I was so cold today that the part of my coat that I was breathing on got a thick layer of frost from my breath. Not like the thin, wet foggy stuff middle-school kids breathe on the school bus windows and then write stuff in, but real frost, the kind made of ice. It was pretty funny, actually, because my coat is all black, but the part I was breathing on was bright white. I would have taken a picture, but when I got inside, it was completely melted back to black before I even made it upstairs.
I feel a little silly wearing the big heavy coat Mom got me for Christmas, but it's enormously comfortable, and it keeps me really toasty warm. So warm that I felt like it couldn't be worse than -10. On the way to class, I noticed nobody else was wearing a big heavy parka with the hood up, which made me start to feel self-conscious... except that everyone else was shivering and trying to get inside quickly. I got to class about ten minutes early and giggled to myself every time someone walked in and started rubbing their hands together, or slapping feeling back into their arms and saying, "Oooooh it's so freaking cold today!" Ha ha. I may look like I'm dressing too drastically for this weather, but at least I'm warm.
Everyone was sniffling all through class because coming in from really cold weather makes your nose run. I never figured out why. Anyway, I was glad, because I felt slightly less out of place. I've got a nasty cold, so I've been coughing and sneezing and snuffling and dribbling all over the place for the last day or so, and it feels like it's going to keep getting worse before it starts getting better. (Yeah, yeah, Mom, I know: take echinacea and drink orange juice, right?) I felt kind of bad for poor Quinby, who had to sit next to me. Every time he said something, I had to get him to repeat it two or three times because my ears feel stuffed up too, and he has a quiet voice to begin with.
Yesterday, I woke up with a terribly sore throat and wanted orange juice. But of course, I don't happen to have any. "No problem," I thought. "There are vending machines on campus that have it." So I left for class early and headed to my first class and stopped in the hall to get an orange juice. But that Coke machine had vitamin water and NO orange juice! Horrors! So I walked across the compound to the Brooks Building and went down to the basement. Fruit punch, but no orange juice. Dangit! I ended up having to search in four different buildings before I finally found my orange juice.
It tastes sooo much better when you have to work for it.
3 comments:
Haha, Ashley and I were walking outside the other day when it was -18. We were talking about how nice a ski mask would be because our faces were so freakin' cold. But then everyone would think we were stupid. Ashley came up with a great point, "Can't we all just agree to be ugly!? Then we wouldn't have to freeze...." Not that your coat makes you look ugly.....
:p
At some point, you get so old that you don't care what you look like anymore, and then you can dress comfortably. Why do you think I wear these ugly flannel shirts and my old aqua-colored parka, with my funny brown stocking cap and red-and-green ski-gloves? To be comfortable, of course. I would've thought people in Alaska would have come to that same conclusion long ago.
Regarding the orange juice: it does taste better when you work for it. I can't believe how much better orange juice tastes when I squeeze it out of five or six oranges in the juicer, as opposed to pouring it out of a box or bottle. It's like it's not even the same stuff, the taste is so different. But I'll bet real oranges are awfully expensive in Fairbanks.
Glad you're warm
Post a Comment