January 20

There's a storm coming. I can feel it. The sky is clear now, but it won't be for too long. The barometric pressure is dropping.

The human weatherpeople can feel it, too. The professor mentioned it at the beginning of class, and said that he wished that we were going to the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids today, because if we had, we could see how they prepared for a lake-effect storm. They had a big responsibility, because people can't control the weather so they have to tell everyone what to expect so that they can get ready, and they aren't always right.

Then we moved on to talking about different types of snow. There are lots of different kinds, and how it appears when it lands on the ground depends on a lot of factors. A lot of ponies don’t know that sometimes snow is made up of individual crystals, and sometimes they’re all bunched together, depending on the atmospheric conditions.

We always like to start off the year with big flakes, and then follow that with a heavy snow to blanket and insulate the ground. It helps out animals who burrow in the ground—as strange as it seems, snow is a very good insulator. It's because it has a lot of air in it, since the legs on the flakes keep them a little bit apart. But if you make them too big they insulate really well at first, until new snow falls on them and squishes them down into slush or ice, and if you're really careless you can wind up drowning animals in their burrows.

Humans can't control what kind of snow falls, of course, although it turns out they can make it at ground level. There are places called ski resorts which make their own snow when there isn't enough falling from the sky, and it's something that I'd like to see some day.

All they're lacking is a way to get it all up to the sky, and then they'd be all set. We've got similar devices to start snowstorms and to put snow in clouds, if we need to. All precipitation needs an ice nucleus in order to start forming (although the dewpoint is really important, too). Maybe they could figure out how to put their snow machines up on clouds, or hang them from balloons or airplanes.

Like everyone else, I kept on looking out the window for the snow, but it wasn't supposed to start until tomorrow.

By the time class was over, the sky was almost completely overcast, and the temperature had dropped a little bit. I thought about grabbing a cloud and bringing it to the professor’s office, but I think I’ll wait. I’d rather have one that the whole class can enjoy, and it’ll be easier if it’s a bit colder out. Plus I'm not sure about cutting a cloud out of a sky full of them. It might be easier to get one that's on its own. I don't know how well Earth clouds stick together.

I learned that Wednesdays are called ‘hump day.’ I thought that had something to do with camels, but it doesn’t. People view the first half of the week as a hill to be climbed, and the second half as the downside of that hill; therefore, the ‘hump’ of the week is Wednesday.

I guess that makes sense; their calendars start on Sunday and end on Saturday, which means that a weekend is both the beginning of the week and the end of the week. They keep their weeks pretty close to the lunar cycles, but not their months, which have an arbitrary number of days in them. It's kind of confusing because not all months have the same number of days.

Before Equestrian class started, I overheard one of the students mention that there had been a Democratic presidential debate on Sunday, and I'd missed it, because I was flying. I'd meant to keep up with them . . . so much for that. Maybe there will be something about it in the student newspaper. Or I could ask around, and see what people thought.

For once, class kind of crawled by a bit. The teacher thinks it's important every now and then to have tests, and I don't get to take them (I would have had a perfect score).

It was a two-part test, and it took up all of the class. She gave them a portion of Clover the Clever's speech to the Second Unity Council and had them translate it into English, and after that they had to translate a passage from The Last Unicorn into Equestrian.

I'll have to read the book. Humans have had limited knowledge of unicorns and pegasi for thousands of years, despite never having seen one before we arrived. I don't understand how that could be; we had no concept of humans until fairly recently. There are minotaurs in Equestria which are kind of similar, but not really. And I've heard that there are monkeys which are like small furry humans with tails, but I'd never seen one.

Of course, most of the stuff they knew was wrong. Except that you can catch a unicorn with a golden bridle. That probably works; a lot of unicorns are greedy and like shiny things.

Before I went to dinner, I went to the library to see if they had the book. My badge can also be used as a library card (which is something humans have; we don't need cards to prove who we are).

There were so many books! The library has three floors, and all of them have shelf upon shelf of books. They were not organized in any system which I could fathom, so I had to turn to a library page—who is a librarian's apprentice—to help me. Their system was so complicated that they had a computer that just kept track of what books they had and where they were. It said that the book was PZ4.B3657, which is a silly way to keep track of books. Who can remember that?

This is what happens when accountants get their hooves on a well-organized system. It becomes unworkable, and pretty soon you need librarians and their apprentices to find just one book.

I didn't have time to read all of it before dinner, but I started it.

Sean asked me when I wanted to come over and watch Star Trek. I should do that. I don't want to be a bad friend. Christine hit him in the shoulder when he asked, but I could tell she wasn't being serious. She also asked him if he was going to show me the movies, or the TV series. He said that we'd just have to wait and see; it was going to be a surprise.

No cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.

--The Last Unicorn

Pre-read by reprovedhawk, who's willing to help me out with climate science stuff.