Craig Koster

Changing Seasons…

Apparently Punxsutawny Phil has seen his shadow which means six more weeks of winter. Did anyone doubt this was going to happen? This has been one of the harshest winters that I can remember.

I’ve lived in Chicago my whole life so I’m pretty used to the cold weather but this year seems especially rough. The snow keeps coming and the temperature has been consistently below thirty degrees. I think that I use more gas warming my truck up outside every morning than I do actually driving to work.

During the wintertime, most usually long for spring and locals are united in the fact that if they can just tough it out for a few more weeks they’ll be in for glorious weather. This year, however, I’ve heard more and more people (my wife and I included) seriously pondering a move to a warmer location. Maybe we’re just getting soft in our old age, but we’ve had enough of the abuse that old man winter is dealing out.

Talk of Florida, North Carolina, Seattle, and California came up. My wife has also always wanted to visit Costa Rica and the other night they had on one of those “International House Buyers” shows that featured a nice house there for about two hundred thousand. Of course, the wheels start turning and thoughts of emigrating and living there start to take shape. Could I find a job there? Would the kids be able to learn Spanish? How would my wife handle the Starbucks withdrawal?

As with most other lofty ideas, though, this one will probably not come to fruition as the reality is that when you have four children, picking up and moving to start a new life somewhere else is not an easy thing to do. So for now, we’ll brave out the rest of the winter and be glad when its over. Costa Rica will still be there when we’re retired.

Monday, February 2nd, 2009