Fickle Texan weather

Man! Talk about fickle! Texan weather beats 'em all hands down. I have given up trying to predict what it will be like tomorrow. Yesterday, it was a hot, humid day. The sun beat down on everyone, and it was muggy in the night. Tomorrow morning when I woke up, it was freezing! Well, not really freezing...more like bracing cold. But brrrrr! I had read something about today being a cold day on the internet, and had thankfully dressed for the day in jeans and two layers of clothing. Many of my friends weren't so fortunate. They were caught in the cold wearing short-sleeved shirts and T-shirts, and, even worse, shorts. The wind howled about all day, and the windchill was probably in the lower 40s. It was a very cold day today. I had cleverly worn a turtleneck, but the wind crept in even through that, making me shiver all the way to my workplace in the Fine Arts library. Now, normally the library is one of the coldest places on campus -- it may be steaming hot outside, but it's cold enough to give me goosepimples inside the library. Not so today. I actually breathed a sigh of relief on entering it, it was a respite from the cold!
After work, I shivered all the way from the FA library to Taylor Hall, which is where the Computer Sciences department is based. The cold crept up my nose, hurting my sinuses (I've had a sinus problem for ages). Even the squirrels seemed subdued today -- one little chap sadly gnawed on his acorn with apathy, and even the sight of me passing by didn't motivate him enough to spring away unlike his compatriots on normal days. I guess they are preparing for hibernation, and the unusually cold day caught them by surprise.
Taylor lab is a dark, gloomy basement with stacks of Linux and Sun machines lining the walls. It's usually freezing cold in there, and I need to often bring along a jacket even on the hottest days if I know that I'll be spending any amount of time in the lab. Not so today. I actually felt warm in the lab! I was stunned.
Yeah, it was a cold day all right! The tip of my nose froze on the way back home. I think it's going to be 88 degrees again tomorrow....that's Texan weather for you!

Unpredictable Texan weather

Man! Talk about unpredictable! Texan weather is harder to predict than the outcome of, say, roulette or something. It was pouring on Thursday; rain interspersed with shine yesterday; and hot and sunny today. I give up! I can never, ever predict what tomorrow's going to be like. In fact, forget tomorrow! I can't predict what it'll be like an hour from now. In fact, even as I speak, the sun is dimming, and the it's getting cool and overcast (just the way I like it!). And, as I complete this sentence, the sun is coming out again. Hmph!
Today is Saturday -- the day that I have, for the past three months, gone out to catch the latest movie released on Friday, and then roamed about the malls for ages. But there's no movie of interest this week -- I'm waiting for August 3rd for The Bourne Ultimatum to release. Instead, I think I'll start packing. I'll be moving out of my apartment on the 1st, so I guess I should start clearing up the mess created over the course of one year. Sigh! I really don't feel like getting started. I try to motivate myself, but one look at the massive pile of research papers from ACM and IEEE sends me back into my corner, hunched over my laptop, furiously typing into my blog, telling the whole world what a mess my room is.
It's the books that scare me the most. I've got a HUGE pile of books to be packed. I'm a regular bookworm, and, in spite of nearly dying of penury over the past year, I've still managed to collect well over 30 books, not counting the 25 or so I brought over with me from Mumbai. AND, to top it all, there's a massive bunch of textbooks collected -- textbooks, that I might add, I've never had to open even once in the semester, because the professors' notes and research papers we got assigned were good enough. Probably the only textbooks I cracked open in the entire year were Database Systems by Garcia-Molina, Ullman and Widom, and Network Security by Kaufman, Perlman and Speciner. The only ones!! And when I look at the massive tomes on my bookshelf, notably the books on Operating Systems and Algorithms, I groan. My intention right from the time I joined UT was to study Networks and Network Security. Why on earth did I lug those blasted books with me? I knew I never intended to take an OS course, ever. I now sit on the chair, looking balefully at the books with ill-concealed hostility.
Well, the more time I spend here, the less I'll have to clear up the scary mess, so I guess I'd better get started now!