In Which Mall Security is Made Unhappy

I can honestly say I hope the weather improves...

For more than the fact that my gas bill is going up, and I'm cold all the time (my desk is right by the front door and the door is Not Well Insulated), and Darcy hates the wind, and her gloves are too big, and she keeps losing one and we have to backtrack to figure out where it fell, and my joints ache and my head is stuffed up.

Last night it was both cold and raining, and that was more than I really wanted to expose Darcy to. We've made her come with us on our walks despite the cold - since what else are we going to do? Can't very well leave her alone in the house for twenty minutes... I'm not calling a baby sitter for a 20 minute walk either. And I don't want to walk in shifts.

So, we drove over to the Mall last night to do our walk. I haven't really measured the mall (I'm afraid of having the FBI show up if I ask the mall for their dimensions, like they did to some poor fifth grader who asked the state for information about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel for part of his class project and they decided he must be a terrorist, looking to blow up the bridge.) but decided that if we walked for twenty minutes, that should be just about right.

Miscalculation #1: While it was cold and wet outside, it was hotter than the inside of Satan's pants in the Mall. So, walking was both more difficult and more uncomfortable while I'm wearing a damn 14 pound winter coat and it's plus 9,000 degrees.

Miscalculation #2: You wouldn't think Thursday would be a big mall day, and it wasn't too bad, but there were an awful lot of brat packs walking five and six abreast, teenagers who are all either yelling at the person farthest away from them, or talking on their cellphones (to the person 4 people away from them?) or telling the cellphoners to shut up... or telling the yellers to shut up, they're on the phone do they MIND?

Miscalculation #3: Two adults wearing trench-style coats and not actually going into any shops appeared to make security nervous. After our first circuit of the mall, we actually had a security guard following us around.

Miscalculation #4: There are still shops in the mall - although not as many as there used to be (at least 6 shops were gone out of business and another 5 or so were going out of business) - and we ended up stopping a few places to get this and that, or look at sales (After we finished our 20 minutes of walking, since shopping doesn't count as an AP) Which meant our little 20 minute walk turned into an all-evening affair. We got home around 7:15 or so, after leaving the house at 5:20.

So, I hope the weather gets better. Or I'm going to need to think of something else, because honestly, this just ain't working...