7 degrees

7 degrees. Really? This Sunday morning in northern NJ it was 7 degrees. May I rant on this a little while? How do you go outside for some fresh air and exercise when it's 7 degrees when I'm used to the average temperature in January being at least 34 degrees during the day? It starts to get depressing after a while.

But the good news is, today is 1/16/22 and we are officially past the coldest days in January. There is great hope in this if you like to go jogging outside in the morning like I do.

The other wonderful thing is the days are getting longer again since Dec 21st, the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, which means the sunrise will be earlier and the sunset will be later by an average of 1-3 minutes each day.

Soon I won't have to jog with my iPhone flashlight in the morning. We will be getting more and more daylight going forward until we hit the longest day of the year, the summer solstice, on June 21st.

One way to look at this momentary troubling idea of lack of sunlight is that it gives us not only a break from the same routine but a challenge to undergo and something to look forward to at the same time.

Last night I thought I could sneak out for a 3-mile jog.  Normally I would go through the wooded trails but since they were still snow-covered, I wound up running through my neighborhood streets instead. On the last leg of my trek, I had to cover my nose with my glove because I felt frostbite was coming on.

How grateful I will be when those warmer temperatures finally arrive. Until I decide to invest in reflective tape, a headband flashlight, and a 3 holed face mask, I'm staying inside and powerwalking in my living room on my laptop with Leslie Sansone.