No kidding...I am currently waiting (impatiently) for our requisite 3 hours of spring weather, followed by full blown summer in all its sweltering glory.
I don't think it's actually "Winter" as such that kills you in Chicago. That's only about 6 weeks or so--mid-December through January. The killer is the four months of gray, grim, overcast, damp, chilly, drizzly, great-piles of slush, huge-pools-of-icy-water-in-the-crosswalks, everything's-still-dead crappiness that comes after that. The occasional nice day during that period will invariably fall on a Wednesday and be immediately followed by a cold front to ruin the weekend.