This is a time of year I find somewhat inconvenient.
It’s got as much to do with the weather as anything else, and I don’t mind the fact snow could be on the horizon in the not too distant future.
No, I mean the day-to-day weather in Prince George. Actually, it’s the day-in-day weather.
I am up early most mornings, which at this time of year means I’m usually wearing a medium-warmth coat (not full-on winter parka yet) as well as a toque and gloves when I go out.
By the time I’m ready to come home around noon, it has warmed up a fair bit, and I sometimes decide I don’t even need a coat for the trip home.
Then the next morning, it’s chilly again, I go to put on my coat, and remember it’s at the studio, left there the day before.
So I need to find another coat to wear, which I frequently then forget to wear home that afternoon.
My personal record is four coats of various warmth levels. That was back when I worked in High Prairie, Alberta. What made it even more likely I would wear a coat in the morning was that I lived just a couple of blocks from the newspaper I worked at.
(Quick note: To be fair, almost anything in High Prairie was just a couple of blocks from anything else.)
I was so close I usually walked in to the office, so I definitely needed something warm.
And when it was close-to-summer warm when I left, I definitely didn’t want to wear a coat for the walk home.
On about the fourth day, I hauled out basically the last fall/winter coat I had left, and drove in to the office.
When I left that afternoon, I loaded all four coats into my car and drove home. I hadn’t needed my car that day, but knew carrying four coats home in the afternoon was going to make things a tad warm.
That is one of the good things about Prince George. Places are usually far enough apart that driving makes sense. During winter itself, a lot of times I will walk down to the station if I know I don’t need the car that day. Then I just wear the same coat home and open the front if I need to if it’s warmed up a fair bit.
I had to come up with a better system, because I don’t have four coats that would provide much in the way of shelter in cold weather, so it was either do this or take a chance of freezing to death one day by wearing my summer jacket when it was 30 below.