Like every other blogger north of, say...Phoenix...I'm going to take this opportunity to bitch about the weather.
It's cold.
Two days ago when I left the house for work at 1 pm, it was 60 degrees. I contemplated wearing a jacket instead of my coat, and then decided it would cool down by 11. When I left the hospital at 11 pm, it had indeed cooled down to a balmy 12 degrees farenheit. Even for you Canadians, I think that's cold. For us here in the Mid South, it's shockingly cold. And while I was at work, the wind had apparently whipped around at 70-ish miles per hour. Pretty much nothing in the yard was where I'd left it that morning except the tractor.
And remember that tree I was trying to take down before it blew over on the house? The good news is that I took down the parts that were hanging over the house. The bad news is that the rest of it blew over and fell across John's crappy shed. But the good news about that is that I hate that fucking ratty-ass metal shed,. It pisses me off every time I look at it. Maybe now I'll have an excuse to get rid of it.
So now it's bitterly cold. And for an added degree of difficulty, our LP tank is hovering around zero. When it actually reaches zero it's going to become mighty chilly in our house.
We actually called the nice folks at FerrellGas and asked them to come fill it up. We even paid them $500 for the privilege. They told us their guy would be here in 1-7 working days, which seems like an excessively large window, but...okay.
But the FerrellGas delivery guy actually showed up in only 2 working days, which should have been good, but he actually arrived in the middle of that driving rain/hail storm driven by the aforementioned 70 mph winds. He decided that the ratty-ass shed was in his way and he couldn't reach the tank. He said he was willing to come back and drive across the yard to get to the tank, but not until the ground dries out, to which Lori replied, "Like when? In April?"
But conveniently, it's been so bitter cold that the ground is now frozen. I'm trying to entice the FerrellGas delivery driver back before the rain or snow or hail or whatever mke it impossible to deliver again. It's sort of like getting our feral outdoor cat to come in the house: I have to make soothing noises and rattle the kibble bowl for her before she'll consider it. Maybe if I rattle my debit card the gas man will come back.
In the meantime...I'm nervous. I know some of you in hardier climes shrug this stuff off, but I'm a total weather weenie. I hate to be cold. I can make myself go outside in it if i know my reward is to come back in out of it in the end, but to be in a cold house is just about my definition of hell.
P.S. Huh. The realtor just called. I think we just bought us a $13,000 house in Cairo. I guess it's time to shop for a furnace. Goody. Now I have another reason to be nervous. EEEK!
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9 comments:
12 degrees in winter in Ottawa is pretty standard. Let me know when it gets to minus 20 or so and then we're talking a fairly cold day. If the wind kicks up as well, then some of us don't stay outdoors for long periods of time.
Ah, but you people are insane. You don't even have a place like Arizona to escape to when it gets cold. What Canada needs is more equatorial property. Have you considered annexing Mexico?
So, when you all move to Cairo, what will you do for a living? That is the one thing that would concern me about a new venture like that.
We'll do what we do now, in the places we're already doing it. We'll just have to drive another 20 minutes to get there. I don't think it'll be that much of an extra hardship. Lori's only working 3 days a week these days, and I love to drive. I'm not thrilled about burning up more gas, but we're old...we'll retire soon.
Canada has been talking for decades about taking over the Turks & Caicos. We're all for it, they're all for it... No one understands the hold-up. Meanwhile, we just borrow Florida and Cuba and other places Americans don't want to go anymore.
Congratulations on the house.
And I understand your cold phobia. I just spent two days without a furnace in Montreal. Though we were lucky, the appartment never got below 15 (about 60F).
Like XUP says though. 12 degrees is fairly standard for winter here. D'you think your next President could be persuaded to annex us? I want to live in AZ.
Still. Ugh.
20 minutes more on a commute is not bad. We have people in the PNW that commute 1-2 hours one way because they live on Islands and down South. I have a rule about commuting that I had to break with this job. If it takes me more than 15 minutes to get there, and that is with traffic, I don't want to work there. Now I drive 30 minutes and soon it will probably be 45 minutes. I think that just sucks.
Jazz, you only THINK you want to live in Arizona. A couple of years there and you'll be sick and tired of all that beige stucco, all that sand, all those thorns on everything, the third degree burns on your neck where your earrings singe themselves into your flesh, driving with only your fingernails on the steering wheel and the permanent leprous ooozing heat rash under your boobs. Not to mention the unfriendly people and the god-awful freeway traffic. It IS close to Mexico, though, and Indian casinos pay out way better than big glitzy casino congolmerates.
Cedar, there are lots of places to work close to Cairo. Cape Girardeau, Missouri and Paducah, Kentucky (both actual cities with malls and restaurants and movie theaters and museums and stuff) are about 30 minutes away. Marion and Carbondale (where we work) are about an hour. The difference between a Southern Illinois commute and a typical city commute is that everything here is measured in miles per minute where 1 equals 1. Sixty miles? Sixty minutes. I commuted over an hour to and from work in Tucson to get to an office that was 13 miles from home. This is better.
Today's weather is less cold but more hazardous. For a couple of hours we had big, fluffy snowflakes that were beautiful and stuck on the ground in pretty, soft patches. Then it turned to sleet. Then it turned to ice. My car looks like a someone dumped a massive snowcone or a slushie on it, except for the places where it's glazed over with an inch thick sheet of impenetrable ice ... like the mirrors and the door handles, for instance.
I love weather. I once spent 3 weeks in Tobago and almost went out of my mind because the weather was exactly the same each and every friggin' day (80 degrees and sunny, the redundant weather man would say). Arizona would make me nuts, too. I like never knowing what's going to fall out of the sky on any given day.
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