sunlight and scarves

I think I need a sunlamp.Once I have a humidifier, that definitely takes top priority here. But after that. Sunlamp.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it many times again in the future: I'm just not a winter person. Snow is beautiful and so are icicles, etc, but I barely manage the desert air during the rest of the year and winter kicks it up to an inhuman notch. Basically, I am never not itchy during winter. But back to the sunlamp idea. I always get sucked into the appeal of the end of daylight saving. I mean, kind of having an extra hour of sleep for a day or two? Sign me up! Ultimately, though, I feel robbed because after a week or so it's still dark in the morning anyway and it's dark way earlier in the evening. This means that, if there's sunlight on a given day I'm exposed to about 15 minutes of it, at most, on my way to work. Now, I generally don't spend much time in the sun regardless of season but I really notice how much that little difference in exposure makes when I get next to none in winter. Ever heard of seasonal depression? It's a real thing.

There's been an ongoing conversation this week about scarves, namely how, at least here in Utah, scarves are worn more for fashion than function, especially for men. This is something that completely boggles my brain, having grown up in New York where scarves are a matter of life and death in winter. I suppose winters here may not be considered as severe [Tim just barely started wearing a jacket to work yesterday. I, however, graduated to my sweatshirt-and-pea-coat combo last week.] but there are definitely those who would benefit from using scarves. The problem some men run into, though, is that if you're a guy here wearing a scarf there's a 95% probability that:
          A: You're a hipster.
          B: The scarf is a flimsy piece of fabric that doesn't do anything to keep you warm.
          C: Both. Probably both.
Now, there is a significant hipster population here, especially around Orem/Provo with all the college kids but that doesn't mean that every guy is on the hipster train and some, like my husband, would not be caught dead being mistaken for one. What to do? I suppose there are a lot of guys that just "man-up" and power through the cold weather and brutal wind-chill but I'm a big believer in being comfortable when you can and scarves are the fastest way to improve your body-heat retention. So I'm on the look-out for "manly" scarves. Tim probably won't need one because he's a personal space-heater but I feel ethically obligated to develop a knowledge-base for any other men out there who want to better maintain their body temperature without looking like someone dressed them for an Urban Outfitters catalog.

One of my favorite things about winter here, though, is the way the sunsets get reflected off of the mountains, especially when they're properly covered in snow. For a landscape that can become so dull and desolate this time of year those sunsets are a dazzling blast of color that you really don't see anywhere else. Maybe I'll get some decent pictures of it this year.