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

[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.