Weekend Plans Post: Was Last Year This Cold?
I work with a couple of kids from Puerto Rico and a kid who moved here from Florida and they were talking today about which of them was the coldest. It was the guy who happened to be the skinniest, which, I suppose, shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
It is cold enough that I almost wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I mean, I didn’t… I agree that the skinny guy is probably the coldest but, seriously, it’s *REALLY* freakin’ cold.
We have a denim duvet cover for a king-sized duvet that we keep around for emergencies. It’s way too big, doesn’t fold more than twice, and weighs about as much as a small car. It’s absolutely wonderful when it’s too cold out except, for the most part, the house is always in the 60s anyway. So you want to get under that big huge blanket and feel it weighing down on you like you’re getting x-rays at the dentist in the late 90s and then, somewhere around 2 in the morning, you wake up in a sweat because it’s a kabillion degrees under there.
Which is nice until the second night that it happens and then you get up to pee and move the gimungous duvet off to the side of the bedroom in the dark and then you have to have a conversation about either putting it away or putting it somewhere in/convenient just in case there’s another cold snap next week.
(Oh, there’s another cold snap next week.)
So I told the guys “just invest in a good blanket, no, thicker and heavier than that. You’ll only use it a couple of weeks a year, but those couple of weeks make it worth it.” And they told me stories about using all of the blankets in the house. Ah, well. They’ll learn.
This weekend should be a little less cold before cold snap #2 comes down from Canada. We’ve got a friend coming down from Denver tomorrow for dinner and I will be making a cheese ravioli piccata to celebrate and I picked up one of those frozen Heath Bar Apple Pies from the freezer aisle for dessert. OOOOH! I SHOULD GET SOME CHEDDAR CHEESE FOR IT!!! So I’ll be picking up some cheddar cheese for it as well tomorrow.
Saturday we’ll have Maribou’s buddies coming over for some breakfast so I’ll get to make some bacon and eggs and… oh… I made cinnamon rolls last time so biscuits, I guess. Unless I see some *AMAZING* bread for toasting.
And Sunday will be spent in prep for the week to come. One sprint ends, another begins, the circle of life continues.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Sun Time”. Photo taken by Maribou.)
supposed to be a bit warmer here this weekend. I’ll take it, though it would be nice for it during the week ‘cos having to put on my giant heavy wool coat and then drive across campus and then walk a ways to go to my classroom-in-exile is getting old. (Yes, I’m still salty about this. No construction has yet started in my building, after they chivvied us out before Christmas and kept yelling at us to move and store any supplies or equipment we might need)
I don’t know what I’m doing this weekend. Right now I’m dealing with a sinus thing (pain, congestion, and periodic sneezing) that’s either mountain cedar pollen (yes, even though it’s cold) or perhaps mold in one of the horrible buildings I have to teach in now
Yesterday I thought I had a tooth “going” but then I realized it was all the teeth on that side that hurt, and that the pain came on fairly suddenly. So at least I don’t have to go and get prodded by the dentist but it still kind of sucks.Report
Our newish house built less than 20-yrs ago is probably only really specced to handle weather in the 20s…. which here in the Valley is about right. But, when the weather dips into the aughts it struggles to keep up. Little things start to malfunction; ‘hey, is that draft from the window? never noticed that before,’ ‘who thought these high ceilings were a good idea?’ a laundry room pipe freezes (it’s unfrozen now), and the upstairs HVAC in the unheated attic crawl space (counter-intuitively) fails to ignite so we wake-up to indoor temps in the 50s. Not catastrophic or anything (yet), but you can feel the house complaining about the lack of foresight. We need things back in the 30s as God intended for Virginia.
This weekend is a do-nothing weekend after last week’s Daughter #1 wedding. We’re people’d out.Report
Oh yeah. Our house was built in 1971 and I have no idea how the previous owners coped with the heat and the cold. Over the past 20 years we’ve replaced windows, re-insulated the attic, added AC, replaced the entire HVAC system, and insulated the garage over which two bedrooms are situated. We’ve managed to make the place quite pleasant regardless the weather outside, though during this cold snap I reinforced the drapes on the big front window with a couple of blankets and the back door remains closed unless the dogs are outside.Report
Insulation is one of those things where modern stuff is so much better than historical stuff and it’s not because of some mystical wonder technological development, it’s more “just don’t do the dumb-but-simple thing you used to do”Report
Replacing windows is such a rush.
We have a mix of casements and double-hung (originally to manage cost), and I can say with the existential metaphysical certainty of 20-yrs living with both, I’ll never buy another double-hung window ever. I dream of replacing all of them.
But really, my new home fetish is now ICF; Lady Marchmaine and I have looked at building an ICF cottage on the property… but is seems we’re not actually sitting on Scrooge McDuck piles of gold. The cost of building — and this is me, who signed a contract to build this house in 2006… the actual literal peak of the previous boom — is beyond outrageous. Still, I covet those 12 inch cement walls with passive heating/cooling and sound proofing (but we live next to a train).Report
2 words: electric blanket. Turn it on 30 mins before bedtime and you’re in heaven.Report
I used to have one of those and it would feel so good as I went to sleep but I ‘d inevitably wake up in the middle of the night over heating and soaked in sweat.Report
5 words: wifi enabled heated mattress pad.
Two different sides, programmable to turn on before you go to bed and turns off so you don’t wake up in a pool of sweat.Report
That sounds expensive but I’m sure if I tell my wife about it I will immediately see the charge appear on the family credit card.Report
Just tell her it has micro-plastics … I understand that this is the new kryptonite for women.Report
Isn’t a plug-in outlet timer a whole lot easier?Report
Sir, it has bluetooth.
…but more seriously the nice thing about programming it is that it has both sides of the bed – so my wife has it set to ‘bake a potato’ and I have it set to, put some warm embers under the covers so my delicate skin doesn’t touch unheated cotton.
Can’t do *that* with a single plug.Report
We had a dual control one. My wife didn’t like the heat so I just never even hooked her side up when I got the blanket out.Report
That’s analog bluetooth.Report