Who in the hell are these rich jerks who think they enjoy winter? I was listening to NPR yesterday because my iPod battery only lasts or about 45 minutes at a time and my car charger is broken and there was a promo on for some show about food with the host saying something like, "Most people hate the cold. I love winter time though because that means things like something-something soups and something-something elses rich in carbohydrates!" I envy the fact that this lady can afford to keep herself warm enough to actually enjoy all these things. What winter actually is to the rest of us is a constant chattering of teeth, shaking of knees, and dreaming of warmer times and places leaving you completely unable to focus on anything productive for four months out of every year.
Why all this hostility towards winter? Well, let's start with my electric bill and the heat in my house. Last month my bill was $299.90. I appreciate the fact that they made it ninety cents instead o ninety-nine... that would make the total slap in the face a bit too obvious. So that bill was for the electric we used in November I believe, before that our bill was a little less than half that amount. The only difference in our usage was that we turned our heater on, which is this one massive furnace in the basement with ducts coming off it that run through the house. You can see the fire blazing in the damn thing and it looks like dollar bills just burning off into oblivion... or at least it might as well be because that'd be cheaper and probably heat the house better. The other issue is that the heat ends up leaking out of those ducts before they make it to my bedroom and I just get cold air blown through the vents in my room. So I'm paying an extra $150 a month to air condition my room in the middle of the winter. That hardly seems like a good deal to me, so we tried turning the heat way down, it's just on enough to keep the pipes from freezing. I should also mention that my landlord came over twice and fixed the heat so it'd get to my room. It didn't work, but I'm sure he'll charge us for it before we move out because that's the kind of sleazy stuff landlords always seem to do
In exchange for trying to make our actual heat work I now have a space heater in my bedroom which makes a small pocket of the room comortable enough to sit in while wearing a bathrobe and some blankets. Since I mentioned the space heater let me use it to put the kind of cold we're dealing with her in perspective. The thing shows you the current room temperature while it's heating up and when I turned it on one morning after not using it the night before my room was 48 degrees. I think it was about 30 degrees outside, so you could essentially say the roof I'm paying hundreds of dollars a month to keep over my head pretty much just blocks the wind and holds my stuff... well shit, I don't have a lot of stuff and my car can do that!
But the moral of all this is that people who take fast showers are either dumb or among those rich D-Bags who enjoy winter because they can afford their heat and it works. I also reuse to believe that anyone can get themselves clean in less than 7 or 8 minutes tops. Like my previous room mate, this dude used to run a mile up to campus every day, work out, and run back and then he'd shower. Our bathroom was in between our rooms as in, there was my room, a door to the bathroom, and then on the other side of the bathroom was a door to his room... which was really weird because you could always hear what the other dude was up to through the bathroom because it was tiny. Anyway, he'd be in and out of the shower in two minutes after all that working out. It always made me kind of wonder about not only his hygeine, but also his life time experiences of being warm. I mean, I grew up with a dad who had a competition with the neighbors to see who could get the farthest into winter without turning their heat on... he always won. In those conditions you quickly learn to celebrate the precious time spent with hot water falling around you. They're like tiny little Christmases you can celebrate every day. Sure I've got to pay for the heated water that I'm running a little bit longer, but at least it's heat that I'm using. Who knows where all the heat from that fire in my basement that I'm spending $150 a month on is going...
I can't wait till four more months from now when I'm whining about how hot my house is. Seriously. Can not wait.
In the mean time I'm sitting here wearing pajama pants with jeans over them, a hooded sweatshirt, and a bath robe with my space heater on high about two feet away and it's tolerable as long as I don't leave my desk. I'm thinking I'm going to eat a bunch of pizza and wings by myself to celebrate comfort food since I watched a whole bunch of Man vs. Food last night and now I'm starving. Oh... and I'm dipping all of it mass ranch.
That reminds me, I've got a new food venture I'm going to try to go on in the next few days. I'll report back with my findings.
Later dudes.
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