The heat is on
This fall I’ve been engaging in the popular annual New England sport of thermostat avoidance. The idea is to see who can be last to turn on the central heating in house or apartment. Last one to do so wins.
Wins what? Nothing but bragging rights, and a slightly reduced heating bill.
I’m not sure why I play this game, except I always do. For a while it’s perfectly fine. All I need is an extra sweater; no problem. Later on, maybe another layer underneath, perhaps an extra T-shirt. And then some thicker, more comfy socks.
And then one day, suddenly (and this year that day came about five days ago) I realize I’m keeping my down jacket on when I come in from the outside. Keeping it on not just for a few minutes, but indefinitely.
That’s the moment of truth. I surrender, flipp that switch from “off” to “heat,” set the temperature level, hear the low and reassuring rumble of the blower, and feel the cozy warmth return. Ah!!
Oh, why not:
You held out much longer than I could. Mine has been on for over a month or so. Of course I’ve just moved to Indiana from Texas, so I’m a wimp.
I thought my dad was the only one playing that game. At a certain point, even us cheapskates realize that “We have the technology”.
I share your pain as you are forced to “burn” money for months!
Hope you got your leaves raked before the first snowfall. Those suckers absorb water, and can be a pain in the neck if you have to finish the job in the spring.
What happened to Arsenio anyway?
I play the same game with air conditioning down here in the south during spring. Memorial day is like my record holdout so far. Heating is maybe half the cost of AC so the incentive to abstain isn’t as great.
I win!
I lived in New England for five years, and never turned my heat on once. (True story.) My landlord couldn’t believe his luck.
Of course, it helped that I spent literally every waking hour in the lab, and only returned to my apartment to sleep, so there was no point in turning it on…
Wow, I’m impressed that you’ve made it this long. I went to college in northern New England and was thankful that the dorms were a bit overheated. After that, I moved to Virginia where I’d generally hold out until just after Halloween before I needed to turn on the heat. Now living in northern Nevada (where the first snowfall is usually in October), I rarely make it that far. If the temperature in the house dips into the 50s, I know it’s too cold for me and I usually give in and turn on the heat.
Ugh, I don’t see how you stand it. I do not know if you are experiencing the same thing we are – but here in Tennessee we just smashed a long standing record for a low temperature (and I bet if we kept record low high temperatures we would have done that too). Our official low was 17 last night – we normally only have a week or so of that in mid-to-late January. Lows are normally in the high 30’s and low 40’s (our high today was lower than our average lows).
I also had a trip to Boston last month and was quite happy the inn I stayed in had good heat (actually was in Concord in the Colonial Inn – they were working on the roof so I got upgraded from their smallest room to a cottage. It was quite pleasant the little bit I stayed there, darn business trips when you get that type of upgrade). Though the receptionist did say it was cold for that time of year even in New England. Since I’m a software engineer and what I was working on was in the server room I spent most of my time in a humidity/temperature controlled environment that was highly pleasant.
Of course, being someone born and raised in the deep south cold isn’t something I do well so heats on when it gets low at all. There is really only a VERY short window of time where the windows are open.
But then I’ve never been one to try and push environmental comfort – that is one of the great things about living in the age we currently are in. If I want to do that whole thing then I will go camping or hunting where the whole experience is oriented towards that, otherwise modern living for me. But then, I also spent from about the time I was 12 to around 26-27 working in a land surveying crew where you had no choice but to deal with the elements (my parents owned said company and I liked the money – especially being 12-16 and having a steady income that wasn’t based on my parents whims *and* made a govt mandated minimum wage). Given that I have no desire to go through all that for any reason whatsoever.
And then some thicker, more comfy socks.
I’m at that stage here in the Georgia, Neo.
Nope! Occam’s Beard, I have you beat! Have lived in NYC for some 30 yrs; 10 in my current apt. My building heats up so much that I keep windows open, and have a fan running 24/7 — even when it’s as cold as it is now (the high here was 32° today. w/ wind chill was at best, 24°). Have NEVER turned the heat on in all these years!
But I’m afraid I make up for it in the hot months. I grew up on Miami Beach — which means A/C constantly. I can’t stand to be hot! One can always add a layer when it’s cold, but when it’s hot, you reach the point of nothing more to take off….
