Arizona Blues

Snow flurries today- tiny bits of ice floating down almost like grains of sand. Tomorrow there's supposed to be more snow. Today's high was in the mid 30s.

One of the worst things about coming from Phoenix, Arizona is this thin blood. This whole "cold" thing gets real old real quick. A little cold is nice, but this persistent wet cold is just miserable. When I'm freezing getting ready to shower, and freezing in the morning, or freezing waiting for the bus, I wonder why do people live this way? And this is the middle of the US, totally discounting the worse weather farther north and east. And its November. That Icy Bitch is just getting started.

On the plus side, we have our heat back. Sunday evening, our handyman came over, took a part of the furnace away to test it and see if it was the problem. Monday, when we came back from school, we came back to a warm apartment. It was a nice surprise. He left the space heater which actually does a nice job on a per-room basis, so we might start leaving the thermostat around 60-62 and using the space heater for the room in which we're working. Probably works better for our gas bill at any rate, which was $80 in October, double what it was in September.

Other adaptations to the cold- breaking out the long underwear. I've also got a nice pair of waterproof, insulated leather boots that look a bit like Timberlands, and I just picked up a pair of winter slip-on shoes from Sorel that are also insulated and water resistant. Hot showers and hot tea. Baking warms up the kitchen nicely- we made blondies the other day. Blondies are apparently a midwestern thing- imagine crossing a butterscotch chip cookie with a brownie and you get a blondie.