Winter in August (darn near)

About 1:00 am today, it started raining - loud enough to wake me up. Although I imagine I was a bit attuned to the sound last night, having left my car outside (usually it lives in the garage, but my husband has started work on a shed he is building as a garage annex, and I thought it might be uninhabitable) and not wanting to have it hailed on. It's still raining, 12 hours later. Probably a fairly normal occurrence in many parts of the country; almost unheard of here. I'm not sure I like it much.

On August 27th, at 1:30 pm local time, it is 50 degrees out according to the handy Desktop Weather thingie from weather.com. I had the heat on in my car at lunch. I saw people at work today wearing coats. In August! Something has gone sadly awry. It's supposed to snow at the Continental Divide this afternoon/evening. In August!

The whole summer here has been cooler and wetter than usual - good for ending our drought, but unsettling. I bought some Halloween-themed decorations at the local Ross-Dress-For-Less this past week, and was a little startled to realize that we really couldn't use them for another 2 months. I've begun planning for the autumn and winter holidays already - what to eat on Thanksgiving, Christmas present lists, stuff like that. Normally, I'm not moved to do any of that planning until it really is Fall (which doesn't occur for another month, almost - not that you could tell...). I keep thinking that I've forgotten to stock up on fake fire logs (the ones made out of sawdust and paraffin) - until I look at the calendar.

I am still wearing sandals to work, sans socks. Part of the reason behind that is that I have large feet (10-1/2, which is not officially a size that women's shoes come in), and my lovely Birkenstocks are much more comfortable than anything else I own, and part of it is because my employer has instituted a new dress code requiring that we abstain from denim except on Fridays and Birkenstocks are my way of subtly protesting. But I may have to abandon my protest sooner than I planned, if it continues to be this cold.

Good sleeping weather, though. We swapped the quilt for the duvet about a week ago. That had a little to do with one of the cats (I won't go into details), but it's been cold enough that the duvet's down filling feels mighty good at night.

The only thing that is really worrying me is, what's it going to be like when Winter really does come? Maybe I'd better get those logs now after all...