How cold do you feel?

[cjsmith]

I am firmly convinced that chilly is colder than cold. Cold hisses across your skin; chilly gets into your bones. Cold means a parka in the snow, and thin watery sunlight; chilly means trying to type with mittens in your office, and sniffles, and a deadline.

California has chilly. Of all the places I've lived*, northern California does chilly in the biggest way.

*eg Boston

(From a comment elsewhere.)

Comments

i think i might have had something to do with this. :-)

[eeyore-grrl.livejournal.com]

i think i agree. ask me again next year after my third *winter* here.

this isn't COLD. i KNOW cold. this isn't it. but STILL it's chilly, damn chilly even (as i accepted once i realized my heat was Not On). it is not NEARLY as cold as it is where i have friends and family. it will not be unless we hit another ice age, but it's *worse* because... i don't know why... because it is less expected? because...there is no pretty snow or (dangerous, yet BEAUTIFUL) ice storms?

cold means you dress for the snow. chilly means you are between seasons stil???

Re: i think i might have had something to do with this. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

cold means you dress for the snow.

I think that's really it. Cold means you're prepared.

If it's COLD, you get a coat and you turn on the heat. If it's merely CHILLY, your house has no insulation whatsoever (because the people that built it had only been in this state during May and June) and the heat won't do a blasted thing.

Re: i think i might have had something to do with this. :-)

[eeyore-grrl.livejournal.com]

i'm with you. utterly.

in the north east (and other places, but i know the northeast) we PREPARE for snow.


halloween costumes are made to be, at the very least, *warm* if not insulating. that is the weather pattern.

when i was in college people would be wearing shorts once it hit 35F. i'm not *that* crazy, but come on... i live in san jose, california. it is winter. when it is 52F in my bedroom it counts as Fucking Cold!!!!!







right? :)

Re: i think i might have had something to do with this. :-)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

And on the days when we stay under 40, I can deal better. I just, as you say, dress for it. What I hate is wearing warm socks and a turtleneck and a sweater and bringing my down parka with the shell to work in the morning, then having to carry it all home, sweating, on BART at 3, when the temperature's 60.

Re: i think i might have had something to do with this. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely.

In New England we used to have a similar (though reversed) problem in the summers. Walking to work I'd get soaked with sweat, and then I'd spend the first hour in my office with deep shivers because they had the air conditioning set to fifty-nine and all my clothing was *wet*.

[sirdiesel.livejournal.com]

I think it's the other way around. For me, "chilly" means "I wish I had worn a sweatshirt. Oh well." "Cold" means "Wow, I'm gonna run and get a sweatshirt." "Freezing" probably involves a jacket and/or hat.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

For me, "chilly" means "even with this sweatshirt my fingers feel like ice". "Cold" means I'm already wearing a coat, so I'm warm. :-)

[eeyore-grrl.livejournal.com]

where ARE you? chilly used to be 37F when i was kinda cold, but not, yet, suffering from hypothermia. now that i'm in san jose, ca --> my definition has changed. :)

[sirdiesel.livejournal.com]

I'm from NY but go to school in NC. My definition of "cold" has definitely changed since I've been here. I'll say it's "freezing" when it's in the 40s, and I'll even occasionally mean it.

[kateo.livejournal.com]

I think I see where you're going with that, and I agree in spirit. But now that I've gone back and lived through another winter in Chicago after living in the Bay Area, I don't mess with "cold." ;-)

Seriously, I'm still traumatized by waiting to catch the Ashland Avenue bus every morning in the dead of winter, and I was wearing at least two layers all over my body, including two pairs of gloves, multiple scarves, god knows how many sweaters under my heavy coat, leggings under my heaviest pants, multiple pairs of socks, etc. And I would stand there waiting and want to die because of the cold. At the very least I felt like crying and wouldn't dare for fear my tears would freeze in my eyeballs.

Ugh.

