Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.

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-- Jeff Valdez

It's been chilly the past few days. I went out Sunday and tried to jog around the park, but it was cloudy and uncomfortable, so I trotted back inside and watched old Super Bowl commercials on You Tube. (Hank, the Budweiser Clydesdale, was my favorite).

Then I started looking at newspaper Web sites across the country and saw those blizzard photos up and down the East Coast.

"This," I said to myself, "is why I live here."

Snow is pretty to look at but a mess to deal with.

The New York Times had a chilling story about an Amtrak train to Chicago that got stuck in snow somewhere in western Pennsylvania.

The train's restrooms got messy. Amtrak had to make a deal with a local Kentucky Fried Chicken to feed passengers.

Boredom was rampant. People on board were actually reading books.

The Times also showed photos -- lots and lots of photos -- of Washington and Philadelphia and New York covered in white stuff.

Properly chastised, I went back out and finished my run.

It wasn't that cold.

SUPER BALL: Family tradition. We watch the Super Bowl with a real Super Bowl football from 1991's Super Bowl XXV in Tampa. (The Giants won 20-19 when the Bills missed an easy, last-second field goal.)

I bought it years ago during a journalism association "silent auction" in Atlanta. It had been donated by a Tampa TV station, which broadcast the event.

The woman pricing the auction items was not a football fan.

"What do you think this is worth?" she asked me while putting the items in a box to be taken downstairs.

"Not much," I told her with a straight face. "I'll give you 10 bucks for it right now, and you won't have to worry about it."

Which she did.

WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN: You know, 40 years ago, I liked The Who.

Better than the Beatles or Rolling Stones. Almost as much as the Allman Brothers.

But when I watched them Sunday night perform during the Super Bowl halftime show, I sort of felt sorry for them. They're old. Bald. A bit chubby. Just like the rest of my generation.

I'm not sure we like to be reminded.

BURN, BABY, BURN: What do The Augusta Chronicle , Tubman School and St. Paul's Church have in common? All of them have burned down at least once. Fire and urban renewal is the topic of my Our Town history blog on augustachronicle.com.

TODAY'S JOKE: NASA was interviewing professionals to be sent to Mars. Only one could go, and he couldn't return to Earth.

The first applicant, an engineer, was asked how much he wanted to be paid for going.

"A million dollars," he answered, "because I want to donate it to MIT."

The next applicant, a doctor, was asked the same question. He asked for $2 million. "I want to give a million to my family," he explained, "and leave the other million for the advancement of medical research."

The last applicant was a lawyer. When asked how much money he wanted, he whispered in the interviewer's ear, "Three million dollars."

"Why so much more than the others?" the interviewer asked.

The lawyer replied, "If you give me $3 million, I'll give you $1 million, I'll keep $1 million, and we'll send the engineer."