Sissy stuff to keep warm with during the "VORTEX"?

[Angela M...]

I went on a quick trip to get some Gas and groceries this afternoon. The wind was blowing pretty good and as I came out of the shop it was ripping the siding off a house across the road. It has been trying to snow/ hail for a little while now and a friend reported they lost power for a short while at the shop she works in. Betty, hope you are keeping OK and you stay warm and healthy through all this crappy weather.

[Betty]

Power went out for about a half hour, then came on. DSL internet kept cutting out earlier when there was some distant thunder & lightning, but it's steady again now.

The wind storm continues, & snow is coming soon to mix with the wind. It's not supposed to let up until tomorrow afternoon. Windows & doors rattling, house shaking, & huge old trees sway dangerously close to me. I'm surrounded by big old trees.

Power outages & downed trees all over the city & suburbs today.

[Angela M...]

Just saw some videos posted by friends in Port Dover on Lake Erie. The water is rising fast and many people had to be rescued from their homes. Many businesses flooded as well as the water rises above the pier and covers the beach area. I just looked outside and it is like a blizzard now. Glad you did not loose power for too long and hope it ends soon.

[Betty]

Lights flickered a couple more times during the storm but stayed on. Never got any snow in the city, but south of the city they got some with zero visibility at times.

Very low barometer made breathing terrible, with extremely high pulse rates if I tried to move around. It improved a little through yesterday when the barometer started to rise. Had 2, 5 oz. glasses of cheap wine late last night, & my breathing improved a lot. It's still a lot better this morning during the pre-dawn  hours.

Currently a breezy 18F (-8C) with a wind chill of 4F. It's going to be a cold but calm week. We might get 3-5" of snow Wednesday, but that's almost nothing for us & no big deal.

Was 39,000 homes without power in the area yesterday with temperatures in the teens & 20s F. Those gas fired furnace's electronics, thermostat, & blower won't run without electricity. They'll freeze, or their pipes freeze & burst.

I'm lucky that my real crappy in-wall gas furnace right in the apartment uses very little electricity, so I can run the furnace's electronics on battery power all day. But it's a god awful stupid setup. The furnace is at one end of the apartment instead of the middle. So I have to heat that end up to 90F to get the middle of the place up to 60F, & the bathroom up to 50F.

So most of the time I just leave the furnace off. Overnight I just ran a 300 watt dish heater in the bathroom. I also have another one of those on the kitchen counter if I need it. Near me, my O2 machine gives off a lot of heat & I stayed warm under blankets. By this morning it got quite cold though, so I just turned on an 800 watt radiant/reflective heater near me. After it warms stuff up I'll turn it down to 400 watts.

[Robyn Jodie]

Someone did a YouTube video about electric space heaters. His pet peeve was that although some are marked for small rooms and some (more expensive) for "medium" rooms, they were all 1500 watts.  And since heaters are pretty much 100% efficient (since they exist to generate heat, there is no "heat loss"), that means that, other things (features, etc.) being equal, the only difference between the "small room" and "medium room" heaters is the price.

[Betty]

Yep. I saw that video too. 1500W of electric heat... no matter what design is still the same amount of BTU heat. Some may have a more powerful fan to blow it around more evenly, concrentate in a small breeze of warm air to where it's pointed at, or with radiant heaters (they glow red or orange), direct quite a lot of the radiant infrared heat toward what they're pointed at (like the ones in the pictures).

The advantage of the radiant heaters is that you can direct more heat to where you need it, therefore save a lot on energy & electric bills, rather than blow heat all over the room, to the ceiling, under & behind furniture, or everywhere else where you or other people aren't around at the time. It's also fast heat, you can warm up yourself or an area in the room rather quickly rather than try to toast up the entire room.

But no matter which design you use, wattage being equal, all of them will heat up an entire room just as much & just as fast. The radiant designs can save you money if you only need most of the heat for the area you're in.

If you're trying to get an entire room, apartment, or house toasty throughout, gas or kerosene will be much cheaper than trying to heat electrically.

