Weather!

Well guys, I've been in England for a week and a half, and let me tell you - the weather is really something. I had been living in beautiful, basically unchanging sunny weather for over two years, pining for changing seasons and snow. I didn't realize those years were making me soft and vulnerable to the cold and accustomed to t-shirts and ballet flats. Now I'm finally in the kind of wet/cold/windy/frosty/snowy/drippy/slippy/breath-catching weather I missed and I'm glad I saved all those woolly socks from my skiing days.

The key to enjoying bad weather (as I am prone to do) is to be prepared for it and to dress appropriately. It's a lot easier to be happy if you're cozy in a fuzzy sweater under a down jacket with a soft scarf all tucked in and up around your chin and a thick hat protecting your ears and your feet encased in wool and waterproof (key) boots. Oh, and it also helps if your mittens are decorated like little bow-tied penguins. All these things combine to make a walk about the village a very pleasant experience, the cold making your nose run and the breath stream away from your mouth like hurried smoke.

The fact that I also have to wear the sweater, scarf, hat and gloves indoors is something I blame on LA and the Pacific Ocean.

I do find it endlessly funny that although constant cloud-cover and rain present zero transportational difficulties (except in the case of severe flooding, which, unfortunately is a big problem farther north right now), it only takes a tiny bit of snow to shut down airports for a morning.