And now I complain about being chilly in Nashville. I'm such a wimp.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kreie/709215.html

[kateo.livejournal.com]

That was great. :-)

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

At the moment (4:43 AM) I'm sitting in a chair under an Easy Up in the San Mateo County Courthouse plaza. I'm wearing nylons under my jeans, wool socks and boots, a waffle-weave cotton long-sleeved undershirt, a cotton turtleneck, a Columbia fleece, a Gortex shell, gloves, a scarf and a hat. I have a fleece stadium blanket wrapped around my lower half. I'm drinking Lipton Cup-a-Soup (Chicken Noodle) and I have a 25,000 BTU space heater about four feet away, turned up to "High".

I'm fucking cold. I'm also a wimp. But there ya go.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've always been a wimp about temperature -- low, at least. I don't ditch my jacket until everyone else is in shorts, sandals, and baby-doll tees. I swear to you I stayed warmer in New England than I do here. It's harder to prepare for it here.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

To me, chilly is shivering, hard to get warm, but not completely intolerable. Cold on the other hand, is biting, bundled up braced for nastiness, hard on the lungs to breath. At the extreme end of cold, I'll often use the term freezing, sometimes with another gerund that starts with "f" in front of it. ;-)

I've been amused by all the people in the SF Bay area posting about the cold weather. Here in the Midwest, we're used to weather changes between extremes daily, particularly in the spring and fall months.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I've been amused by all the people in the SF Bay area posting about the cold weather.

Have you ever lived in a house that had *no insulation whatsoever*?

Contrary to popular opinion, it gets below freezing here. It did last night. I'd love to see all the colder-than-thou folks deal with a house that simply will never get any warmer than 53.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

*no insulation whatsoever*

Blech. I can understand being cold in that situation. Not that I didn't before, and I wasn't trying to be a "colder-than-thou", just amused at seeing people who, for the most part, seem unprepared. I've been out there enough to know it gets farging cold.

It's the same reaction I have to people here who seem to forget how to drive in snow.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

just amused at seeing people who, for the most part, seem unprepared.

Yeah. After another generation or two, every house built shoddily by stoopid people in the fifties will have been lived in by someone with enough extra cash to insulate it. :-)

It's the same reaction I have to people here who seem to forget how to drive in snow.

Yeah. I, too, have stories along these lines...

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Or in the summer: It's 95 degrees? Why not, you know, turn on the air conditioner?

My house has two furnaces. The one that works is in the front room with the giant windows. The one that rarely works is near the bedrooms, but rarely works. I'm not sure how well insulated the house is, but with all our glass, it's almost irrelevant. In the summer, we bake, but because a pitched roof was added to this house ten or more years ago, we're happier than our neighbors with flat roofs.

Air conditioner? *snurf*

No. There's not even more than one window a wall one would fit in, and the idea of central air is a strange fantasy.

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

Silly California girl! :)

I'm from the Buffalo area. We know from cold. You'd rather be chilly, trust me. :)

Winter around here never seems to end. Almost every winter, I cut fingers off a pair of gloves so I can type comfortably in my office building. Even at 70°, the house feels cold. Etc. :(

Thank God winter hasn't started yet...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Silly getting-into-a-contest-about-it girl. I've lived in Boston. I've spent time in Buffalo, and in Maine. I've been cold too. I *hate* chilly.

[abenn.livejournal.com]

I can relate to what you say, and I agree it's the damn houses with no insulation. When I lived in the Northeast, I could at least count on going inside and warming up. Here, I'm coldest when I'm trying to go to sleep at night.

The exception would be the couple of years I spent in the northernmost part of NY (St. Lawrence River Valley) living alone in a house with nothing but wood heat-- a house that also had inadequate insulation because it was basically a board and batten cabin. I had a full-time job then, too-- and let me tell you, no matter how expertly I banked my woodfires (and I got quite good at it) that house was quite chilly each evening. One day I did a poor job and the fires went out. When I got home, my kitchen thermometer read 18 degrees F. By some miracle, the pipes did not freeze, I still don't know how.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeowtch. :-O Something tells me that the builder of that cabin had a wife who stayed home...?

