Thanksgiving Advent, Day Eighteen: Central Heating

[swan_tower]

I grew up in Dallas, lived there for eighteen years. I don't care that my ancestry is largely Scandinavian and Swiss German; I don't like the cold. I am a creature of sunlight and warmth.

At this time of year, and for the next five months or so, you can be damn certain I am thankful for central heating, which for is the difference between living, and living in hell.


. . . now if you'll excuse me, I have to go create a conflict between a previous object of gratitude and this one, by standing in the cold for three hours or so.

Comments

[spiffikins]

Every year around this time, we start to have some cold nights. After the first couple of COLD MORNINGS when I'm nearly late for work because I do *not* want to get out of bed and out into the cold house, I get my programmable thermostat set up and bask in the luxuriousness of HEAT in the mornings.

I grew up in Canada, and we had no heat upstairs - well, we had electric baseboard heaters in the bedrooms, but we weren't allowed to use them, mostly - it was too expensive :)

So in the winter, I had an inch of ice on the *inside* of my windowsills :)

I'm thankful *every* year for my programmable thermostat and heat in the mornings

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

God, I can't even imagine living like that. It's my idea of hell, seriously.

[spiffikins]

At the time we just dealt with it, and honestly, it was probably only *really* bad for about 3 weeks out of the year when we had a really bad cold snap in January.

But it wasn't ever *warm* upstairs in the winter.

When I installed my first programmable thermostat and used it, I was nervous about the gas bill - and nearly fell over when I got it. It costs me about $1.00 a day to heat the house with my program - my bill *doubled* from about $30 to $60 for gas and electricity.

I will *gladly* pay $1 a day to be warm.

(note that I totally understand that it was *way* more expensive to heat our 3000 square foot house, in Canada, from September to May, most of the day, with electric heat upstairs and force air gas furnace downstairs, than for me to heat my 1200 sq foot condo from November to Februrary, 3 hours a day, with my gas forced air furnace - my mom's bills were several hundreds dollars a month!)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I lived for several years in an old, drafty duplex that cost a fortune to heat in the winter. Even so, I paid: the therapy for my depression would have been more expensive. :-)

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

My first winter in Edinburgh I stayed in a huge top floor flats with ceilings high enough that we needed a stepladder to change the light bulbs. Turning on the central heating was a luxury restricted to two short blocks per day, except when the boys (PhD students to my undergrad status) were ill with manflu. Then it was on all day.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Well, of course. Poor babies needed the comfort!