Today was the first really cold day of the season in Hanover. It's 6 degrees Farenheit outside, even at midday. I confess I carpooled with the rest of the Voxfamily for a short ride to work this morning. And the recent bout of freezing rain made the 45 minutes with the snowblower this week more challenging than usual. But I wouldn't want Hanover without the cold winters.
As much as the cold is uncomfortable, I've got a higher threshold for it than most people I've met. The cold keeps the place uncrowded. And it turns out that I've got a much lower threshold for crowds and congestion than most people I've met. So the rest of the world and I sort ourselves into communities where we each get relatively more of what we like and relatively less of what we don't like. And at important times, the fact that we were not in competition made us both better off. Consider, for example, what the prices we paid for our respective first homes might have been if we were all searching in the same market.
To tell the truth, I might even like it even ... colder.