Seth Nickell

Lesson: Do not leave soda cans in the car. It might seem obvious to those of you accustomed to cold climates, but I finally realized I have to think of my car as a freezer. So I left 12 cans of mountain dew in my car right behind the driver’s seat. What happened? Of course about half the cans exploded when they froze. So that’s not good… unfortunately I didn’t notice this for three weeks. Well, turns out one of these days must have gotten above freezing, because the mountain dew in the exploded cans melted. Of course by now its all frozen into my carpet. I hate this place.

Lesson: Microfiber pants really help. Thanks to a suggestion from Carl-Christian Salvesen in Norway I’ve swapped out jeans for microfiber slacks if I’m walking around in the cold. They’re much lighter so I sort of assumed they wouldn’t work as well as jeans. Not so, they appear to trap a lot more heat. When its really windy I have windbreaker-pant things I can pull over them.

Lesson: If you want to buy gloves and scarves you have to do it before winter. People in this place exhibit extraordinary wishful thinking during the winter, it seems. The stores have already had their “get rid of everything” winter clearance sales. Sears had not a single scarf or pair of gloves left. The stores are filled with people bundled up to the rafters in coats, gloves, scarves, etc buying… swim suits and light skirts. Its ridiculous. I mean, I know you start selling before the season starts, but its not even February yet! What are you supposed to do if you lose your gloves? (anyway, I finally found some nice black leather gloves, but I tried a bunch of stores that used to have them but don’nomo’)