Salon post: The weather out there...

[jenett]

Welcome to a return of the salon posts, something I did for a while several years ago, and keep trying to pick up. We're going to try this thing again. (Check out the tag for previous posts)

The idea is that it's an open conversation, with a few topics to get people started, but you are welcome to talk about anything else that suits you. It's a public post, anonymous commenting is turned on (but see the note below about picking a name people can use to refer to you)

Topics of the week

Top on my mind, of course, is the weather, because I have to go out and excavate my car. (I'm just outside of Boston, and there's at least 9" of snow out there.) On the other hand, I have a second snow day in a row from work, so that's not horrible.

How does the weather affect you? What weather do you particularly like or dislike? (Or like in certain circumstances, like "Snow is great, but not when I have to shovel it.")

Recent things I've been doing:

I am continuing on my rewatch of Classic Doctor Who, and am about 20 minutes into The Five Doctors at the moment.

And then working my brain around to writing, which works better some days than others.

House rules:

* Consider this a conversation in my living room, only with a lot more seating. I reserve the right to redirect, screen, and otherwise moderate stuff, but would vastly prefer not to have to.

* If you don't have a DW account or want to post anonymously, please include a name we can call you in this particular post. (You can say AnonymousOne or your favourite colour or whatever. Just something to help keep conversations clear.)

* If you've got a question or concern, feel free to PM me.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I am continuing on my rewatch of Classic Doctor Who, and am about 20 minutes into The Five Doctors at the moment.

"No, not the mind probe!!!"

:-D (Enjoy!)

I wouldn't mind some snow - I live in a valley by the sea, so even though I'm in the north of England rather than the south, I rarely get any to mention (even by UK's mild standards). But I am sure I wouldn't want to shovel it, either, so I wish you all the best with that.

[jenett]

The rewatch has been lots of fun! I had seen pretty much every episode that aired in the US, but I had seen a lot of the early ones only once.

Shovelling is not my fun part of snow. I miss the previous apartment in Maine, where they plowed most of it, and if I didn't do it first thing in the morning, snow removal fairies (in the form of my landlord and his preteen son) would often clear my car off for me.

[author_by_night]

First, can I borrow this idea? I really like it, and I think it's a great way to get more people engaged.

I like snow better in places that are used to it. Here, practically a sprinkle sends the whole area into a frenzy. (For reference, I live in Maryland, 45 minutes outside Baltimore, about an hour and a half from Washington DC.) And because everyone is panicking, I start to panic, even though I know that it's probably only as big a deal as people decide to make it.

(The irony is that when no one panics, we actually DO get a blizzard. But that's the thing - you need a balance between "oh my god a flurry GO TO THE GROCERY STORE BUY A SNOW PLOW" and not even bothering to take any measures whatsoever.)

I like warm weather, except for air conditioning. The problem is that I Feel The Cold. So if I wear a summer dress, I'm fine outdoors, but the moment I walk inside I'm so cold I can't even think. And the whole "just layer" thing doesn't work. First, often I'll be cold enough that even if I do wear jeans and a sweater inside an A/C'd building, I'm shivering like I have a fever and starting to feel hypothermia symptoms. (I'm exaggerating. Barely.) Second, if it's hot outside, what am I supposed to do once I leave? Sometimes it's easy enough to work with - for instance, if I'm going to work, I can just dress for work and change when I get home. But if I plan on going somewhere in between, and it'll be outdoors, it gets trickier.

What's interesting is that I swear this is also a Maryland thing, because I've been to other places and while sometimes you still need a sweater if you feel the A/C more than other people, it's fine. Maryland has hot summers. We should be able to handle them. But nope, in all honesty the moment temperatures go above 68 degrees, the A/C comes on. Brr.

... so basically, my ideal weather season is when it's the middle of spring. Cold enough that the A/C's not on yet, warm enough that I don't have to lug a heavy coat everywhere.

[jenett]

Absolutely you can borrow it! (And feel free to mention here if you set stuff up - when I did the original round, I found that picking a day of the week worked really well, and just setting the thing up. And people have great conversations in the comments!