I have no sympathy
(I joke)
I would remind you all that starting this year it’s your patriotic duty to enjoy keeping that thermostat as low as possible, along with paying higher taxes, if you’re in that obliged and privileged minority. Who would dare think of dreaming of something especially evil, like an extra lump of coal in their stocking this Xmas? Jumping jacks anybody?
My in-laws live just north of L.A. in one of the few climates where neither heat nor A.C. can remotely be considered necessary. (They do have heat, but when they turn it on, it’s only the way people sometimes turn on a gas fireplace: for conscious comfort; they turn it off before they go to bed because the cycling of the furnace fan disturbs their sleep.)
We live in what I consider an ideal climate for four-season-lovers: southern PA. Snow in the winter but not the bitter cold of the Midwest or New England; not-dry heat in the summer but not the wring-out-your-hair humidity of the Gulf; and spring and fall about as perfect as you can get. We keep trying to get them to move here; they won’t, because “it gets cold!” or “it gets hot!”. Explaining about the miracle of Climate Control Technology is a wasted effort…
And that said, bully for you, neo, for resisting! You are a woman of fortitude. (Have you seen the blog Gender Analyzer that Insty linked to this morning? I plugged in your blog and the site is absolutely sure you’re a man. We all know better: you’re just good stock.)
We’ve had our coal stove and oil furnace running for a month now. It was THREE DEGREES this morning in our little corner of upstate NY. Where is global warming when you need it, I ask you?
Where is it? Unfortunately mrs w, (as you know) global warming is more of a state of mind, and like everything else these days, it’s relative to the heat generated by excessive left-wing hot air; Everyone will have to wait for spring for the Return of Global Warming…
“…global warming is…relative to the heat generated by excessive left-wing hot air;…”
That’s perfect! Have to remember that one. Thanks!
“…global warming is…relative to the heat generated by excessive left-wing hot air;…”
That’s perfect! Have to remember that one. Thanks!
csimon, I bow to your awesome performance.
As a Westerner who lived on the East Coast for a while, I was always amazed at the tendency there to overheat in the winter, and overcool in the summer. Stepping out of 20 degree weather into an 90 degree room, or conversely leaving a humid 95 degree day to enter a 58 degree room (in both cases verified with a thermometer), always seemed to make things tougher than they had to be because an appropriate weight of clothing for outdoors (e.g., wool slacks and sweater, or summer weight slacks and short sleeve shirt) became wildly inappropriate indoors.
Jamie: I hadn’t seen the blog gender analyzer, but I’m not surprised at the results.
When I first started blogging, before I had a photo on the blog, everyone who came here (all ten of them) seemed to think I was a man. That was also before I had any posts up about my experiences as a ballet dancer or trying on clothes or that sort of girly thing. In fact, one of the original reasons I put my photo up there in rather short order was to make it crystal clear that I am a woman.
I love that the Gender Analyzer also thought I was a man, in spite of my two recent posts on (because I’m not just female but a seventeen-year-old girl at heart) Twilight. Hilarious! It makes me want to find out what the criteria are: if you write clearly, grammatically, and intelligently, are your chromosomes assumed to be mismatched? Or is it that only men lean right? Silly folk.
But anyhoo, I love the cold weather for the same reason csimon seems to prefer it: you can bundle up in every article of clothing you own to get warm, but if you’re too hot, you can only get so naked.
A bit OT, but this warmed the cockles of my heart.
The Grucci Fireworks Co. decided to stand up for Christmas: they’ve had ENOUGH.
The Staten Island Christmas Boat Parade organizers decided to ban the word “Christmas” from the festivities altogether. Grucci, disgusted by this display of mean-spiritedness, bigotry, and holiday-hijacking, said they could jolly well do without the fireworks, then.
I wrote them an email to thank them, at this link:
http://grucci.com/contact.html
This Christophobic lunacy is way out of hand. We’re the only religion that is forbidden to speak its OWN name at OUR OWN celebrations! And if non-Christians find our holidays so “offensive,” they can jolly well stop horning in on them and taking them over.
Good grief.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/20/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-75/
The above link shows in part along with the Steve McIntyre work why the 1930’s truly was the hottest decade this last 100 years…..
Global cooling is on the way… 🙂
Thanks for the link to the lively performance by Glenn Frey!