Moving to Vermont has been all kinds of fantastic because it's involved learning about so many new things: VT state regulations about car and license changes (6 months), laws to protect renters (better and worse than CA), pricing and quality of heating methods (gas is better than oil), and public intoxication (bars and restaurants allow only one alcoholic drink on the table per person, which means that servers will stand a minimum of 3 feet away until you cough up an empty). But the one thing that took me by surprise was the amount of linguistics learning.

Everyone and their dog has at this point, warned Yoshi and I about Vermont winters. I am here to report that yes, they are cold. Very cold. They are also gray and somewhat dark, and it does indeed snow. Without snow tires, you will get stuck, possibly at a busy intersection just outside a Walmart. But we've also had to learn the vernacular of winter, as there's several key vocabulary items necessary to engage in conversation here about the weather.

• squall: a light-to-moderate snowfall that comes up quickly and is of short duration.
• flurry: fallen snow that gets picked up off the ground by wind and gently bandied about in a localized manner.
• Snow Belt: a geographical area of Vermont below Burlington that encompasses the Stowe, Barre (pronounced "Barry") and Montpelier ("Montpill-yur") areas, which receives exponentially more snow than the rest of the state. Unsurprisingly, this is where the majority of the ski resorts are located.
• lake effect: a meteorological phenomenon where the area closest to a bigass lake stays marginally warmer than the rest of the state. The Burlington area apparently, benefits from the lake effect, as Lake Champlain, at 116 miles long, qualifies as "bigass".
• foreigner: a person not from Vermont, but identifiable soley by the fact that they stand at their office window and squawk with delight at any new snowfall, and issue frequent weather updates to their officemates.

(I'm apparently the subject of an office-wide pool as to when I'll stop being delighted and actually complain about winter. Sign up now! Many fine dates still available!)

These terms may be common knowledge for many readers out there, and their use probably extends across New England. But for me, it's all very different from life in a state where I routinely wore shorts and Flojos all year long.

All told, I think the most surprising thing for me about the winter here has been my reluctance to get out in it. I haven't been running in two months, and for someone who's been running 3-4 times a week since age 17, that's huge. I mean, I ran in Hayward, for fuck's sake, when we lived down the street from the halfway house. That's dedication. I keep adding bits of clothing to my running ensemble in the hopes that I'll find some magic combination that will allow me to jet about in 10-degree (f) weather, but I keep getting 500 yards from the door and then sprinting back home with my hands over my nose. It's not really enough of a workout.

Then again, there's really no words that can describe how it feels to get brain freeze simply by breathing.