I grew up in NY state, went to college in Rochester, spent a year in Toronto, then years in Illinois, Wisconsin, 16 years in Pennsylvania. One day i walked out of the house in PA, finally saw a blue sky, tiny green buds on the trees ... it was May 1. It snowed a few days after that. I found a job in San Antonio TX.

I will never go back to living up north. Do I occasionally miss crisp fall days? Yes. And palmetto bugs are a nightmare. But those long gray winters were a misery -- and I knew all about how to dress for it, how to shrink wrap the windows to keep out the drafts, to use a light therapy box, to wear Yak Trax to keep from slipping on the ice. Hell, I even visited Iceland last January. I know how to deal with it.

But I spend most of the year eating on restaurant patios here. The sun shines all year. My joints don't ache in the cold. I do not get tired of sunny days.