Rigamarole status

So today, I finally busted out the ear-flap hat. I had thought that I could hold out until November, but there was frost on the ground this morning, and as my ears are very dear to me, the hat could not wait.

April gave this to me last Christmas; as you can tell, I was very excited about it. It's wool, but fleece-lined. And those handy strings mean that you can tie the flaps under your chin to make sure the wind doesn't get to your ears.

And don't think I don't. I'm way past freezing for the sake of fashion. I figure the fact that I ride my bike to school every day during the winter, even in the snow, must earn me some street cred, regardless of the fact that my hat strings are tied under my chin ("like a little schoolboy," to quote April). And generally, once I start tying, I've already got a scarf covering half of my face, so no one notices.

Just wearing the hat isn't the true sign that winter has arrived, though. The true sign is that after returning home from the climbing wall and library this evening ("To be mysterious?!" Ben the Wall Worker asked when I told him I had to stop climbing so that I could go "be studious"), I continued to wear the hat while I cooked dinner, did dishes, and looked at blogs. I'm still wearing it, even though, after almost three hours of continuously running my space heater on high and baking three batches of cookies, my living room has reached a toasty 66 degrees.

And so it starts.