I hate temperature fluctuations
The one thing that drives me absolutely nuts in terms of the weather is temperature fluctuations. I don't mean the changing of the seasons, though to be honest I would much prefer it if it was always around 22 C (72 F - I hope the Americans appreciate all my efforts to do conversions for them, even though they may be wrong). No what I truly hate are the rapid changes in temperature, the kind where it goes from -5 C (22 F) to -25 C (-13 F) within 24 hours. I swear that happened at least twice last winter in Edmonton.
Of course these types of temperature fluctuations are inevitable; thankfully we live in a modern society and have good shelter from the elements. Most importantly to those of us in northern climates is heating, I assume that my regular readers from Hawaii and Malaysia aren't overly concerned with home heating systems, cooling yes, heating no. But it's comforting to know that no matter how cold it gets outside you can come home to the ideal 22 C (sorry, you only get each conversion once per blog). Or if you live with my parents, the slightly less comfortable, 16 C (62 F). It's kind of funny that when I visit them it's the only time that I pack and actually wear sweaters, and I curse myself each time I forget to bring the slippers (ok, I forget every time) that I never wear at my own place.
The house where I lived in Edmonton had a fabulous digital thermostat. It was set to keep the house nicely warm when most people were home. And by nicely warm I mean around 24 C (75 F), but what would you expect with multiple roommates from Iran, India and undetermined African nations. Hell, some of them started wearing tuques as early as August. Oh, if you are wondering about the link (you must be Canadian) because it's to inform non-Canadians what a tuque is. In the US it's called a hat, they are an odd bunch down here. The real benefit of the digital thermostat was that you could control the furnace temperature to cool the house a bit at night, to around 18 C (65 F) which made sleeping very comfortable, and saved energy (what a noble idea).
Well, my current residence is in an old apartment building, so it's kind of lacking in things like digital thermostats, or even double-pane windows for that matter. No this place relies on hot water radiators to heat each room. The up side to this is that I do not have to pay for heating (at least not directly, I know it's paid for in my rent, any bets on whether or not my rent goes up next year?). The downside though, is the ability to control the temperature, and I swear, there is someone fucking with the water for the radiators just to make it as hard as possible to keep a stable temperature.
Last week I didn't spend all that much time at my place. So when I came home one evening to the rather balmy temperature of 26 C (80 F) I figured it would be a good idea to nearly close the valves on the radiators and crack the windows a bit to get things to cool off. That night I didn't spend the night at home and I only returned to my place with Deirdre after Thanksgiving dinner at her parent's place, a couple of days later. This was when I realized that the temperature in the apartment had dropped to about 14 C (56 F), needless to say nobody was very happy with this. So I cranked open the radiator valves and closed the windows; the problem is that the water doesn't flow continuously through the radiators, it's sporadic; the only time I know for sure that the water is flowing is 4 am; the air bubbles knocking in the radiators woke me up constantly in April. (For those wondering about the semicolon use, I'm reading "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", a really good book on punctuation rules, so does anyone know if I used the semicolon properly?). So because of that the apartment wasn't much above 18 C the following morning, so when we left, I figured I would leave everything as it was.
Well upon returning to my place Monday night, I found that I was now the proud tenant of the tropical apartment, it was 30 C (85 F) in there! If my place was a German school I would have donned my swimsuit. Now I don't know about you, but when I'm not the type of person to sweat when sitting under a ceiling fan, but Monday night I was. So I fiddled with the radiators again, keeping the windows closed this time, by morning it was a bit chilly, but I had just gotten out of bed, so I expected as much. Well it seems that I hadn't achieved the proper balance just yet, because when I came home the apartment was 16 C, it reminded me of my parents place (I dug out the slippers right away).
I finally have the temperature right where I like it, 22 C. I'll let you know tomorrow if I wake up in a tropical hell or frozen wasteland.
8 Comments:
Just to firmly cement my geek factor, I have also read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." The semicolon use looked a little excessive to me. It's probably a little more usual to use only one in a given sentence; more than one can look pretentious. ;)
I know exactly what you mean about the hot water radiators! I had those in my last apartment, and I had only just got them set to the ideal level when I had to move out, four years later. :) Mind you, there was most of one winter when they weren't working at all due to a poorly-installed pressure release valve. It almost got down to single digits (°C, not °F!) before they got around to fixing it. Chilly...
9:35 p.m.
How very funny!
I'm from Germany and a regular reader of your blog - now I find this link in your latest post to the German school where students are allowed to wear swimsuits because of a problem with the school's heating system. As a matter of fact, this school's situated only 10 km (sorry, I can't convert this to the American system, but it's real close) from where I sit right now. And the principal is a friend of my father's!
The funniest thing about this: I didn't know about the swimsuits before I read your blog...
7:54 a.m.
Have you ever considered leaving a pair of slippers at your parents place? Just a thought.
10:04 a.m.
You are forgetting one nice aspect of water radiators. You can cook on them. Take a can of something like Chef Boyardee ravioli and place it on the radiator. Come back in a couple hours and it is nice and hot. I don't se your fancy digitial thermostat doing that!
This was one of those tricks I learned in a boarding school where there were no kitchens.
10:15 a.m.
Colin - Yeah, I was kind of going for the pretentious level of semicolon usage ;)
Tina - Thanks for commenting, I had been wondering who was reading my blog in Germany. And no worries on the metric units, I prefer it that way.
Aaron - Smart ideas and funny stories just don't well together. Otherwise how would we have the golf cart story?
Paca - To me any room that is hot enough to cook food is a bad situation...but I suppose if I'm ever desperate for a can of beans I'll keep your idea in mind...though a really hot room after a meal of beans may not be the best idea.
12:11 p.m.
Since you asked for it... your semicolons are really pushing it; the clauses are not that closely related.
"the problem is that the water doesn't flow continuously through the radiators, it's sporadic;" was the best place to have used one but you used the dreaded comma splice instead. Keep reading, scientist!
8:57 p.m.
Actually the last semicolon you used was pretty good.
8:58 p.m.
Mike - Thanks. And I'll be the first to admit that I have yet to finish reading that chapter of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves". Nor am I reading it as attentively as one should if one desires to use punctuation perfectly, if there is such an instance.
9:10 p.m.
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