It’s here, huzzah!

My definition of sweater weather is different from most people’s, I suspect. The temperature has dropped out of the 90′s since Ike, so last week at Target I felt compelled to buy two new sweaters in preparation. Yesterday the high was 88, and I wore my first sweater of the season. Today it got up to 90—sweater with a skirt!

The thing is, you see, that even though a sweater might not be ideal at 90 degrees, most of the day it’s not that hot. In the mornings and evenings it gets down into the low 70′s, which I find pretty uncomfortable without long sleeves or pants or both. I HATE being cold, even a little bit. It’s an awful, miserable feeling. There would have to be some SERIOUSLY ENTICING extenuating circumstances to get me to live someplace that has real winters. We’re talking daily massages, cookies that don’t make me fat, and Tim Gunn as my personal shopper.

Most buildings are over-air-conditioned anyway (the Law Center isn’t too bad in most rooms, but don’t get me started on the grocery store), so planning a sweater into my outfit from the get-go keeps me from having to carry an extra one around with me.

The key to great weather, in my opinion, is to keep the outdoor and indoor temperatures within, say, ten degrees of each other, so that walking between classes or getting out of the car doesn’t necessitate a wardrobe change.

Speaking of cars and weather, I’m actually a bit annoyed with the way my Jetta’s temperature control system behaves during this pleasant time of year. The AC works great on hot days—with the fan at full blast it cools the cabin down in a couple minutes, easy. I assume the heater works fine, too, though I haven’t had the car long enough to test it.

The setting for “cool things down just a skosh,” however, does not exist. There is AC-on, which blows near-freezing gusts, and there is AC-off, which blows air at about the same temperature as what’s already in the car. (Or warmer—the only temperature control is a “thermostat” that doesn’t correlate to anything sensible.)

The two solutions I’ve come up with* are (1) toggle the AC on and off every few minutes or (2) turn the AC on, but turn the fan to the lowest setting and close all the vents pointing at me. Neither seems to be an efficient use of resources. And I thought Germans were good at this engineering stuff. Don’t they ever have 80-degree weather in Germany?

Um, right. There was a topic to this post, and the title seems to suggest that it was sweaters. Now that I type that, I’ve remembered other profound sweater-related thoughts I wanted to share with you, internets, but they’ll have to wait. If I rambled on any longer I’d feel compelled to spend time editing, and I’m just not in a critical-thinkingy mood right now. Off to play braid solitaire and listen to TED talks.

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* Here we assume, of course, that I’m driving too fast for my hair to survive the windows’ being open without tangling. I could tie it up, but…oooh, that’s a topic for a whole other post.

Tags: weather

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