What matters

A week ago, we had a very cold day.  5° in the morning and it was that again in the evening when I went home. My commute isn't obnoxiously long or anything, and it gives me plenty of time for reading, but it does involve a bit of standing around waiting for the next bus or train...

And some days, there's like a perfect blizzard (haha) of circumstances. For instance, that day, which had a delayed opening but was still 5° (-15° C) and vicious windchill at 9 am. The bus was 40 minutes late. My toes ached for an hour.  That evening, the bus that came, 15 minutes late - 15 minutes of standing outside waiting - to Cromwell had a passenger door that wouldn't open and, what with one thing and other, it was another 21 minutes waiting for the next bus. My toes? Aching again.

I had these boots - the purple ones - which were attractive. Every time I wore them, somebody would tell me how good they looked. Just one problem: the boots look warmer than they are. They've got these plastic uppers and toes - fine in the 20s, not so good in the single digits. Last year was a much warmer winter than this one, with no single-digit days and only a handful below 20 (and those were lows). That day made me go online and buy the grey ones. No one has yet told me how much they like them...

The purple ones got complimented a lot. The grey ones have kept my feet warm in this single-digit winter.