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Thursday, December 08, 2005

Three Dog Nights

The Australian Aborigines (I think it's them, perhaps its the Mongols?) rate the coldness of a night by how many dogs you'll need to cuddle with. The coldest is a 3 dog night. It was also a band from the early 70's; but I digress.

For the last couple of days the low has been in the negative 20's and the highs have been in the single digits. Currently its about 2 and I'm enjoying both degrees. Truth be told its not as unbearable as one might think. We don't have winds so no wind chill, normally its sunny, and the air is very dry. Though I've learned a lot of interesting things about the cold. Let me enumerate a few of them.

  • Trucks start but they don't like it.
  • The refrigerator never turns on. Its more like a cabinet
  • Below -10 it hurts a bit to take a deep breath.
  • In the short trip from the supermarket to the car flowers will wilt and die.
  • Pipes burst
  • Locks freeze
  • Large amounts of store shelf space that used to hold ice melt, space heaters, and heat-tape sit empty between shipments
  • Pedestrians become less willing to dart in front of cars on icy streets.
  • Ice cream sounds less appealing
  • The office admin has trouble typing with gloves on.
  • You find yourself dry-humping a space heater
  • You can make zero radius u-turns. With some practice you can even do them on purpose.
  • An apparently unfrozen bottle of water will flash freeze when you try to drink it.
  • You drink more; not only because it warms you up but also because alcohol remains a liquid at colder temperatures,

Speaking of burst pipes: Over the summer we scavenged the power cords for the heat tape. And come this year only some of it got plugged back in. I discovered the oversight and plugged it all in. It, of course. had froze and burst. That basement is pack to the gills with hastily stacked trim, doorframes and faux brass headboards. To turn off the water I had to scramble over all this while getting drenched. When its -20 out and 20 inside, it's not fun to be wet.


The Continental Divide in the Morning from the Colorado Mineyard

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# posted by Max : 12/08/2005 05:05:00 PM  
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