It is here.  I have it.  Like a new tattoo, it is an itch I can’t scratch.  In my car on the way to the office I had to turn down the heat and put on sunglasses because this strange radiation emitting light source in the sky was blinding and overheating me.  Glorious.

Those who hail from northern climes know the phenomenon of which I speak.  You have it too.  I can see it in the too giddy expression on your faces when leaving office buildings.  There’s a spring to your steps as you traipse along the sunshine flooded pavement of Michigan Avenue.  I know what you are thinking because it is also in my mind…spring!

Those whose winter temperatures dip to the shocking low of 50 degrees (San Diego, I’m lookin’ at you) don’t quite understand that collective and panicked thought that floats like a low pressure system across the north country in the heart of the long dark: “Winter has to end some time. Right? Doesn’t it?!”  Much like the recognition of our own mortality, a northern winter drives those who experience it slowly insane.  It makes things like sandals in 45 degree weather, not only reasonable, but downright pleasant.  Is there something somehow inappropriate to shorts at this time of year?  It’s in the UPPER forties, people.  Might as well be 70 degrees when one has spent the last four months as a semi-animate icicle.

So to all of you enjoying this first sunshiney, warmish day of spring I say the tide has turned!  Spring cometh!  In the words of Whitman, “Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.”

Oh yeah, and go Cubs!  Like Spring itself, hopes springs eternal!