Carolyn I am slow to respond to this post so you may never see this comment.

Why is it that weather brings out so much conversation?  Many, many long distance calls between my mother (your grandmother) and my grandmother (your great grandmother) began with a discussion of the weather in Davis, California, and Boise, Idaho. So here is my weather contribution to the weather conversation tradition. . .

In late January we had an ice storm in Louisville, Kentucky, well throughout Kentucky, which glazed the trees and bushes and the wires with nearly three quarters of an inch of ice.  The night the storm began we listened through the night as huge branches and trees came crashing to the ground.  At 3:30 a.m. the power went out (you could tell because the night light no longer glowed).  For the next 6 days we hunkered down in our living room with the French doors closed and the stairs draped in fabric to keep the warmth of our wood burning stove contained in the front room.  It was cozy until a trip to the kitchen to cook reminded you that this was no winter vacation in a ski lodge.  Then there was the shower in the 30 something degree bathroom.  It made me realize just how daunting it must have been for the Bulgarians when the Russians cut off their gas in January.  When you mentioned how undisturbed your Bulgarian friends seemed to be due to enduring many a winter with heat as an uncertain resource, I began to feel the reality of being an over indulged American with an entitlement complex when it comes to central heat and electricity. We found that cold cuts into one's ability to function normally.  Heat is a magical invisible wonder that we don't typically appreciate or even notice much.