brother and my New Years Eve party this year was pretty huge, and for some reason everyone bought Sam Adams Light. Not that there's anything wrong with that, not at all, it's a tasty beer ... with only 124 calories. The fridge was full fairly quickly, so people just left the beer on the enclosed-but-not-heated porch.

The next morning in cleaning I found we still had four cases of Sam Adams Light left over.

Since we enjoy Sam more than some other beers, I switched the fridge out, putting the Miller Lite and assortment of other Sams out on the porch. See, I got one of those sampler packs a few months back, with such beers as Sam Adams Scotch Ale, Cream Stout, Boston Ale, etc. They were pretty rank tasting really, at least nowhere near normal Sam quality. So I put those on the porch, along with a few Sam Summer Ales we still had.