It appears that another gray and somber day, like that of yesterday, is about to pop into existence. I awake two or three hours before dawn, and stumble into the living room to build a quick fire and heat the house. That "building a fire" business, however, is an inside joke, as we got rid of our old sheet metal fire place two winters ago, and put in a natural gas fireplace instead, which is recessed into the wall. Building a fire actually consists of pushing two buttons simultaneously on the remote control. Those buttons take care of all the stacking, hauling, ash cleaning, and poker stirring activities that I used to go through to try to add some extra warmth to this place in the middle of a cold winter. Even in California we have some chilly days.

The old fireplace did a horrible job of heating anything. It actually made the house a tad colder, by sucking a cold draft across the floor of the living room. The cold air would then rush up the flue and suck up all the existing heat in the house along with it. So rather than emanate a charming warmth, it would stir up a whirlwind of miserable cold. I think many home owners that have retained these older style fireplaces must have boarded them up by now. Either that or the occupants have since turned blue and become frozen in place.

This past week most of the country has experienced this phenomenon that the weathermen now call an "arctic vortex", a term I had never heard before, where somehow all the massive amounts of cold air up near the North Pole decides to lower the boom on the lower forty-eight. It is when I see images on TV of people neck deep in fluffy snow that I turn to my own fireplace and become expressive of my gratitude for not having to deal with the cold country. It is too bad that the technology wizards have not yet invented remote control buttons that operate snow blowers and shovels. I would think they would be a welcome addition in most homes. Just wake up, look out the window to see if it is snowing, and if it is, just press the two buttons, and make the snow go away.

It is easy to become so smug when living in California and watching others around the country struggle with the weather. Those who have arrived only lately in California and have to pay a lot of money for a modest house call this high-priced living a "weather tax". Those who have firmly decided they can no longer live in the cold have bunched up here together in the affluent cities where there are good-paying jobs, which one must have to be able to pay for a place to live that has a tiny lot and a couple of lemon or palm trees in the backyard.

In "Grapes of Wrath" Steinbeck wrote about the dream of the dust bowl-era migrant workers coming here from Oklahoma to find a little house in the California sun. That is apparently still the dream of many, but the price of the dream has become too dear for most. So now Oregon is the most popular state in the union for people to move to, according to a recent survey. You have got to love rain and fog to live close to the coast in Oregon. If you find that oppressive, which many do, you can then move inland, and experience the ice, snow, and chilling wind, for many months out of the year. But if one doesn't mind sitting indoors through the colder months, these remote-operated fireplaces are quite the thing to enjoy.

In just a few weeks we will all be talking about spring. Winter cannot go on forever. After the first big thaw I'm sure people will be dragging out their cameras and taking pictures of tiny birds sitting on the limbs of budding trees, or daffodil bulbs raising their noggins out of wet, soft dirt. Actually, I'm ready for spring now, and I haven't even seen snow this year. I usually make at least one trip to the Sierra Nevadas in the winter time, and get a pretty good close-up view of the stuff, but with California in a spell of drought, there is little in those big mountains that looks at all like winter.