Oh, yes, I can totally understand that about Maryland. I have a very deep respect for the weather (living in Minnesota will do that for you: if you ever want to read about a truly terrifying storm and incidentally why we have all the weather warnings we do now, The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin is an excellent reason to respect the weather thoroughly.

I have a fairly narrow range of temperatures where I'm comfortable and I'm particularly heat sensitive, so anything much over 75 (or about 80 if I'm outside and there's a pleasant breeze) is Too Much. I don't get terribly cold while outside unless it's really frigid, but if I'm sitting and it's under about 65, my fingers will freeze up, which makes typing hard.

My previous job often varied temps by about 15-20 degrees inside depending on what part of the building you were in, so everyone did the 'wear a light top and have a sweater or heavier layer handy' thing, and many of us also had small heat or fan things.

The current job is much better even if my office tends to run warm *and* our facilities folks are really responsive if we go "This thing, this is weird, can you make it better?" (Or the more important "The stacks or archives HVAC is being really weird, make it stop" since we maintain specific environments in both places for preservation reasons.)

[anne]

That "it's 70 out, better put the a/c on 50" is a universal Southern thing. In Texas I used to keep a laceweight alpaca shawl in a sandwich ziploc in my purse. Movie theaters, eek...

[worlds_of_smoke]

I hate, hate, hate the cold and very humid heat. The cold makes all my arthritic joints hurt (the facet joints in my spine and my goddamn hips). And humid hit is evil, especially since my body can't thermoregulate well. When it's humid out, the sweat doesn't evaporate and I get heat exhaustion so. fucking. easily. I always carry a 24 oz water bottle around with me, but it isn't always enough.

My ideal weather would be in the upper 40s to mid 60s. Chilly enough to be comfortable, without being fucking cold.

(I'm from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan so, yes, the upper 40s is quite comfortable for me. XD I wouldn't even wear a hoodie in that weather, unless there's really chilly rain.)

[jenett]

Humidity is indeed so evil.

And hee, on the 40s. I routinely don't bother with a coat (especially if I'm just going to be outside from parking lot to work and back) until about then, and it completely baffles a bunch of the people I worked with. I am very "I spent a dozen years in Minnesota, this is not yet brisk."

[mindways]

I get cold... very easily. I usually start wearing long underwear in September, and put it away sometime in May. I know of exactly two people who feel the cold more than I do. (One's my dad.)

As such, winter is not my favorite season.

It's gotten a lot better since I realized the delta between me and everyone else, and started breaking out long underwear and toe-warmers and sweatshirts when *I* need them rather than when most people do. But the cold season still drives me a little spare by its end.

(Our honeymoon was in February in the Caribbean. That was *lovely*.)

I don't mind the cold as much if I can choose my times-of-engagement with it. From my POV, the main problem with snow is that it forces shoveling (don't get to choose when I'm going outside to be cold) and makes transit harder (requiring more time in the cold). The physical labor of it's only an issue when the snow is heavy or copious, and even that's been mitigated by getting a snowblower.

There are things I love about winter, and I wouldn't want to do without it. Really, what I'd like is January and February as they are, but September/October's weather extending reliably through the end of December (plus maybe a week), and May's weather starting up reliably in early March (or maybe late Feb). 6-8 weeks of deep cold would be much more fun if it weren't surrounded by another 8 weeks of just-plain-cold on either side.

[jenett]

Oh, definitely, on the times of engagement.

The thing I find really hard about winter is having to juggle the 'have to dig out the car so I can get to work, but digging out the car will take ALL MY SPOONS'. (The current job is awesome because work from home occasionally in such cases is okay, unlike most library jobs where in person staffing is a core thing and has no real substitute. Which at least can buy me a day to shovel when I can pause between - I can only do 15 minutes or so at a go, before I have to go inside and focus on breathing for half an hour.) And then, as you say, the fact that all the other transit takes longer and is generally less predictable.

I do miss the electric snowshovel I had in Minnesota (which is great if you don't want to deal with the upkeep on a snowblower and/or storage) but I don't think there's anywhere to plug one in at my current building.

[anne]

Having lived in both extremes, I'd much rather be cold. You can always add wool, but you can't strip down to your skeleton. Of course now that I'm in Boston, where nobody's heard of central air, I get the worst of both worlds! But my 1905 three-decker was designed for air movement, so it's not as bad as it might be.

