Winter is here

            Winter has arrived.

Winter, the season with the best weather and best holidays. Maybe it’s because I live in a desert but I love the snow. And Halloween and Christmas have some of the best memories for me. Lets explore the reasons why winter it better than summer.

This is Stuart Heritage’s 4th reason for liking winter.”

“4 Winter is not summer

It isn't summer, when you can't hide your wobbly belly under a big coat. Summer, when men wear socks with sandals or begin marauding topless so everyone can see the badly spelled prison tattoo tribute to their ex. Heatstroke. Discomfort. Summer is the worst. Now, the air is getting crisper. It becomes impossible to breathe amid pints of vaporized commuter sweat on trains. There are log fires. There are ruddy-faced shopkeepers welcoming you with a hearty chuckle. There are hog roasts on every corner. There are probably lots of things I haven't just ripped off from Dickens. Either way, we can all stop pretending to like summer for another nine months. What a relief.” I agree with everything thing in here completely. The intense heat of summer is horrible. Especially if, like me, You don't swim a lot. When you sit inside with friends or on the computer heat is your worst enemy. A fan is all you can do to lessen the heat. You’re in your house so you can’t strip naked without getting yelled at. When in winter you can just put on a jacket and keep rolling. No will give you sideways glances for wearing extra clothing.

One of Brian Moylan reasons for loving winter is:

 

“Snow Days

Snow, itself, is really annoying. Sure, it's nice and pretty when it's falling down and blanketing everything, but it quickly becomes brown, disgusting, and annoying to remove and/or walk around in. But, there is nothing as glorious as getting an unexpected vacation day due to inclement weather. Even if you have to go into work, if the flakes are falling, people are flaking off at the office, fueled by some atavistic enthusiasm about what is happening in the sky. Enjoy it people, because no matter how hot it gets, you still have to go in.” Brian makes a good point of “…no matter how hot it gets, you still have to go in.” Unless you have a stroke you still have to go to school or work. But I disagree with his point that snow is annoying. I love playing in it personally. There’s no other time of the year that you can get snow days besides winter. 

     When you think of summer holidays the only one is The Fourth of July. Fireworks are cool and all but we also get them on new years in winter. Winter has Christmas and Halloween. (Halloween is technically in fall but its close enough.) Christmas where people give you free presents and then all glare at you because you brought them nothing. Or if you’re a kid don’t expect anything from you besides hanging out with the family. Some of my favorite things like my cello and computer I got as Christmas presents. And you get to have hot chocolate (or apple cider in my case) with the family as you watch Frozen for the 50^th time. Then there's Halloween where people give you free candy for wearing a sheet over your head. Even if you’re a teenager people will still give you candy even though they always give a second thought about it. And for the adults there's the Halloween parties where you can dress up and not look weird.

     Winter is just way too superior to summer. Summer has swimming going for it I’ll give it that but it’s not like you can’t do it during winter indoors. You could also go into a Jacuzzi during winter. Summer has it’s ups but way too many downs to be the best season. I’m bringing this up because I love observing in winter. The deafening snow dulls the sounds of the everyday bustle of the city and when you’re out in a forest you can feel like time has stopped and the whole world is standing still except for the snowflakes that fall from the heavens. I’m going to be stopping the observation for now. I may or may not start it back up again. I probably won’t, to be honest, but you never know when I might find something that I think is worth posting to the endless dimension of information that is the internet.

Work Cited

Heritage, Stuart. "Ten Reasons to Love Winter." Theguardian. N.p., 25 Oct. 2013. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.

Moylan, Brian. "10 Things I Love About Winter." Gawker. Kinja, 6 Dec. 2010. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.

Winter's on it's Way

         This week was a cold one. I didn't observe all days of the week because we had a holiday on Tuesday. this week the Puddle was frozen over and most of the trees have lost all their leaves. They look like large sticks poking out of the ground.

There were a lot of geese this week. Their numbers ranged from 0 to somewhere around 50. The one day I didn’t see any I got to school pretty early and I saw that the grass was frosted over. My guess is that the geese wait till the grass defrost to eat it.

