Eight degrees of. . . well, actually just eight degrees.

It was cold, very cold, stupidly cold. The weatherman said it this morning, "It's unnecessarily cold." It's like 
childhood spanking 'chilly' gone way too far and jacked up to felonious child abuse cold.

Cold this cold makes no sense, it doesn't accomplish anything than couldn't be achieved twenty degrees less cold than this. The murmur changes from an annoyed and uncomfortable 'brrrrr' to an angry and impassioned 'enough already!'

I'm really glad I have an indoor job, unlike my dear wife. 
I've lived in more northern climes. Northern tier north, freezing temps and snow from September through May north.
I didn't like it, one bit. It never got as cold there as it has been today here though. But there in northern Japan, nestled twixt the ocean and the mountains, the weather came in and stayed, rolling over and over on itself, for days, even weeks at a time. Unrelenting low overcast, biting, slicing wet winds pushing the cold into your face and up your backside at the same time. Snow on the ground for five or six months each year, never fully melting, turning uglier and uglier, slicker and sloppier. Warmth eventually became a mere abstract concept, a desire, a wistful want, yet another unfulfilled fantasy.
But it wasn't this cold, ever. Single digits, wind chill leaning toward the obscene at the slightest hint of a breeze. Insanely cold. 
It can get colder here, in fact it probably will before this new season finally runs its course.
Even an hour after going indoors my body was still occasionally smacked with an outburst of stored or repressed shivers. My fingers still burned, the joints still clumsy.
The little car protested this morning as well. I turned the key and it groaned a distinct pair of 'Unh-Unhhh's !' before the engine parts finally found purchase. It's body and frame were as rigid as mine, solidly stiff in the bitter cold. Minor bumps and dips jarred our bones alike. Joints creaked, movements were stiff and unwelcome.The car's interior never really got warm. The only warmth to be found was in direct proximity to the puny vents. The engine wanted to keep all the heat for itself, unwilling to share it with the driver. I'd probably behave the same way though.
Later in the day the temp soared to nineteen degrees. I could tell the difference. It wasn't warm, it just wasn't as murderously cold.
Outer space is colder, a lot colder.
If it were not for our atmosphere our planet would be nearly as cold as space. The sun would only feel warm when and where it shined, the heat the ground soaked up would soar immediately into space. Freezing, temperature-less space. Our atmosphere is like fur on a mountain breed dog, trapping the stored heat in a thick blanket, holding it against the surface. 
I think we should probably make the effort to be more appreciative of our atmosphere, we're the only orb in our solar system that has one good enough to keep us from being the desperately cold and lifeless, spinning rocks that the others seem to be. 
I wonder if they shiver, the other planets and moons? I think I would.
I heard someone say something about getting used to it. 
Balderdash. I spent three long winters in Japan, there was no getting used to it. You tolerated it, fought it, some even sucked it up and accepted it, but cold is cold. You cannot zen-think your way to a warm spot whilst your extremities turn blue, your mustache ices over and your vision narrows. Cold isn't about perception, its about physics. I can think myself happier or sadder, sometimes, I cannot not mentally warm up a declining core temperature. Our bodies respond selfishly to bitter cold exposure, shutting down everything to protect the mighty brain. Everything else from that brain pan's narcissistic perspective becomes extraneous and expendable. Like closing off the unused rooms in an old house, they're on their own.
Well it does save something for last, the sex parts. The brain has a pretty high opinion of our naughty bits. When the body's core starts to succumb to low temperatures, the mighty brain looks around and pulls in those parts, tries to draw them nearer to the warm core. Not your ears, fingers, lips, legs, elbows or hair. In desperate straits you'd be left with nothing but a beating heart, a throbbing brain and a couple of functional genitals. Your eyeballs may turn to ice, your toes and fingers may snap off like shattered icicles, but the brain will try desperately to save Winky, until that too becomes simply too much a burden. That's a funny, dare I say impractical, design. Logic would dictate saving the hands and fingers first because they can build a fire, adjust a thermostat, crawl out of the snowbank, all kinds of useful things to mitigate the situation. If my car slips off the road into an icy abyss the last thing in the world I'm thinking about (with my more modern and sophisticated frontal lobe) for the next few days or hours would be reproducing. Maybe that's just me though. I certainly know that given that same desperate situation, talking any female I've ever known into getting it on at that moment would be a laughably futile endeavor, so what's the point in such complex mechanisms to save those bits?
The lower brain's prime directive is quite different from polite, contemporary society's.
Fashion model, thick lipped movie star or muscly Atlas, none of that matters at all to the brain when times turn bitterly cold and brutal.
Physics has no heart. Cold treats us all the same. Good, bad, jaded or optimistic, philanthropic or greedy, you simply can't win the ultimate battle of extreme low temperatures. 
Cold is cold. 
Today, it was cold.