Hella cold today. Well, not by *other* people's standards, perhaps, but definitely by ours. There was a low of 38 degrees (Fahrenheit). I've been bundled up even inside the house, and I wore my warm wool coat when I went out. When walking with friends outside, I was surprised that so people were wishing they had gloves, even one guy from the East Coast! I tried not to mock them. Shouldn't someone from Connecticut be a bit hardier than that? Sometimes I really miss Scotland. I remember standing on the Stirling campus in the snow, waiting for the bus into town, wrapped up in my warm coat, boots, scarf, and gloves, with my nose and ears freezing off. It rocked. Except my face was so numb with cold that I couldn't tell if my nose was running. I didn't want to gross out the bus driver.

Last night I got to thinking about the movie Gremlins (1984) for some reason, and there's something about it that has always bothered me. I mean, it's been bothering me for 27 years. The characters are told not to feed the gremlins "after midnight" or terrible things will happen. Okay, so what does "after midnight" mean? Can you feed them at 6 a.m.? What about 10 a.m.? Noon? Is the afternoon right out? Because, if you really think about it, any time of the day is after midnight. So the guy was doomed to fail unless he never fed the creatures at all! Either that, or the know-it-all guy at the beginning should have been more specific about which times -- specifically -- were forbidden. These kinds of things bother me.

Maybe that's why I love proofreading.