Definitely Brrr.
I've had to keep the cats in at night and they are not happy.

They would be unhappy if you let them out, too. Can't please cats.

They'd be catsicles if I let them out, which is why I don't do it despite their complaints.

"They'd be catsicles if I let them out…" Doggie treats!

You'd wind up with dogsicles, too, if they went out after the catsicles. After a while I could see a whole frozen zooful. :)

It's about the same here. I'm feeling it despite flannel-lined chinos.

And there you get the added bonus of cutting, moisture-laden wind off the lake. B-u-r-r-r-r-rrr. Here at least it tends to get calm when it's below zero. (On the other hand, down in the southwest corner of Minnesota there's absolutely nothing to stop the wind between there and the Rockies. Ufta!)

Yeep! Hugs.

Awwww, thanks. Nothing better than warm hugs on a cold winter's night I always say.

Forecast high today of 81°F in my neck of the woods.

Oh, go away lotus-boy. We're talking weather here. Real lumberjack stuff—like as to have to button up our vests.

I see you're a musician,
And not just a common loon;
For none but a musician
Stirs his coffee with ... a spoon?

No, that's not right. Sigh, back to the drooling board.

I see you are a blogger
And not just a common hack
For nobody but a blogger
Stirs his coffee with a FAQ

Um. I see what you mean…

It's -12 right now, and my outside thermometer agrees.

Crazy.

B

Yeah. Crazy. Now with snow!

And thus my decision to jog on the track this morning rather than go swimming...

Still, it doesn't feel all that cols to me, outside of the fact that my glasses fog up. I think it's all this exercise.

Yuppers. When you have to cut a hole in the ice to go swimming, you know it's time to jog instead…

Yeah, I don't miss that early-morning drive home at all. Now my decision comes down to deciding between the cold and cleaning puppy puddles off the floor. Surprisingly, the cold wins.

"…deciding between the cold and cleaning puppy puddles off the floor." Can't you just take the box Caryl Meryl points to?

Actually, I've heard it as "freezing the balls off a brass monkey", with the monkey in question being the old-style storage rack for canon balls.... This may be ... it's definitely not "urban" legend, but.... I'm forgetting the generic. Anyway, I was told that the differential between how much the cannon balls shrunk in the cold plus the shrinkage of the brass racks caused the balls to fall through the racks, if it was cold enough. Apocryphal! That's the word.

Actually, so have I. It's just that I have this great fondness for puns, spoonerisms … word-play of all sorts.

According to the Wikipedia article on Brass monkey (colloquial expression), the term you're looking for here is "folk etymology," although "apocryphal" will certainly serve. That is to say, the canon-ball theory "is discredited by Snopes [the Urban Legends Reference Pages], Michael Quinion, and others…" for what look to me like some pretty solid reasons. The start of the Wiki entry states rather dryly: "What a brass monkey is in this phrase is the subject of much discussion."

I must thank you, by the way. Absent your comment I wouldn't have thought to look up "brass monkey" in Wikipedia, and I found the article (and a number of its hyperlink tangents) to be fascinating.

I'm usually very careful not to discuss the weather down here, except when brought up by other people, and to always be complimentary. Today I said that it was going to be "warm" this weekend, because it will be going up above freezing.

It was 12 degrees here today, which seemed warm compared to MI and MN, and above freezing in February seems downright friendly.

I was admonished that the 30's (or 0 - 4 degrees civilized) is never "warm" down here.

Yeah. When we were in Brisbane in June a few years back, everybody kept apologizing to us for how cold it was. Cold? Heh. Felt like perfect weather to us—slightly brisk in the mornings and evenings, warm during the day. What's not to like? ('Twas then I decided that my life-ambition is to Winter in Minneapolis and Brisbane, 'cause I mislike summer here and I seriously doubt I would like it there.)