So here I am in Washington DC for a 30-hour in-the-city visit (46 hours door-to-door). I am massively overscheduled: one seminar (albeit a brown-bag one), one three-hour dinner, eight hours of meetings I have my laptop to draft an introduction for an article due next week, four papers by graduate students to read, three books for when my willpower is weak and I find myself unable to either read gradute students' work nor write my own, my shorts and t-shirts, and my dress clothes: dress shoes, wool slacks, two dress shirts, two ties, and... my heavy tweed jacket. It is 10:00 AM in late June in Washington DC. The temperature is already in the low 90s with huge humidity here in Dupont Circle, heading up to a high of 97 degrees, and at the moment one question is foremost in my mind:
Why in God's name do I have my heavy tweed jacket, rather than my lightweight navy blue sportcoat?
There are several possible answers:
Climate illusion, n.p., a mental delusion, often held by Californians, that the climate in every place is like the climate where they live.
Thus on some level I believe that, no matter where I go, the daily highs will be 80s and sunny in the interior and 60s and cloudy near the coast (in summer), or 60s and mixed sun and clouds everywhere (in winter) save for those 20 days a year when it actually has the audacity to rain. This "climate illusion" leads me to do things like show up in Washington DC in the summer with no formal coat save my heavy tweed jacket (which is appropriate for Berkeley in the summer, but for noplace else in the world off the west coast that is south of Edinburgh).
Still, it could be worse: there was the time I showed up in Minneapolis in early February with only a lightweight sweater as outerwear...
Posted by DeLong at June 26, 2002 11:25 AM
So that is what it is called: "climate illusion". Living in Seattle does that to you also. I always pack a rain parka and sweater no matter where I go or what month it is, but rarely a short-sleeve shirt.
A related malady is my secret lust to own a topcoat again. I have not had one since I went to college in Chicago. There is at most one day per biennieum where you can wear a topcoat in Seattle and not look like an idiot.
Posted by: RP Johnson on June 28, 2002 02:02 PMIf I were someone who made a living analyzing and forecasting the economy, while teaching others to do the same, I am not sure I would broadcast my inability to forecast the range of temperatures in summertime Washington. :)
Posted by: George Zachar on June 28, 2002 02:23 PM