Dress Like a Parisian: Wear a Scarf

I had an impromptu visit from one of my US coworkers yesterday, a social call at the office as he was on the starting end of a vacation in France. I'm not homesick (yet), but I do miss my family, friends, and of course officemates, so it was a pleasure having him stop by for a part of the day.

As we were at lunch, my coworker made the observation that "everybody here wears scarves!"

"It's true," I said. "It's part of a layering strategy that allows you to un-layer on the steamin' metro, be warm enough in your office, be able to strip off easily if the sun decides to come out, and to bulk it all back on for the sub-zero wind chill."

"Is the weather really that crazy?" he asked.

Had I had an iPhone, I would've shown him my last blog entry.

(Appeal to faithful readers everywhere: Pool your money together and get me an iPhone! Even an old 4-gig model would be fine...)

Had I had some sort of holographic memory recording device implanted in my brain, I would've shown him the conversation Alannah and I had recently. Upon being presented with a lovely Celine scarf, she panicked thinking, "Oh my god! How am I going to tie it and make it look good? Those women in Paris have, like, a million ways to tie scarves, and look GREAT! How am I supposed to do it!?"

Hmm... I guess you had to be there. (She ties it beautifully now, by the way.)

So only hours after this discussion, I decided to spend my evening running errands. Not so exciting for a Friday night, but one of them included stopping by the local for a drink - you know, to make myself familiar to the bartenders. Figuring that everything was only within a few blocks of my apartment, I decided to do so... without a scarf!

"No big deal," I thought. "I'll just button my coat up all the way if I get cold."

Hah! Take that, Parisian fashionistas!

Fast forward to this morning, when I woke up with a small but highly nagging chest cold. I had to down cough medicine like crazy and sleep it off, thereby wasting an otherwise lovely Saturday.

Lesson learned: Wear a scarf!