Misnomers
My life, for the time being, is both very simple and constantly difficult. The simplicity of it is that searching for a job doesn't take up nearly as much time as actually having a job; the difficulty is keeping track of all the things I want/need to do and actually remembering to do them. One result of my having so much time is that I always end up needing to go buy groceries on particularly dreadful days.
It's not that this kind of day is uncommon in Boston, but certainly this January has had more nice weather than I ever remember seeing so early in the year (though to be fair, most of my late January in the past four years has been spent either in front of a desk strewn with course notes or in a classroom, writing frantically for three hours straight, or in attempts not to be in Cambridge at all). In the two weeks I've been here I've seen weather I'd call balmy, I've walked happily in the kind of rain that doesn't freeze on contact with the ground, and I've enjoyed the sun.
But every time I really, really have to go to the grocery store, it's been very typically January. Today my goal was to get to the store before the "light rain with some wind gusts" became the predicted "wintry mix and strong storm winds." In my opinion, the term "wintry mix" is one of the greatest examples of false advertising ever: it sounds like it would describe some sort of magical, sparkly, dancing snowflakes that are floating merrily to the ground. In fact, it describes what happens when the sky dumps slush.
Even if I had made that goal be to get to the store and back before the rain started getting chunky and driving sideways, it wouldn't have helped, because I would almost definitely not have factored in the time it took for me to get 1/3 of the way home, realize I'd dropped one of my mittens somewhere in the store, walk back, search for it, and then search for the lost and found desk.
Clearly, that is what ended up happening. By the time I was actually walking home, the rain contained drops of water, sleet, and ice in varying combinations, and the wind made sure to attack my face with the sharpest of these fragments, regardless of the direction I was walking. The truly wonderful part of it all was the soundtrack: I had brought my iPod as a shopping companion, and when I left the store for the final time I was about 3/4 through a mix album that Jeremy made for me last year at about this time, when I was shivering in Cambridge and he was wandering around the sunny South Island of New Zealand. As I stepped out the door and started to cough on inhaled ice crystals, my ears were filled with the opening bars to "Summer in the City."
It was too cold to think about taking off a glove and unzipping my raincoat to reach into my jacket pocket to skip to the next track, so I walked the first couple of blocks, attempting to believe more in the Lovin Spoonful than in reality, trying to convince myself that the sidewalk actually was "hotter than a matchhead" instead of gritty with tiny hail particles and that there didn't "seem to be a shadow in the city" due to direct overhead sun rather than thick banks of angry clouds. It didn't work.
It's not that this kind of day is uncommon in Boston, but certainly this January has had more nice weather than I ever remember seeing so early in the year (though to be fair, most of my late January in the past four years has been spent either in front of a desk strewn with course notes or in a classroom, writing frantically for three hours straight, or in attempts not to be in Cambridge at all). In the two weeks I've been here I've seen weather I'd call balmy, I've walked happily in the kind of rain that doesn't freeze on contact with the ground, and I've enjoyed the sun.
But every time I really, really have to go to the grocery store, it's been very typically January. Today my goal was to get to the store before the "light rain with some wind gusts" became the predicted "wintry mix and strong storm winds." In my opinion, the term "wintry mix" is one of the greatest examples of false advertising ever: it sounds like it would describe some sort of magical, sparkly, dancing snowflakes that are floating merrily to the ground. In fact, it describes what happens when the sky dumps slush.
Even if I had made that goal be to get to the store and back before the rain started getting chunky and driving sideways, it wouldn't have helped, because I would almost definitely not have factored in the time it took for me to get 1/3 of the way home, realize I'd dropped one of my mittens somewhere in the store, walk back, search for it, and then search for the lost and found desk.
Clearly, that is what ended up happening. By the time I was actually walking home, the rain contained drops of water, sleet, and ice in varying combinations, and the wind made sure to attack my face with the sharpest of these fragments, regardless of the direction I was walking. The truly wonderful part of it all was the soundtrack: I had brought my iPod as a shopping companion, and when I left the store for the final time I was about 3/4 through a mix album that Jeremy made for me last year at about this time, when I was shivering in Cambridge and he was wandering around the sunny South Island of New Zealand. As I stepped out the door and started to cough on inhaled ice crystals, my ears were filled with the opening bars to "Summer in the City."
It was too cold to think about taking off a glove and unzipping my raincoat to reach into my jacket pocket to skip to the next track, so I walked the first couple of blocks, attempting to believe more in the Lovin Spoonful than in reality, trying to convince myself that the sidewalk actually was "hotter than a matchhead" instead of gritty with tiny hail particles and that there didn't "seem to be a shadow in the city" due to direct overhead sun rather than thick banks of angry clouds. It didn't work.
posted by Katherine at 1:44 PM
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