After chatting with a number of family members I have been informed that most of my family believes that I live in an icebox. My grandfather in fact told my uncle that in no way would he come visit me becuase he could potentially die of hypothermia!! Now of course I wouldn't let his happen... I have a wonderful electric blanket which I would willingly wrap around him like a muu-muu! This fact was then confirmed when my uncle called me up last night and said (demanded) that I stop whatever I was doing and go turn my heat up to 70. Then I was to leave it there for the next month and he would pay the difference. Gotta love fam! :) Now I was able to talk him down into allowing me to turn it down at night and maybe off when my roomate and I are both gone, but it still cracks me up for a number of reasons.
1) I have always been cold. No matter what is happening, unless I am in a sauna or something similarily designed to make you sweat, I'm chilly. So for me to be sitting wrapped up in 1 or 2 blankets while watching tv is not insane, and I truthfully enjoy the coziness it provides. The only time this does get annoying is when you're trying to do something like blog, read, eat. You know the normal stuff. And frequently I still do these things and end up with icicle hands. There have been a number of times that I have had to stop chatting with people because I had to put the computer down! But eh, getting away from a glaring screen every few hours is not a bad thing.
2) For my entire life I have never seen heat above 68 degrees! At my home the heat would turn on around 7 or 8am to 68 and then around 6pm at night it would go down to 55. Now as soon as I got old enough to understand what was happening I was pretty much existing in 55 degree temps becuase a kid is always out of the house by 8am for school and by the time I got back and sat down for whatever the heat was off or turning off and the temp very quickly sinking. House has lots of windows. Now my father (who set the heat) never experienced the chilling cold because he went to bed extremely early! (up early as well but...8pm bedtime is just ludicrous to me).
These temps were engrained in me, and even though sometimes I would get pissed and turn the heat up it never did that much, and a body gets used to it. So going into my college apartment I did the same thing. Whenever I turned the heat on I would put it at 68 and at night I would turn it down to 55 (if I remembered, which I usually did b/c my bedroom had the one rogue heater that would go on no matter what and it usually got so hot that I had to open my window! ). This apt as well absolutly sucked at insulating so I stayed used to being cold, under my blankets or accepting body heat from others. :)
3) Now that I have spent 22 years used to this pattern it seems very odd to me to change it now. Especially since I don't believe in wasting excess energy and the only rooms that are very cold even at 65 or 68 are my bedroom and the living room. WHich I have found remedies for. Now it would be nice to get up without an ice cold nose, and it would be kinda fun to be able to move around at night and not feel like I'm setting my head down on an ice block every time I move it somewhere new. But hey, spring will come sometime. And plus, I love sleeping in slightly colder temps.
4) Energy?? I know that it takes a lot to heat it back up but does it take the same to keep it there hour after hour?? potential research for this afternoon.
So a very big thank you goes out to the uncle for the idea, but I don't mind bundling up. And if I'm ever shivering too much a shower is fantastic to warm you right up! Plus I have a trip to LA planned out in just about 3 weeks!!! That'll keep me going!! Woot woot rockett!!
No comments:
Post a Comment