Tuesday, January 06, 2004
hot and cold
Why doesn't anyone say, "It must be 9 degrees in the shade!" You always hear that phrase in the summertime. Someone will come into the office, their shirt sticking to them, a flushed look on their face, and they say, "It must be 110 degrees in the shade!"
But not in the winter. In the winter, you'll hear things like, "Man, it's freezing out there!" The fact that it began to freeze 22 degrees and 3 weeks ago doesn't seem to fit into the equation.
Personally, I prefer the cold. I've always found it easier to put on some extra clothes or huddle under a feather blanket to warm up than to shed clothes to cool off. After all, you can only take so much off and then you're not only an eyesore (at least I am, unlike say, Demi Moore), but you're still hot, as is Demi Moore.
I actually like to keep my house around 61 or 62 when I'm home. Sometimes, when I'm feeling a little under the weather, I'll crank it up to 64 or 65. When I'm away for the day, I'll turn it down to 55 or so. Normally I lounge around in an old pair of sweats and be perfectly comfortable. Sometimes, if I settle in to watch TV or a video, I'll pull a blanket over me. I spend a lot of time in my basement, where last night it was around 55. I have some woodworking tools down there and with a sweatshirt on under my workshirt I'm quite content. I've not been able to wear my house slippers down there though, they just aren't warm enough.
Speaking of temperatures, you have to wonder why we in the US are still holding on to old man Fahrenheit's namesake. My girlfriend lives in Canada, so when I'm comfy at 62, she's cold at Mr. Celsius' 17. By the way, how did -40 end up the same in both places. (historical aside: When I got my first computer, one of the things to do was to write a temperature conversion program. Hey, when you only 4K and interpreted BASIC, what can you expect. Anyway, when someone would show me a F to C program, I'd try -40. Usually they'd go crazy trying to find the bug.)
2fers: Anders Celsius and Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit
