The night guard awaited its call to duty as we dried the stuff for three chilly weeks, determined to put it to the test on New Year's Eve.
So, naturally, I think it fair to share some of my discoveries over the past months, and those I think worth exploring during the chilly weeks of winter, when the color of the world is really in the imagination, or in a warm-walled escape to another bliss.
On a recent chilly week night, a few dozen nine- and ten-year-olds were hollering in unison around a boisterous bearded man I'd seen several times on the Don Bosco sideline shouting advice, like a freelance coach, at some of the team's African-American players.
ITV News Business Editor Laura Kuenssberg took to the slopes nearer to home to go back over the news of a chilly week in Westminster, as she rounded up the political highlights.
There is one interesting similarity between these Mets and those 1964 Phillies, who fell out of first in the chilly final week in St . Louis with their star right fielder, Johnny Callison, playing while shivering from a fever.
"Double Concerto for Two Violins" hasn't been performed yet, but "The American Seasons" was introduced memorably, on a chilly night four weeks ago in Troy, by Mr. O'Connor and the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra.
Scientists say no individual storm, heat wave or other weather event can be directly pinned on climate change, and despite an overall warning trend, there will always be cold snaps that make an area unusually chilly for days, weeks or even a month.
Scores of weeds are thriving in Eastern gardens this year, thanks to the unusually warm winter and a roller coaster spring that has been hot one week, chilly the next, too dry then gloriously rainy.
I visited Florida one time and experienced chilly rain all week.
It could have been the sunshine, a welcome change from weeks of chilly showers, that had pepped them up.
The first day of New York Fashion Week was chilly and sunny, the kind of contradictory weather that calls for complex outfits and unnecessary accessories: sunglasses for standing in the shade, or jackets for draping over shoulders.
