sholio | This post has nothing to do with fandom, because I am COLD

This post has nothing to do with fandom, because I am COLD

This weather sucks. I had a mini-freakout tonight when I came home from work to find the fire was completely out in the boiler (we have a coal-fired boiler that heats the water that heats the house) and the house was freezing and I could not get the fucking thing to burn. For two hours. The problem with coal is that you can't just set a match to it; you need a fire of sufficient heat to make the coal combust. You are, after all, trying to burn ROCKS. And the boiler is outside, so I'm trying to start a fire in 40 below zero, where your fingers start hurting instantly when you take off a glove. I couldn't even get diesel-soaked cardboard to burn! Of course, the diesel was mostly frozen, which probably had something to do with it. You know that Jack London story To Build a Fire? Well, that's what I felt like. Only, minus the actual, non-metaphorical freezing to death. But I definitely felt like I was failing some sort of survival test if I couldn't even make a fire when I had access to a house full of burnable objects.

But! The coal finally caught on fire and the house is creeping up towards 60F (after I threw a screaming fit next to the coal pile, which was very cathartic but made the dogs terrified to come near me for an hour or two -- possibly because they were also familiar with the ending of "To Build a Fire"**).

**The protagonist tries to kill his dog so that he can crawl inside its carcass. From the look of MY dogs, that's exactly what they expected to happen.

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Yikes. *brrrr*

I <3 my temperate climate.

You know what's really hilarious is that I always believed that I lived in a temperate climate, until I moved to an actual temperate state (Illinois) for a few years. I just didn't really know what temperate meant. I knew we had a winter and a summer, and I just figured that 7 months of snow and cold was what everybody had to deal with.

See, and personally I think Illinois is already full of awful weather extremes, and not temperate at *all*. They have snow storms and sometimes need air conditioning during the summer from what I hear. Here otoh, with the exception of the odd cold snap, the average temperature in January differs from the average in July by less than 20°C, that is it will be slightly above freezing, sometimes slightly below in January but it's usually only freezing at night (and sometimes significantly warner, this January we had days it was over 10°C), and the average for July is something like 17°C with the average highs something like 22°C (though every now then hot days, or even weeks happen where it may be over 30°C). I really love the gulf stream, considering that my latitude is as north as southern Alaska.

It's sometimes a little odd to me to look at maps and see how far north most of Europe is, relative to here, because our climate is so much more extreme at the same latitude! I mean, I do understand (in a general sense) the climate whys and wherefores, but it's still interesting. I went to Italy with my husband on a business trip shortly after moving away from Illinois, and Italy is just about on the same latitude, but SO different in climate!

You're in Germany, right? I didn't actually know the winters were that mild -- I'd always imagined snow and such.

Well, there are parts of Germany, especially regions with mountains that have more snow, but I'm in Northern Germany, in Hamburg, which is near the ocean, so it is even milder, and it rarely snows. It's not uncomon to have winters without any snow at all. Though they do come with plenty of rain. Kind of like England I think, as far as the weather goes. The winters here are dark of course being that far north, especially since it's dreary and overcast so often even during the few hours of sunlight, and unpleasantly wet (no dry cold here) so you still want winter to be over, but it's not cold compared to how winters are in North America.

Oh dear god, I can't even imagine what being in that level of cold is like. If it gets to 10C I'm a complete and utter wimp; you are obviously made of sterner stuff than I.

Well, it's not like I have a choice. :D One of the odd things about cold is that, subjectively at least, the difference stops mattering after a certain point. -40 does not feel much colder than -20. Of course, it actually is colder and your body will let you know if you have to be out in it for any length of time ... but the shock of going from ten degrees above freezing to ten below doesn't carry on to colder temperatures.

I am horrible at making/starting a fire, and I've had lots of failed practice to show for it.

And that person is an idiot, you just cuddle up with one's dogs not kill them. We had sled dogs. Long fured and quite the furnace of heat when wrapped up with a good blanket, even better alive - because they keep the heat!

My dogs are spaniel mixes; they're very furry, soft and warm! Unfortunately, it's not much help when they're running away. :D

(You had sled dogs? How cool! So did we, when I was a kid! They have such wonderful personalities.)

