Shoe abominations

I meant to blog about this last week when I witnessed it, but time got away from me. However, it bears discussion.

I see, um, interesting fashion choices. I work on a university campus, with other institutions nearby. Student fashion is always creative and different. For example, students wearing flannel pj bottoms in pink with little sheep all over them in public. Often even worn to class, which for students is their "job" for however many years. Not something the vast majority of the world could get away with wearing to work unless you worked from home. But it's university/college society, so students get away with a lot more because it's not "real" society yet. It's an opportunity for them to explore who they are and who they want to be, and this often gets manifested in what they choose to wear. There was a guy at my college that discovered he loved wearing skirts, he found them airy and much less confining than pants, so he wore them for a good 3 1/2 years. But when he started interviewing for jobs, he wore a suit. University/college life vs. the real world. My sister shaved her head during college because she knew it was a time in her life that she could do that and not have it held against her. People kind of expect university/college students to do crazy things.

There are some things, however, that are always an abomination. I see Ugg boots everywhere, and they're bad, but not an abomination. Flannel pj bottoms in public are not an abomination; hell, at least they're covered by their clothes. Don't get me started on the mini skirts and girls that don't know how to bend over and pick something up without flashing their panties to the world. But the other day, on my walk home from work, I witnessed footwear that made me want to gouge out my eyeballs:

Black. Patent. Leather. Clogs.

Yes, CLOGS in black patent leather.

In general, black patent leather should be reserved for formal occasions. It reminds me of the fancy church shoes I had as a child, in a Mary-Jane style. But to make a CLOG out of it is, well, disturbing. Disturbing and wrong.

Wrong. So many shades of just wrong. A shoe abomination. The person wearing them needs to be put in a room and subjected to reprogramming regarding appropriate footwear. Somebody call Stacy and Clinton of TLC's What Not To Wear before I take matters into my own hands.

It's *cold*, dammit!

It's cold out. Seriously cold. And it has been for months now, despite all predictions for a mild winter and that it was going to end early. Today is deceptively cold. It looks nice out. Sunny with a clear blue sky. So when you look through the window it doesn't look that bad. The temperature isn't even all that cold: mid-20s Fahrenheit. But then there's the wind. Wind chills down to the single digits and sometimes even into the negative range. And tomorrow it's supposed to snow again.

Now I'm not one to normally complain about the cold. People have described me as a "human heater", a trait I share with my dad and sister. We don't get all that cold, ever. Yes, extremities get cold, but they do warm up, and usually quite quickly for me. I can't use flannel sheets because I get too warm, even in the coldest of cold snaps. Besides, when it's cold, you can always add more layers. Generally, cold doesn't bother me, and neither does snow. In fact, I kind of like winter. Fall and spring are my favorite seasons, particularly because I love that snap and crisp feel to the air, the cool evenings, but I don't mind the cold of winter.

Heat, on the other hand, is another issue. I'm not a big fan. You can only peel off so many layers before you're naked. Once your naked, there are no more layers. All you are is hot and covered in sticky sweat, stuck standing in front of or below a fan praying for some relief from the heat radiating from your person. Yuck. Over the years my body has learned to adjust to extreme heat, but that doesn't mean I like it.

Back to the cold. I know what you're going to say. March comes in like a lion and this cold is the lion part, right? My take on things is that the damn groundhog lied this year and we are having six more weeks of winter. And that day this past weekend where it was 60F out? Yeah, an anomaly just like that 70 degree day we had in early January. It's still winter, dammit.

Normally, six more weeks of winter wouldn't bother me, but the deceptive cold that it is today causes me to complain. The wind makes your eyes water, and then, if it continues to gust, it freezes those tears to your lashes. Or, if the wind gust passes, you feel the tears coursing down your cheek like hot lava digging crevasses into your skin. Cold enough to make my skin hurt under my layers and to wince when the wind blows up my coat. I'm home and warm now, but that walk home was vicious.

And on my walk I saw something I could hardly believe. A person outside, walking home from a corner store, in a T-shirt and jeans. A T-shirt. I can only explain this as either:
a) the person is from Antarctica so temps in the 20s with sub-zero wind chill feels balmy
-OR-
b) they're insane and trying to kill themselves by getting pneumonia.

I just can't decide which.