Underdressed Arctic Explorer

It's been snowing pretty much every day this week. Which is a good thing for Utah, but it's giving me a bit of trouble.

First off, I'm living on the edge and haven't moved my car for a grand total of six days because I'm a little way of sliding around on the slush and ice. As you may recall, I'm supposed to move it every 96 hours. Nothing has happened yet but I should probably move my car as soon as the weather permits whoever keeps track of who is parked where for too long sufficient access to my vehicle to put a boot on it or leave a not soggy ticket on a snow free windshield.

Yeah, let me see you put a parking ticket on that...

(Really, though, do they keep track of how long you park in a particular space? How? Surely the police have better things to do then check where all the cars in a parking lot are. Maybe it's only if someone makes a complaint? Or maybe they're hiring a college student to keep track...)

Second, well-- let me tell you a bit about zippers.

I know a lot more about zippers than most people want to know, thanks to a school project I did once. For example, I know that it was originally invented by a Canadian named Whitcomb Judson on behalf of a friend who never quite managed to learn how to tie his shoes, that it was a complete flop when it was introduced at the worlds fair, and that when it did come out into common usage it came with written instructions. In other words, zippers are convenient. Except when they aren't.

I have a brand new nice warm winter coat that my mom got me because the old one was falling apart, so I left my old coat back home and brought the newone to school. Well, it's a very nice coat-with an awful zipper. My first day wearing the coat, the zipper pull comes right off. Turns out the zipper on this thing has this weird slider with a clasp that pops on and off, and every time I popped it back on, it would shortly pop back off.

I'm thinking about supergluing the slider together.

With the zipper broken, the coat is stuck at halfway unzipped and therefore is pretty much unusable, which of course happens right on time for this particularly cold week. I've been making do by wearing two lighter jackets on top of each other, though it isn't super comfortable or really quite warm enough for me. And especially when I'm headed to my early morning class when the sun is down and the snow is falling, I feel like an underdressed Arctic Explorer--actually just for fun I wore my aviator goggles I got for Halloweeen a while back yesterday, since it seemed appropriate, but it didn't last long because it turns out the fog up if I wear them when it's cold.

Anyway. The punchline?

I've been finding other people's popped-off zipper sliders and pull tabs on the ground outside on Campus. So apparently there's been an epidemic of breaking zippers. Looks like I'm not the only person on Winter's hit list.