My dad loved Huskies/Malmutes. Ours were mostly mixes and 'muts', but they had the 'look', and you know, that's really pitiful for a long haired big shaggy dog where we lived...... in the desert! (got coldish at night - but NO WHERE as cold as you are putting up with)

I couldn't even get diesel-soaked cardboard to burn!

Ummm... that's because diesel doesn't actually burn all that well.. certainly a lot less well than petrol.

However, I can certainly understand your frustration and the cathartic screaming fit... I did the same darn thing last night, though over something that seems trivial by comparison... my mouse wasn't working. *embarrassed grin*

Let me put this in context, however: I was part way through trying to edit roughly 150 photos with the intent to then load them up to PB and copy and paste the code into the multi-page con report which I had spent a couple of days putting together when my mouse died. And without a mouse, it was an impossible task. And I just so much wanted to get it done and finished last night. And the damn mouse didn't just die (actually make that two mice - my mouse starting crapping about and I phoned hubby and he told me where to find a spare mouse and that was a piece of shit too! And it kept stopping and starting working and I was having to move it sooooo very slowly and carefully so that the batteries inside didn't move a millimeter and lose their fragile connection and after the nth time that it died on me mid-process I kinda lost my rag and had a screaming fit whilst banging the damn thing against the desk! *sheepish grin* Scared the cats good and proper. :D

I sympathize with your mouse woes! I would have screamed, too. :D

Ummm... that's because diesel doesn't actually burn all that well.. certainly a lot less well than petrol.

*laughs* True! I think I was expecting it to behave like petrol/gasoline, though, and then it didn't! I'd close my eyes and stand back and throw diesel at the fire, prepared to run. And NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN, leaving me feeling like a total dork.

We have a little space-heater in the crawlspace under the house that uses diesel (technically, #2 stove oil, which is more or less the same thing) and I was absolutely terrified of that thing for a year or so after we moved into the house, until I decided to see what diesel actually DOES do when you light it. I filled up an old pie plate with diesel in the yard and threw a match into it.

The match went out.

Hmm.

Threw some more matches down.

Eventually I managed to light the fumes. And, wow, when the fumes torched off, it produced a column of flames higher than my head. But it's really difficult to get it to do that. And something I hadn't considered is that diesel has to be volatile in order to burn (the liquid state doesn't burn at all) and diesel at -40 is hardly volatile at all, compared to diesel at 70F which was what I was playing with.

Random silly petroleum-related story: The first year that I lived in this house, I was filling up a 5 gallon can with diesel from the gas station to keep the crawl-space heater running. WELL. It turns out that the gas station where I was getting it from actually has two diesel pumps, one which is a high-volume pump with a larger nozzle that's designed for filling up barrels and other large-capacity containers.

I didn't know that. One day I pulled up to the pump with the high-volume nozzle, by accident. (It was probably about 20 or 30 below.) I stuck the nozzle into the can and turned it on. It made this weird whistling sound and then it just EXPLODED. The nozzle jumped out of the can and shot a high pressure stream of diesel straight into my FACE.

I've never been so glad I wear glasses! They protected my eyes. I snapped my mouth shut, and shut off the pump as fast as possibl,e and then just stood there dripping diesel and trying to keep my mouth closed and not inhale, feeling like a total idiot. A total idiot in danger of frostbite, since petroleum has a much lower freezing point than water!

I went into the gas station and grabbed a handful of paper towels while trying very hard not to look at the attendant. I don't think he saw precisely what happened, since I was behind the pump and out of his sight, but maybe he was just trying not to laugh. Anyway, I slunk outside and wiped myself down and to this day, when I gas up my car, I stand back and off to the side, out of the potential line of fire. :D

Oh man, I shouldn't laugh but that story... the image of you casually trying to wipe diesel from your face whilst avoiding making eye contact with the attendant... :D :D :D :D

I'm popping into PC World on the way home this evening for a new mouse! :/ I can't be without my computer in the evenings... and I'm having to return the laptop (which saved my life last night) to my sister today!

P.S. What on earth are you doing up and online at this hour?!!

P.S. What on earth are you doing up and online at this hour?!!

