The Heat
I break this regularly scheduled technoblog to talk about the weather. Well, everyone, it seems is starting to mention it and I've touched on it a couple times before, but I'm going to go into more detail here. The short version is, Winter sucks. Cold sucks more. I wish it was Summer again or that I was living on a remote tropical island. If you want you can skip the rest.
The first time I started thinking about blogging this is when I read Greg's blog refering to a post on Dominic's blog that I had passed over before:
If You Want Some Real Chill...
...come to Poland. Dominic amused me seriously by complaining about chilly mornings in Florida:
It is starting to really cool down over the last week. I know, how cold can Orlando get you might ask, but for me being from the islands, I still do not like anything below 80F. [dsuspense, Chilly Friday]
Still laughing (bitterly), especially after having run units to see how much Celsius 80F is... 26C!!! At the beginning of October we had temperatures dropping down to around 0C (they said though it was the coldest October for years). Now it's getting better, pretty warm actually, reaching 10C ;-)
Nice. Dominic is MY type of guy. I HATE THE COLD. Let me repeat that for posterity. BEING COLD SUCKS. I hate it. I hate Winter. There is NOTHING GOOD ABOUT WINTER. Hey, I really like snowboarding... but you know what, if I never went snowboarding again because I never saw snow again, hey, I could accept that.
Before I go into the reasons why I loathe the cold so much, here's some thoughts from Pascale:
What two words spell bliss for the apartment dweller? "Utilities included."
It's Fall, there's a distinct nip in the air. It's rainy and cold. My office was downright chilly today.
I got home at 8, and was greeted at the door by the distinctive smell of the dust toasting on my radiators. The heat is on!
I grew up in a cold house. I lived in underheated dwellings my whole life, until I moved to DC. Utilities included: T-shirts and bare feet in winter. It's decadent and wrong, I know. But I love it.
I left a message on her blog that ended: "Crank the heat baby. Turn up the mister until the windows fog. That's the only way to live. I'll be cold when I'm dead, but no sooner." Also, just to point it out...there is no such thing as "Fall" or "Spring". There is simply the Start of Winter, Winter, the End of Winter and Summer. And since I hate Winter you can see what an enjoyable guy I am for most of the year.
I grew up in various towns and cities all over New England and spent the years 11-22 in New Hampshire. NORTHERN New Hampshire. 1 hour South of the Canadian border (another reason why I hate the Canadians, those wackos seem to LIKE the cold.) In the winter, in the Mountains of New Hampshire, the sun goes down around 4 p.m. and it's pitch black at 4:30. You live in some grey semi-light netherworld for months at a time. I'm not even slightly exaggerating. I wish I were. It gets so cold you need to plug in your car overnight, or have a truck or some other vehicle that'll start to make sure you can jump start your car in the morning. 7 months of grey, cold and misery. Anyone who lives there are insane, psychotic, masochistic wackos (Hi Mom and Dad!).
Growing up in this freezing hell, we heated our house solely with a wood burning stove that we had in the living room of our 200 year old home - it was a School House at one point and our living room had 15 foot ceilings. Not particularly energy efficient. The add on sections to the house (where my room was) were insanely drafty... If it snowed in that dry, fine snow and the wind blew (not an uncommon experience living at the base of a small mountain) the snow would seep through cracks around doors or windows or walls and make little mounds of snow that you'd discover in the morning. My room, of course, was on the opposite side of the house from the stove. During the middle of the night - even if you dampened down the stove to keep it burning - it would get REALLY cold. So much so that the snow seeping in from the outside WOULDN'T MELT. My 3 or 4 homemade quilts I had stacked on top of me and my sweatpants and longjohns would barely keep me from dying of cold and to touch the "EMERGENCY ONLY" oil-heat was a sin beyond redemption. In the morning, I would never want to get out of bed. Sometimes being able to see my breath in my own ROOM. I would then get up (late) and go to the bathroom and jump in the hot water (thank god) but the bathroom was just as drafty as the rest of the house, so I would never want to get out of the shower. I'd stay in there until I ran out of hot water and then was forced out into the biting cold. I would get dressed quickly as possible for school and then go out and try to start the car (a 1978 Pontiac passed down from my grandmother), which would never start and always covered with at least 6 inches of snow and ice. My hair would freeze. I would drive like a maniac in the twilight viewing the frozen roads through a 6 inch slot in the ice I was able to scrape from the windshield so I wasn't late for school. I would arrive in the dark and leave in the dark. Daylight and warmth was a dim memory from years before... like a dream you had once.
I spent years living like this. I'm STILL cold.
I finally snapped in the Winter of 1993. There was SOOOO much snow that year I couldn't take it. I quit college. I quit my job as a reporter I got AFTER I quit college and moved to Miami. HEAVEN. Cold in Miami is like 50 degrees which happens like 2 weeks a year to remind everyone what a great life they have. Life in Miami is exact opposite than in New Hampshire. Up north, when you come in from the outside, your glasses fog up. In Southern Florida, when you step out of your air conditioned home/car to the humid outside, your glasses fog up. What a wonderful thing.
I had an ex girlfriend who loved the winter - she'd keep the window open a crack in fucking January and sleep naked. That's why she's an EX girlfriend. As fate would have it, my wife, if she had her way, would be the same way. Yes, Ana's a small little thing, but where I am always cold ("Turn the heat up") she is always too hot, ("Is that heat on AGAIN? It's like an oven in here!!"). Now that our third winter together has arrived, the battle of the 'stat is on once again. Me: up, her: down. "Did you touch the thermostat? It's freezing?!?" "It's a goddamn sauna in here!" We've sort of agreed to leave the thermostat at a hard-negotiated temperature of 26C. This doesn't make either of us happy, really. But that's okay. Lately, however, I've been able to pull the temperature trump card: The Baby. "It's a bit chilly in here, I think the baby is cold...". YEAH! I'm hoping he takes after me, but Ana says his first words are going to be "Que Calor!!" which roughly means, "Christ, it's hot as hell in here." We'll see.
Okay. So that's my thoughts on the heat. I'm all ranted out.
-Russ