Okay, you know how when you love a girl you have to love all kinds of less-than-wonderful things about her? Like remember how Emily had that incredibly annoying habit of saying "Done and Done!" when she finished a task like washing the dishes, even though clearly one done would have sufficed? And do you remember how that second done felt like she was willfully twisting a knife into your kidneys but you just smiled and loved her, because that's what good boyfriends do? Well, yeah, it's like that. It's winter in Chicago. It's cold. Like any guy from Alabama, you hate cold. But you love Chicago.

But then again, there is a case to be made that you really didn't benefit, in any kind of long-term sense, from putting up with the Done and Done business, since we all know that Emily ended up leaving you and taking that not inexpensive engagement ring with her, which engagement ring she perhaps wore during her more recent engagement to the boy for whom she left you, the one-and-the-same boy she ended up marrying, so one could certainly argue that you ought to have just gone ahead and said, "That second done makes me crazy as a blonde in a Hitchcock movie."

So the question, then -- oh good God that wind hurts; it's like liquid nitrogen, a lip-chapping reminder of your coming death that cuts through all your careful layering and then through your skin and chills the very depths of your human soul -- the question becomes whether you're going to let Chicago be Emily or whether you've got the guts to take the upper hand with this lovely but irredeemably cold town. Yes, of course. You've got to take control. It's time to stop compromising your every ethical principle in hopes that you won't be abandoned by cities and girls and friends and jobs and the rest of it.

You will draw a line in the snow, John Green. You just need to look Chicago in the eye and say, "Listen up. I've made a lot of sacrifices for you, and if you love me back, you're going to need to take this winter business down a notch. I'm not asking you to stop being your frigid self, Chicago: Just give me five extra Fahrenheit degrees every day, baby."

Okay, okay, so you said it, and it's not considerably warmer. Actually, huh, would you look at that: it's now snowing. The unholy trinity of Chicago in December: the wind; the wetness; and the bitter, boreal not-numbing-enough temperature. And so maybe this is your fate: powerless before both women and weather, you can either compromise or leave. And everyone knows you aren't the leavin' kind, and you know what?

Wait. Wait. You're almost there. That wasn't so bad. You're within spitting distance of the office--well, you've lived in Chicago long enough to know better than to go around spitting into a wind like this one--but whatever, you made it to work. Mission accomplished. Done. And done.