Winter is Coming

I wasn't really around, but I heard tell that it was a cool summer here in Missouri. No one minded, I'm sure! But fall seems to be coming hard and fast, and now I'm thinking that this year might be a cold one all around, with a long winter ahead. Last year I wore a tanktop to renfest. This year, renfest is next weekend. For Halloween last year, I wore a bodice and a very skimpy sort of undershirt thing underneath, and I spent all night in it until we walked two or three miles back to Laws in the wee hours of the morning. It was chilly, yes, but it was bearable, and that's the point. This is Missouri, so things can still change, but so far we're looking at a cold year.

In the mornings we can see our breath. The green leaves still on the trees look silly. When I walk outside, I see first sunlight and green, and the unmistakable smell of winter is startling. Yes, winter already. Now and then I catch a whiff of autumn too, but already I smell winter. And it's only October. Poor Zahra, her first winter and it's promising to be a hard one! I myself, being from the "Heart of Winter", (as I call Missouri to mess with foreigners from more summery lands), will be fine, of course.

Yesterday Allan, Yannick, Esther, Amy, and I went to Baja Grill. Yannick was only wearing a thin jacket and he was complaining bitterly about how cold it was. Not wanting to hear that, I finally took off my jacket and threw it at him. I figured that he must really be cold if he was desperate enough to wear a small girl's jacket. He zipped it up all the way.

Baja was yummy and afterward we went still further, towards the agricultural buildings, a part of campus I like to refer to as the ends of the earth. On the way back everyone complained about the cold except for Allan and I, although they were all in pants, shoes, and jackets, while Allan was wearing shorts and flip flops and I was wearing sandals and only a medium-sleeved shirt. We reveled in a sudden sense of Scottish Superiority.

And I really wasn't even too cold. I felt the cool air, certainly, but I didn't feel in a rush to get into the buildings or anything like that. My fingers did lose a bit of their dexterity, though, so I kept my fists together to keep them a bit warmer. It would have all been fine and good, if Yannick hadn't gone off and smoked a cigarette while still wearing my jacket.

This is a major fail. I don't have my winter clothes yet and I'm going to need that jacket for a while. And now it smells... indescribable... X(