Yellow Galoshes and Fat Squirrels

One day this week, I can't even remember which (it must have been Tuesday. Was it raining on Tuesday? Sure, why not), as I rushed the library before class, I saw a girl wearing bright lemoney-yellow galoshes over her jeans. I'm talking old school Paddington Bear style rubber boots; you could see them from 80 yards away. Kudos to her for having the fashionista balls to tromp around on a drizzly day in such brightly hued footwear. Either that, or negative 10 points for trying to be 'modster' chic.

Haverford College, and Pennsylvania in particular, has been the host of some seriously whacked out meteorological phenomena in the past week. Today, the power went out twice because it was so windy. Right now, outside my window in the small wind-tunnel created by apartments 14 and 18, howling gusts are sweeping large clumps of damp leaves in cyclones, while the yew bushes over in the parking lot up the hill are inclined at a 50 degree angle when the wind really picks up. It's gone from below freezing to 60, back down again in the frosty region, and then last night I hardly needed a jacket to go out to dinner. Weird shit, man. The squirrels know what's up.

All of them, including the hideously ugly ones like the half-tailed mongrel that lives behind our building, have been doing nothing but eating and fighting over acorns the past week in preparation for the wintry times ahead. It's odd how an animal's immediate self-preservation instincts can go completely to hell when they're preparing for the future. I feel as though there should be some sort of allegory there, for my own incipient plans, but I'm 1. not awake enough yet to find it, or 2. still so sleepily deluded that I think squirrels will be a source of personal inspiration. In any case, the plump creatures just sit there next to the path when people walk by, unperturbed by humans. Considering the bad blood that we've established over the course of this semester due to several cases of forced entry into the apartment, sometimes I have the urge to just kick one. This doesn't make me bad person, I swear! I'm sure there are perfectly nice squirrels out there...somewhere.

Anyway, the wind rages on outside, and I've got some reading to do before class this afternoon, so I should get on that.