Realization of the Day:

Well, summer was nice while it lasted.

I'd like to point out to the weather gods that it is still August, which is far too early to be walking home in 58 degree weather with 20mph gusts of winds and rain. My coworkers are saying things like "well, summer was nice while it lasted" as if I should be airing out my winter sweaters. Except I don't have any winter sweaters here!

The wind is pounding against my windows like nobody's business. People are rushing around even more than normal so that they can avoid being splashed on by passing buses. Women are wearing their winter coats, and scarves are something more than a fashion statement. After witnessing this dreary weather in August, it's no wonder that the weather became such a focal point in English novels, especially those of the Brontes and Dickens--They write about the wind as if it's constantly tapping them on their shoulders. To wit:

'A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.' --Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

'The business of eating being concluded, and no one uttering a word of sociable conversation, I approached a window to examine the weather. A sorrowful sight I saw: dark night coming down prematurely, and sky and hills mingled in one bitter whirl of wind and suffocating snow.' --Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

'A blight had fallen on the trees and shrubs; and the wind, at length beginning to break the unnatural stillness that had prevailed all day, sighed heavily from time to time, as though foretelling in grief the ravages of the coming storm. The bat skimmed in fantastic flights through the heavy air, and the ground was alive with crawling things, whose instinct brought them forth to swell and fatten in the rain.' --Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby

'The wind began to moan in hollow murmurs, as the sun went down carrying glad day elsewhere; and a train of dull clouds coming up against it, menaced thunder and lightning. Large drops of rain soon began to fall, and, as the storm clouds came sailing onward, others supplied the void they left behind and spread over all the sky. Then was heard the low rumbling of distant thunder, then the lightning quivered, and then the darkness of an hour seemed to have gathered in an instant.' --Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop