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How cold do you feel?
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.)
California has chilly. Of all the places I've lived*, northern California does chilly in the biggest way.
*eg Boston
(From a comment elsewhere.)
i think i might have had something to do with this. :-)
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. :-)
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. :-)
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. :-)
Re: i think i might have had something to do with this. :-)
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*.
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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.
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I'm fucking cold. I'm also a wimp. But there ya go.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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.
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(Maybe the pipes had enough heatmass that they got cold more slowly than the air. Whatever the case, glad they didn't freeze!)
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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.
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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.
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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. ;-)
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Joe's cats say thumbs up for floor heating.
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I'm surprised my kitties haven't discovered the joys of my electric mattress pad. That thing is wondrous. It should be kitty heaven!
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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.
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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*
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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!
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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!)