[Angela M...]

My mom had a small one of these heaters in her little bathroom. My dad converted a small closet into a powder room so they would not need to go downstairs to the main bathroom at night. Basically it was a toilet and sink and it was an unheated space with very little insulation. She would often put this heater on low and leave it on all night with the door open about 5 inches. This worried me all the time as she did not remember putting it on and almost never shut it off. I had the thermostat programed to reduce the furnace time at night and come on again at 9 AM when she got up but she often messed with it not understanding it was automatic. She drove me crazy the last few years of her life but I miss her dearly almost everyday. 

[Betty]

My 300w dish heaters like the one in the bathroom don't get hot enough to set fire to most stuff placed right in front of it, but they will get hot as an object placed in the hot sun on a hot sunny day. I keep it near the bathroom door far away from where the towels & other stuff is in case a cat knocks them onto the floor. They haven't done that in a long time though.

The other one just like it is on a kitchen counter, so nothing can fall in front to it. They all have tip safety switches, but the cats never bumped them. They don't like much heat so keep some distance from them.

The more powerful 400-800w heater is on a low little table so nothing can fall in front or on it. Even when only 3' from the bed, the side of the bed never gets dangerously hot.

For Sunday, we're still expecting a rainy, windy day, with a high of about 50F (10C). It looks like most of the rain will be early. But we may get light sprinkles throughout the day.

For St. Pat's Day parade the following Sunday, we're expecting a snow/rain mix with a high of 37F (3C) & a low of 32F (0C).

So far our first day of spring, March 20th, it looks like snow with a high of 32F (0C) & a low of 22F (-5C). It appears it will get even colder in the following days, with more snow. But those long range forecasts aren't very accurate.

Currently it's 17F (-8C) with a wind chill of 7F (-14C) here. Better than yesterday's below zero (-18C) wind chills right? High of 31F (-0.5C) expected tomorrow.

Also on the 20th. It's Betty's Pub's anniversary. Betty Pearl's Sissyboys went officially online on the first day of spring, 1994... 25 YEARS ONLINE!

I was already setting it up before then, but set the official ready & open date for the the first day of spring. That was the day we would abandon our usenet newsgroup, & move to the new fangled internet. The site was hosted in those days by "inthenews.com", an internet bulletin board host server.

Technically Betty's was around on the usenet since 1981 when I was still in my mid-20s. Our usenet newsgroup was for gays, CDs, & trans with a typical usenet address in those days, alt.binaries.gay.cd.trans. The was no Betty Pearl name yet, which is of course, was something I made up for the internet board.

In 1981 it wasn't world wide, it was served off usenet hosts in Buffalo, Hamilton Ca, Niagara Falls Ca, Toronto, Rochester NY, Syracuse NY, Albany NY, & NYC. In 1981 that was a lot of coverage for any newsgroup. Just a few years later though, most newsgroups & us were carried nationally, & then internationally.

So Betty's in one form or another, if you include the usenet/newsgroups has been online for 38 years.

The newsgroup may actually still exist, but we abandoned it in 1994.

I rather quickly came up with the name "Betty Pearl". A week or so before making our board public, I thought I should have a name other than than the defaults like mod, moderator, admin, or administrator. In just a few seconds I came up with the name "Betty Pearl". It was always my intention to change it to something else later after giving it more thought.

But because I was moving an entire group from the usenet to the place, the name stuck & became familiar rather quickly. The search engines & web directories of the time quickly had the place listed as Betty Pearl's Sissyboys. People could find us by searching for "Betty Pearl" rather than knowing the address. So I kept the name.

[Angela M...]

I think I got my first home computer in '94 when my friend and I started our business and soon discovered Betty's. I guess I have been visiting about that many years. Thank's Betty for all the wonderful years of entertainment and information.

[samantha1]

Hi Betty,and how  is your weather doing for you these days.It appears that your weather is getting better ,so hopefully this is helping you a little bit more.