On the other hand...I don't like shoveling snow. I usually get the maintenance guy's teenage son to dig my car out, but I have nowhere to go for the next week, so I think I'll let next week's thaw take care of it for me. Ray Magliozzi said it doesn't hurt, and who am I to argue?

The other thing about winter is I get to wear the wool socks I make. Cue wearing my wool socks out! I just found a hole in the heel of my favorite pair (leftover Kureyon, so nobody is surprised). Today's plan is to stay inside and learn to darn. Fortunately I have leftover leftover Kureyon! (They lasted for three years of very hard wear, including machine washings and a couple of machine dries. All hail wool!)

[jenett]

Yay, learning new skills! Yay wool!

And yes, I'd rather have to add layers (which being me and running hot and being well insulated besides, I almost never need to, but.)

My AC is a portable machine (because weird windows) which works fairly well. I definitely need it for a large chunk of the summer (where in Minnesota, I really needed it for about 3-4 weeks, and in Maine, I needed it for about 3-4 nights, and made do without). But my bedroom window is also ground level in the courtyard, and people smoke out there in the summer, so a fan won't do regardless.

[wohali]

My grandmother, who lived a few years in Chicago for university but settled back into her birthplace of New Orleans, said she'd rather it be hot all the time. Hot and humid, even. I guess growing up in that environment, pre-AC, teaches you a lot.

I was born and raised there too, but have lived most of my life in the North now, and now up in Canada (today's high: -18C!). I'm with you. Cold, layer. That said, I can handle hot+humid (Toronto's summers in a nutshell) way better than most of the locals can.

[tjoel2]

I have lived in both extremes as well, and also would much rather be cold. I currently live in the Sierra Nevada's just below a ski resort and I've also lived in Vegas and Phoenix. They summer I moved to Vegas it was literally 120 degrees. I've never felt anything like that and really never want to again.

If you're cold you can curl up with a quilt or two, a cat or two and have a nice fire. If you're hot, you can be naked in front of a fan with a cold drink and still be hot! Hate it!

[silveradept]

The weather here is mostly rain, which can mess with your sense of time if you're used to a more orderly progression of the seasons. It will snow once, maybe twice, a year here and otherwise just create sheets of ice in the cold. I miss the snow pretty significantly, even after all this time.

Strangely, though, just about every house and apartment I have seen has a fireplace built into it. I don't understand why, but they're there.

[jenett]

Sheets of ice are awful.

I did rather like Maine, which despite being further north than Massachusetts, gets a thing where you get snow, and then it gets sunny, and the snow melts off pathways if they're adequately shovelled. Some exceptions, but it was suprisingly manageable after living in Minnesota (where you don't get ice so much as deeply compacted snow that doesn't begin to disappear until at least April.)

[redbird]

I'm okay with snow: the problem with what we just had was the blowing snow, and I don't like serious wind chill. Layering works for a lot of things, but really cold air makes my lungs unhappy.

My current solution for layering is, rather than a flannel shirt, a t-shirt and then a relatively thin long-sleeved silk shirt. That plus the parka will do for a bit below freezing, but I think I'm going to add a cardigan when I go out today. The advantage of this is that I only have a couple of flannel shirts that fit, and I've got lots of t-shirts and about eight of the silk shirts. And a few years ago I was in Montreal, it unexpectedly warmed up to 10°C (50 F), I was wearing one of those silk shirts (without the t-shirt underneath) and my parka, unzipped it, and was comfortable standing around waiting for a bus.

[jenett]

For the breathing part, I have a Turtle Fur (sample here) which is poly fleece in a double layer, and which doesn't freeze up when you breathe through it (but can feel a little overwhelming sometimes.)

(Round 2 of shovelling done, of 4. Whee. I dislike the part where I can only do about 15 minutes at once, so there is a lot of 'put on all the gear, go do the thing for a short amount of time, come back, take off all the gear')

[florianschild]

I feel bad for everyone being hit by the storm along the east coast, but it's nice to not be the leading weather story on the news anymore (I live in Erie, PA where we recently received ~5ft of snow in 3 days). Still, something about the cold temperatures mixed with the rain and all the water looks really horrible, and I think I might rather take the snow.

Lately, I've been devoting a good amount of time to my reading habit. But I am resolving to take up a new challenge: making homemade pizza. I've never done it before but I've really been craving South Philly style tomato pie, and since they don't have it up here in Northwest PA I'm going to give it a shot.

Also, as a new friend I just wanted to say hello and I love this idea!

[jenett]

Is that Lake Effect country? (I'm guessing so: I have a friend who's in Niagara, and some similar issues that mostly pass her by but hit nearby areas.)

Homemade pizza is an excellent resolution. I haven't done much baking at all in this apartment for a variety of reasons, but I used to really like doing pesto sauce with chicken and fresh mozzarella on top.

(And also! Welcome! And yeah, I love having a post that is explicitly "Chat about whatever!" People seem to really enjoy it.)

[anankastick]

I live near Phoenix, AZ, and people out here are definitely smugly posting screenshots of their weather apps to "the folks back home" since almost everyone seems to come from somewhere else (myself included). It's 75F+ and sunny here right now, which is actually a bit warmer than usual. I hate it, as I hate all weather above 65F. It's a long story why I live here, but rest assured I am waiting impatiently to leave! I grew up in the midwest and lived there most of my adult life so far, too. The only thing I really can't stand about winter weather is having to excavate, as jenett said, my car. I hate chipping ice off of my windshield and for years I had a car that developed frost and ice INSIDE the windows because of faulty sealing. UGH. That being said, I am grateful not to be dealing with all that right now, as increased chronic joint pain issues, I suspect, would not be improved by cold, wet weather or constant shoveling.

Like florianschild, I'm spending a lot of time reading lately, and working on building daily writing back into my routine (not blogging/journaling--that doesn't count for me). The last few days I've been trying to prepare myself to return to work on Monday! Our winter break goes out a week past New Year's, so it's back to the educational grindstone in two days...

[syntaxofthings]

Wait, frost and ice inside a car are faulty sealing? I wonder if that means that my new car that I got this summer (to replace the one I had 10+ years) won't have frost and ice inside? Oh, that would be marvelous. I hope you can get back to the midwest soon! Arizona is a climate you have to want to live in for it to be bearable.

The weather is frightful

[syntaxofthings]

I'm also thinking about the cold right now, as it's currently in the negatives and spiked above 10˚F on Tuesday, but hasn't gotten much above 3˚F all week. I really have to get groceries today, and I'd like to walk somewhere, because my hips are in so much pain and I hope that some movement will at least loosen up the muscles or something. I have been inside for three days avoiding the cold. I was just texting a friend that people shrug off winter in Minnesota, but honestly, we could do with a lot more self-care in this weather, because it is exhausting to have to cope with this kind of cold.

I used to love the summer, but lately it makes my disabilities flare as well. Grrr, climate change.

Re: The weather is frightful

[jenett]

I prefer winter to summer - summer makes my lungs cranky *and* my brain go away, where winter just makes things cranky.

I am delighted to announce I have finished shovelling out my car. It took me an hour of actual effort (not including breaks) though I managed to do it in three sets rather than four, with sitting in the car to catch my breath several times on the last one. (Note to self: in future cases, do that again, it worked well.)

Now, fortunately, I don't need to go anywhere until work on Monday, and I am getting groceries delivered, because that will wipe out all my physical cope until at least Monday.

[wohali]

Doctor Who: I have seen every ep a couple of times over now, some many times more, so if you wanna chat about anything, hit me up. :)

Rifftrax did a live riff of The Five Doctors that I couldn't get to go see because they no longer simulcast into Canada. But! It'll be out on download/DVD soon. So, keep an eye out for that.

The Five Doctors is such a poorly written ep...I think it was JNT who said that "you'd think the multiple-Doctor episodes would be better, but mostly, they're worse." Tom Baker refusing to appear in it didn't help, either. Still, I have a fondness for it that I can't explain.

[jenett]

Having finished it since posting this morning, I agree. It has a certain charm to it.

(And I do love the various iterations sorting each other out, and the Master being so very "This time I am telling the truth" And I love Sarah Jane and Susan's interactions, no matter how brief.)

