It was very cold last week, to the point where I actually bothered to keep my giant gloves on when fumbling for my keys. It's supposed to warm up this week, but I still hate January.

Oh how I hate it. December has so much excitement, and February has that big circle around my birthday — warmer weather too, some years — but January. January.

New Year's Day, with a mess everywhere and a suspicious new year staring you down with its full 3-65. Snow, the certainty of snow. And cold. January isn't the start of winter, but it's the month where you realize what exactly you've gotten yourself into, the month of the hangover.

I usually get a bit of cabin fever by the end of January, and of course that's mainly my fault for never getting into skiing or snowmobiling or ice-fishing or any of the other winter stuff I've tried. As I'm sure I've written at some point while talking about deer hunting, ultimately I'd just prefer to be warm.

My first floor has a-lot-a-lot of green so fingers crossed. I'm still mulling over what color to paint the basement, a green called Painted Turtle was the frontrunner last time I looked at the samples... but now that Ben and Nora are gone and I'm not expecting houseguests for a while again, the impetus to dive into another large project has faded.

I've been hunkering down. Continuing to hunker down. Last week I finished season 2 of a Doctor Who spinoff called Torchwood. Yesterday I watched a surprisingly good horror movie called Broken.

Mostly I've been playing a lot of Modern Warfare II.

It's another one of those games where you shoot strangers online. But I'm also gaining experience and leveling up, like in an RPG. And my guns are gaining experience and the individual attachments for the guns are also gaining experience and there are so so many unlockables.

That game is downright dangerous. On a few occasions I've played until my left hand developed an uncomfortable malady I've taken to calling Modern War Fingers.

Even if I get sick of that game (unlikely from where I'm sitting) I have so many to get to yet that I don't expect to be bored this winter. But I do wish it were over.