It's only midnight Alaska time, and I don't have to work tomorrow. I'll probably be up for an hour or so yet. The house is finally getting comfortable, so I'm surfing and enjoying being able to feel my toes. :D

It was hilarious; even at the time, I figured that I'd probably laugh about it, once I got the smell out of my coat. Which took a while. :D What was really funny is that I also had to pick up some things from the store, and since we live a ways out of town, I didn't want to go home and clean up and then go back in (half an hour drive each way) and do my shopping. So I went into the ladies' room at the store and cleaned myself up as best I could with a wet paper towel, and then kind of crept around the aisles, putting things in my basket and trying not to get too close to the other shoppers. :D

Holy crap. I've never been anywhere near that level of cold - the coldest I've been was maybe 5 Fahrenheit, and that's including the wind chill factor. It is currently 20C here, which is nearly 70 Fahrenheit, so the only thing I can give you is warm virtual hugs and my one icon that has fire in it.

And OH MY GOD that story I am TRAUMATIZED. Poor dogs :-(

Perhaps oddly, I'm equally traumatized by heat! I would rather be cold than hot, because at least in the cold you can put on a sweater (or ten). When I lived in Illinois, I loathed the summers (100F and humid). I'd actually rather have my horrible winters so as not to have to deal with ultra-hot summers.

That story was in a book of short stories that I read when I was about 10 or so! It's stuck with me ever since, as you might imagine. I am pretty sure that story is ENTIRELY responsible for me being almost borderline paranoid about getting my feet wet when it's cold.

I prefer cold for the exact same reason, with one exception, which is during army courses. I only prefer cold when the alternative is cuddling up under a blanket in the heat, not waking up at 5AM in a wet tent. But since those days are long over, *points to default icon* <--I love winter.

just curious, where did you live in Illinois? I'm a bred and born Illinoisian. lol.

We were in Champaign-Urbana. My husband went to grad school at UIUC. Which part of the state are you from?

wee bit north of there, I'm in the Peoria area :D

Yeah, I know where that is! Though I never really got over that way -- we'd go down to Springfield sometimes, and of course up to Chicago, but I don't know if I ever made it that far west in the state.

I was in Champaign briefly three months ago, taking a bus to Chicago. Makes sense, right, take one bus from Peoria, down to Champaign, then transfer to another one up to Chicago? lol.

Makes sense, right, take one bus from Peoria, down to Champaign, then transfer to another one up to Chicago?

For certain definitions of "sense", I suppose! :D

Greyhound succeeds at being confusing! :D

You’d laugh, the first time that I laid a coal fire was in a post-grad student flat. My friend had lived their previously and had left a bag of coal. She’s told me that to run a fire cost about £1 a night. I’d, of course, asked how much a bag of coal cost – answer “six-ty seven” pounds (which was over a month’s food bill). Okay, I’d looked the bag, about the size of a giant bean bag, did the math and carried my ten lumps of coal into the flat. Prepared a pyramid of kindling and scrunched up paper and spent the rest of the evening throwing matches at my art display.

Next night, Dad’s on the phone and I had to keep putting the phone down to tend the fire -- the pyramid kept falling apart. He’s going: What are you doing? The fire, Dad.

This fire was better than television.

It was also freakin’ cold.

My mam and dad visited a month or so later. They’d stopped by the uni and I’d given them the key, so I could study late.

I came home to a veritable inferno. Dante had nothing on this. It filled the whole grate. The front room was so hot you had to take your coat off!

A month’s supply coal!

The parents are going, what’s the matter?

Me: Student grant up in flames! Global Warming! Horrors. Sixty seven pounds a bag.

The parents crease up laughing.

Turned out it wasn’t “six-ty seven” pounds it was “six to seven pounds” a bag.

Edited 2008-02-05 09:48 (UTC)

Heeeee~! Oh dear. And yet I think it's a perfectly understandable mistake to make! We didn't have the foggiest clue, when we bought this house, how much coal we'd use or even how to get the stupid stuff to burn.