[hitokage]

I live in South Carolina, have done for a couple years now, and this cold weather polar vortex BS can go die any time now, seriously. I ran away from the Midwest as soon as I could because I've always hated the cold (this is probably related to my borked thyroid, I feel it more), and I certainly wasn't expecting daytime highs to barely crest FREEZING down here in the South, goddammit. And yet here we are, freezing our tootsies and using space heaters to augment the central heating because this house has not been maintained properly for the last gods know how many years, so we're still finding and patching heat leaks as we're able. At least our utilities are included in our rent, or I'd really be upset about now.

Ah, classic Who. I need to carve out some time to watch that again, it's been too long now. T_T Somehow never enough hours in the day for all the things I want to get done, though. :/

[tjoel2]

I love the snow! And we currently have none. :( I live just below a ski resort, so that's not a good thing.

[jazzyjj]

What a great idea to have these salon posts. Regarding the weather, Chicago's been experiencing subzero temps for the past several days. The heat in my building has been screwed up for quite awhile, and it seems nobody can quite figure out how to fix it. We have radiator heat, which inandof itself is not a problem if you ask me. However, the pipes clang like crazy whenever the heat comes on. This clanging fades away after only a few minutes though, so I haven't found it to be such a big deal now that I've gotten used to it. The guys in charge of maintenance keep saying they're going to fix it, but somehow that hasn't happened. What's more, the heat cycle in this building is messed up somehow. I heard a couple days back that the app used to control our heat isn't working properly. I was basically freezing my tail off in here due to a broken kitchen window. Actually only the top portion of the window was broken, but one of our maintenance guys recently fixed that. I only like to touch snow and ice, but when it comes to traveling by foot you can count me out. I much prefer the warmer weather, and I like air-conditioning but only when it is truly needed. I have 2 window units here in my apartment, one of which was purchased only a couple summers ago. All righty then, I think that's enough from me for today. Lol I hope everybody had a nice holiday season.

[julian]

I gallumphed through the first three Doctors, and then Calluna wanted to watch with me, but we don't gallumph nearly so fast when we watch together, so I detoured around to starting with the New Doctors, so I'm now up to almost the present, with Capaldi's last season.

I do like Pertwee a lot.

As for weather, I rent and don't own, so I don't have responsibility for the driveway/stairs, so I like snow just fine, when it doesn't overwhelm the streets.

Basically, I can't think when it's humid and hot, and I really dislike Boston summers. With winters, I cope fine, and one can always put on more clothes, as opposed to summers, where there's a limit to that.

[jenett]

I like many of them, but for different reasons. (And actually, I think that's very early modelling for me, that things can change, but continue to still have good things in them, which as life lessons go is a really decent one, honestly.)

I am finding it really fascinating to watch how things change over time, when I'm binge watching in a way that wasn't possible with the original. I'm not entirely sure when I started, but sometime in July, so it's taken me 6 months or so to get to season 21 (which I just started) because I don't have it on all the time when I'm home, and I have paused for other things a few times. And that's with there being a couple of seasons where nothing else survived.

(And I am with you on the hot and humid being Not Desired.)

[rosefox]

This is a lovely idea!

I really like snow because it temporarily quiets the city in a lovely way. My mother and I have a tradition of going out for chocolate ice cream cones; you can see the snowflakes very clearly against the ice cream before you lick them off, and the ice cream doesn't melt all over your hand. Much nicer than ice cream in summer.

I am glad that we rent and don't need to shovel our porch/yard/thing or walk, but I didn't mind shoveling when I lived in a place where it was partly my responsibility. I was a teenager at the time, though, and hadn't yet acquired chronic arm injuries. These days it would be basically impossible for me.

Pushing the stroller through snow is, of course, impossible, but I carried Kit home from daycare in the baby backpack today and that was not too bad as long as I avoided the place where temporary sidewalk repairs had been done with big sheets of metal, which were pretty deadly under the slush. Some guy had put a trash can in the middle of one of them as a warning sign and was yelling helpful things at people: "Walk around! Take your time! Step carefully! Don't break your neck!"

Weather in general doesn't affect me very much as long as I can get a bit of walking in daylight every day. And when I can't, there's the light box, though it's not as good as actual sun.