        One cool thing I noticed was that the ghost car had frost on his window. This probably means that it gets to the parking lot pretty early. I really want to know how and when it gets to the parking lot and when it leaves. Would I be allowed to put a tracker on it or is that illegal? I don’t really have access to a tracker anyways.

         I have been noticing a decrease in trash lately. I’m not sure what’s causing it but the parking lot has very little trash. It’s mostly filled with the fallen leaves. Less people must be eating their lunch in the parking lot and more in the cafeteria. 

         I wouldn’t mind eating in the cold. I really enjoy the cold and Winter/Fall. I’s way better than Summer because you can keep stacking on layers of cloths if you get cold. When you’re hot you can only strip so much till it becomes illegal. 
"Coming in from the heat is a shitty feeling. It's a wave of cool at first, especially in warm climates where you really do need it. Then it flash-freezes your sweat to your skin like you've been in the ocean, and you smell like scallops, except you haven't been in the water, you've actually just been loafing around town like there's a problem with the Earth's gravity. Fuck, Texas would suck without air conditioning -- good food though. Now compare what we were talking about two sentences ago to the feeling of coming in from the cold. Spies come in from the cold, and James Bond is bad-fucking-ass spy who knows how to ski. When you come inside after a day out in winter's gnarled cryo-clutch, be it a weekend out or a weekday commute, you shake off the cold and it shoots life back into your body. Happiness and feeling return to your fingertips, you get some color in your cheeks, and you are excited to be home and inside. Drink something warm and you crack a more real smile that you just get other times of the year. Then get shitfaced and go back into the cold with even less clothing."
         Swimming is nice but it’s not better than snowboarding or playing in the snow. We use swimming as a way to escape the heat. With snow we play in it even though we are already cold. And the fact that a lot of the bugs leave or they at least become inactive is awesome. I hate mosquitoes buzzing around my head and all the spiders making webs in the house. Then you also get to have apple cider and have Halloween, Christmas and Thanksgiving.  They are all the best holidays. In the Spring/Summer we only have Easter and the 4^th of July. So I’m super happy getting to school early and looking at my breath freeze in midair as I see the beautiful leaves fall from the trees.

Work Cited

Crumb, Alex. "The 10 Vital Reasons Why Winter is Better than Summer."

     http://www.ghostlittle.com: Critically Continually Thinking. N.p. 2014. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.

The Shade

                Winter’s just starting to kick into gear. I’ve decided to put on some of my heavier clothing and jackets. I don’t really mind the cold but the wind you get when you ride down a hill full speed on a bike just passes right though you without something thicker than a sweater.

            This week I showed up at school at very variable times. Once around 6:00 a.m. and another near 8:00 a.m. Right before school starts. This lead to some amazing discoveries related to the Ghost car. When I showed up early I didn’t see very many geese but the puddles on Tuesday were Huge. And on Thursday I saw…The Shade.

             Thursday was already a weird day at the beginning. I woke up late, around 3:15 a.m. (it’s usually around 1:00 a.m.). I was starting to get bored of my games on my 3DS. So I decided I’d look through the e-shop and buy a new one. As I started to download it, I ended up leaving my house extremely late. And I had nothing to show for it because I had to leave my 3DS at home to finish the download. As I started to enter the school grounds it was extremely difficult to get to the bike rack with all the sidewalk traffic and cars leaving and entering. As I rode past the football field I noticed that there were a large number of geese out in the field. Three large groups of maybe 30 or so each. As I rode into the parking lot it was almost completely full with cars so I couldn’t exactly get a good look at the Ghost car. And another car that was leaving was stopped on the puddles so I couldn’t see them that day. Quiet infuriating day to be honest. 
              But as I rode past the puddle blocking car I came into view of the Ghost car. I could see that its headlights were on so I rode closer. I could see a human shaped Shade sitting in the front driver seat of the car. The whole time from then on I continued to study the car, mostly the person/thing inside the car. I didn't stop and get off my bike to stare at this possible man/woman. I just kept riding past but a little slower than usual. What was weird is that the windows shouldn't/weren't tinted enough to block out everything but the general outline of someone. But all I could see was the Shade. Even the seats looked more textured than the Shade. It was bright out too. The sun was in my eyes the whole ride. But here as I rode past the car almost late for school I couldn’t tell anything specific in the appearance of the Shade. After I parked my bike on the rack and locked it up I started to sort of jog walk towards my class. And the entire time I kept looking over at the Ghost car. I could still see the Shade and the car and neither had moved.  I was pretty sure the engine was on but I was listening to music so I’m not 100% sure. I thought maybe I had caught it leaving the parking lot but it just sat there the whole time my entire ride in and walk to class. I hope someday I might be able to see the Shade again and figure what’s up with that car.