It does seem like a coal fire has precisely two operating modes: way too hot, and not nearly hot enough. :D

It does seem like a coal fire has precisely two operating modes: way too hot, and not nearly hot enough. :D

ain't that the truth. There's also the delay factor. The number of times I came home late at night and did the “shall I light it or shan't I” debate? And then you’d the scurry off to bed early, because the time that it would take to warm the room, it would past bedtime.

I've done -20oC but I haven't done -40oc brrrrrrr. It does help to have a dry cold as apposed to a damp cold. I suspect you have the dry cold.

You're absolutely right about the dry cold -- we have a *very* dry cold (Fairbanks is technically a desert; our average annual rainfall is about twice that of the Sahara) and it does make a big difference. A damp cold at -10C, with a wind, is more cutting that -40 in dry still air.

woah! ::chafes your cold hands::
poor you. I'm glad you finally got the fire going...

Oooh, that's COLD! Glad you got the fire going in the end - and I can fully understand the fit of screaming! Best to let it out and get it over with, I say (and do)!

Poor doggies...I bet they're glad you didn't follow the book's example! As if you could have!!

Makes me glad I live in the UK - people may complain about the weather here, but we've got it easy compared to others in the world.

oh, wow, yay for cathartic screaming fits and finally getting the fire going.

*shivers*
We hit -40 a few days when I was in 6th grade. I love winter, but I think I'll keep our 20's and 30's.

I know what that's like! We usually have trouble starting up the fire in the wood stove that we have. (It's an antique, and it's tiny but it puts out!) Once, it took my younger sister about Two Hours to start the fire! She had to sit on the floor the entire time, waiting for the stupid thing to light up. When it finally did, we all cheered. (Well, she cheered, we just smiled a lot and congragulated her.)

That sucks, coming home to that! Definitely understand the need for Screaming Fits, they really DO help *nods* Glad you got the heat back on. Being that cold is just wrong. And kudos for being able to get that puppy fired up, if it'd been me I'd probably froze to death because I don't touch those things--had a heater blow up in my face when I was a kid so I'm a bit gunshy now :-)

Firstly, I had to laugh about the Jack London story, back in the winter of 1974 we were without power a week cause of an ice storm that hit the east coast of the U.S. I remember thinking of that story as I was trying to keep pipes from freezing (and me too). Glad you finally achieved fire. Living in Chicago area now and sick of listening to people complain about the weather.. It just isnt that bad, we have lived in both International Falls, MN and northern Ontario. Now they know WINTER..as do you!!! Stay warm. Annie

HHhghkjdhdhlhlhjk BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. When the temperature matches in Fahrenheit and Celsius, that's when you know you're talking REAL cold, and should consider just switching to kelvin. XD

I mean - EEEP. My part of the world (well - not where I am right now, where I can sit around outside in the sun in a skirt and t-shirt and read which is UNNATURAL and really nice, but you know what I mean) can get pretty cold, but - I have never been anywhere NEAR temperatures much below -25C. Which is - what, -13 F? So. Eek. Um. Please don't freeze to death? (You had to remind me of "To Build a Fire", too - creepy, scary, terrifying story! But at least the dog is alright at the end. *g*)

H-holy crow, I don't know how you deal with that. I don't think I could. *shiver* It hasn't snowed in the area of California I'm from in forty years, and it only snowed twice in the 4 years I was in Texas. I like the cold, but not that much!

*hands over a large mug of hot chocolate*

Poor glacierdust! :( I am so glad to hear you got that fire lit finally. Hope it keeps going this time. How often does it go out?

Sounds like you're in for a bitter run of weather too... last time I talked to mom it was 22 below in the mornings at least, at home. Should've known that you'd be braving even colder temperatures.

At least the days are getting longer? ^^;

Yeah, I can actually deal just fine with cold as long as I'm not also going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. And the dark is okay as long as it's not insanely cold. So, yeah ... it's do-able! It's light until after five, these days.

I didn't know it was getting that cold down south of us! But as cold as it is here, that's not surprising. The whole state must be under a high pressure system.

Well, people are complaining and freaking about the cold here in Arizona - I woke up to heavy frost on the lawn and apparently it was briefly snowing in the northern part of town - which is something for here. Still, I'll take this over trudging to high school in northern Illinois or college in central Ohio.

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This post has nothing to do with fandom, because I am COLD

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