(Maybe the pipes had enough heatmass that they got cold more slowly than the air. Whatever the case, glad they didn't freeze!)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of one of the stories that stands out most in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book "The Long Winter." She and her sister are in their bed in the attic loft thingy, cuddling under piles of quilts to stay warm, then in the morning she awakens all warm and cozy, thinking spring had come.

But the storm had blown a hole in the roof, and snow had come in and covered the bed. It was unmelted because the room was so cold and the quilts insulated it from the heat of the girls' bodies, but it kept the girls warm.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

No insulation is a biggie. I live in an Eichler, which because of the way it is situated does not get much sun on the sheet glass windows in winter. Talk about a heat sink. Brrr...

It also does not help that I live with people who are utterly incapable of shutting the door to the (unheated, uninsulated) garage when they go out there, or even when they are back in the house.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I just do not get the Eichler thing. I understand that people find them aesthetically appealing (though I don't, particularly), but did Mr. Eichler ever try to pay the heating bill for one? What was he THINKING?

I keep hoping that after another generation or two, every house built shoddily by stoopid people in the fifties will have been lived in by someone with enough extra cash to insulate it. But the Eichlers, I don't know what can be done about those.

utterly incapable of shutting the door

Ah yes, you have children. ;-)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Floor heaters. Mmm.

Joe's cats say thumbs up for floor heating.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd enjoy floor heating, especially if there were (insulated) walls and a (n insulated) roof involved. :-)

I'm surprised my kitties haven't discovered the joys of my electric mattress pad. That thing is wondrous. It should be kitty heaven!

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

I just do not get the Eichler thing. I understand that people find them aesthetically appealing (though I don't, particularly), but did Mr. Eichler ever try to pay the heating bill for one? What was he THINKING?

It's surprisingly non-awful, at least my Eichler is. We noticed a signficant improvement in that by insulating the roof, which seems surprising on one hand (you'd figure the windows would dominate, but even R9 foam roofing makes a palpable difference). We also have our house sitting with a pretty good facing, light coming into the living room via the atrium.

Our worst winter gas/electric bills, with the hot tub and everything, come in about $225.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

By insulating the roof, I mean we replaced the tar and gravel roof (when it gave out) with a foam roofing material that's rated at R9. Also helped in the Summer.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the door is a biggie. Sounds like we have a better orientation to our Eichler. Do you still have tar and gravel on the roof?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

If they only work in good orientations and after the roof gets replaced, I'm not giving Mr. Eichler huge thumbs up for design. But maybe I'm picky.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to orientations, but I can say that I didn't consider the electric/gas bill "bad" before we redid the roof.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Here, in Illinois, chilly is when you need to grab a light jacket. Nippy (or the much preferred Nipply) is when you really should be wearing long sleeves, but you are out and your shirt is so cute!

Cold is January and perhaps February when the temps go to the ones. Fucking Cold is when we go below zero. Damn Fucking Cold is when the windchill goes to -20.

*grin*

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I'm not the only one who says nipply? :)

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Hee! Nope, it's a designated temperature here! And it's an easy one to spot. ;)

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, my mother would always tell me, "Put on a sweater, it's chilly out." Or at most, "Put on a jacket, it's chilly out." So to me, chilly has always meant a little bit cold, but not very.

Cold applies to both absolute temperature, and to my perception of temperature. "Brr, it's cold today -- only 30 degrees" can be said when I'm warm and toasty in my blanket-cloth robe and fuzzy slippers, but "Brr, it's cold!" can be said when it's 62 degrees and I'm outside with no jacket or sweater.

I love exploring what the same words mean to different people. Forgetting that connotations can very widely is the basis of sooooo much misunderstanding and miscommunication!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Chilly means the same thing to me, I think, as it does to you. I'll use "it's cold" for 30 degrees but since I know I'm such a coldness-wimp I'll probably say instead "I'm cold" for the 62 degrees without a jacket.

The phenomenon I was trying to describe was that I *feel* colder when my environment is merely chilly than when it is truly cold. For some reason, chilly sinks in in a way that cold doesn't. (Probably because "cold" comes along with a coat or functioning heat in a house!)