The Polka Dotted Sky

            This week at my school we had P.S.A.T. testing so the week was a little unusual. Wednesday had a 3 hour delayed start because of it. This lead to me arriving at the parking lot around 10:15 a.m. instead of the regular 6:30 a.m. But because of this I discovered some interesting things that day. First was that the geese have already started to show up. They looked like gray and black bean bags inhabiting the football field. Bending their neck to tear up some of the grass. I am glad that I don’t play for my schools football or track team or else I would have to deal with their leftovers. The Starlings were also back pecking around in the parking lot. Maybe I just show up when they are still sleeping in their nests.

            The sunny sky really pales in comparison to its night counterpart. I wish that cities had a special event where twice a year they would require that everyone turns off all lights for about 30 minutes. Once in summer and once in winter, each on a full moon. This way everyone in the city could see the night sky at its best.

I once went to a wedding with my father where we went to celebrate his high school friend’s marriage. The party took place out in the woods of California, off the grid, away from any cities. My dad took me out away from the lights into the deep woods at night and told me to look up.

It was Amazing.

Having lived in a city for most of my life, I never knew the sky had so many stars. The TV shows and pictures don’t do the night justice. And when you get that slight vertigo affect from the red wood trees surrounding you like natural skyscrapers, it makes your head spin. Instead of the darkness being the dominate color in the sky now the white had taken over pushing the empty blackness out. The Milky Way in all its glory was massive. I always thought it to be smaller but I was sorely mistaken. If any of you reading this have never gone on a trip outside of the range of urban human civilization I implore you to do so. No Youtube video or picture on your phone can give you the same effect.

The Autumn Apocalypse

It was pretty uniform throughout this week. I didn’t see a single bird and the puddles in front of the last lane in the parking lot stayed, For the most part, the same. The trash always seems to change every day but there never was an abundant amount. On Thursday I even saw half of a banana cut by (I’m guessing) a knife.

The sun is starting to take longer to rise early in the morning. Like a child refusing to leave the warmth of his bed for the chilly winter-frosted air. I really enjoy these mornings now. With just me, the cold empty Parking Lot and the Ghost Car. We have the occasional visitor of an extra bike on the bike rack but for the most part we have the parking lot to ourselves. Our own little secret club.

            I really do love the winter for multiple reasons. The first being no more annoying bugs and less spiders. The second being the cold air. And the third being the way trees and plants change. A lot of the trees around the parking lot have started to relinquish their leaves to the autumn frost in order to hibernate for the winter. They are starting to look like tree skeletons and zombies. They are either void of their leafy flesh or are starting to turn and their flesh is “rotting” from a natural green color to the golden orange and deep red color. But soon they well all just look like the skeleton in my anatomy teacher’s room. Except for the evergreen trees that are already immune to the Frost’s cold bite.

Smokey Mornings

     My week mostly consisted of my discovery on a puddle and a ghost car.I watched the puddle grow and shrink each morning and other baby puddles appear around this large adult puddle. I also saw a car that seems to change its position in a completely random pattern. It has a license plate with the number of 54446. It seems to always be there every morning under the only street light that works on that side of the parking lot. With that and the combination of the smoke that week it really did seem to be a ghost car.  A car with the soul of a Ghost Ship.
     No more exciting things to report that week except for a few birds and some trash. I also saw another student one day which was weird for so early in the morning.