My tiny wall furnace apartment heater was left on the max all night & still wouldn't keep the place warm enough. Had to turn on two 800 watt electric radiant/reflective heaters to get the place up to the upper 40s F. Normally this place is cheap on energy because it's a small 1 bedroom place with low ceilings. I'm only 5'5" & I can touch the ceilings standing on my toes. With only 2 3x5 windows & a 1x2.5' window in the bathroom, not much heat can escape. But last night was so windy & cold it was freezing standing near them... and they're modern, new well insulated windows. The bathroom is remarkably large for a small apartment, about the size of a small bedroom. A total waste of space in a small unit short on space. I only see the room to pee, poo, or wash up. Give me a bathroom with enough space for the tub, toilet, sink, a cabinet, & enough room to walk between them & I'm happy.
The kitchen space is also wasted. 2 huge double basin sinks, & 12 large kitchen cabinets with 6 drawers. & full sized fridge for a 1 bedroom small apartment? This tiny unit is for a single person only. Most single family houses don't have a kitchen this big. They got it backwards. The areas where most singles would spend their time in a small, & the areas they'd spend the less in are huge. I like to cook, & cook a lot to save money. But I don't need a kitchen area that big, & don't spend all day there. It's also a waste of energy to heat all that extra space I don't spend a lot of time in.
The buildings & their heating systems around here weren't designed to handle regular Antarctic-like temperatures. This would be a bit chilly outside even for penguins & polar bears. They could easily handle it, but it's not within their comfort range.
By bedroom is my workspace & storage space. I leave that area unheated & the door closed. Jan-Feb as usual, has been slow with work. Hardly anybody has dropped anything off to fix or work on, or called to inquire about some project. So I didn't have to go back there.
My primary computer & laptop are near the bed, not at the workspace. So I can get online instantly even if my breathing is terrible that day. The living area is a single room with the kitchen on one end, & the living area on the other. I got it set up studio apartment style. So my bedroom is set up in the living section. In this small place the bed & pillows double as my sofa & easy chair most of the time. It's not a hide-away bed. It's a normal king-sized bed. I've got a few chairs, but I hardly use them, when I sit, lay down or relax, almost always it's on the bed. The cats sit on the chairs occasionally. But unless they're running about or playing, they're usually on the bed too. It's a huge bed so there's plenty of room for us to move around & play on it. But doesn't leave much space left in the living area. The computers, monitors, & speakers are lined up in a row between the kitchen & sleep area facing the bed to partially block the view of the kitchen so it has a more cozy & bedroom-like feel. The computers also give off a bit of heat, which warms up the area on moderately cold days. But it made no difference last night.
It was so cold in the place even with all that heat running this morning, I didn't want to get out of the warm bed. It was nice & warm under all those blankets. The cats didn't seem to mind, stretched out across my legs. A cat would be curled up in a ball, or around each other, or curled up against me if they were cold.
So I stayed in bed very late, awake warm under the blankets, until I had to go to the bathroom. But I didn't fall asleep until 3am, so it's not too bad. No work today again. It's President's day, a national holiday here in the USA too. After people spent money on Christmas, & have new toys, nobody is considering fixing, or upgrading their old ones this time of the year. With local winter bills high, most people will stall having something fixed or upgraded, unless they absolutely need it done.
I might of had a chance to fix somebody's huge snow blower that died in the suburbs for an elderly lady. But with no heated garage there, & it was way too big & heavy to lift up the steps to get it inside, with my severe COPD I wouldn't have survived the job. I would have had to get a ride out there too. I sold my truck after the fire long ago to raise money for replacement stuff. With my COPD, I'd be gasping for air just to yank the pull-starter a few times trying to get it started on a nice day. Usually cold doesn't effect my COPD. I seem too breathe better when it's cool. But not when it gets this cold. Just a minute out there in this weather, & I'm gasping for air.
Most of my work requires them to drop their stuff off for me to fix, & pick it up. I can't travel well most of the time. Even on a good day a trip up or down the stairs or to walk a half a block is quite an effort. It takes hours just to sweep my place because I have to keep sitting down to catch my breath. House keeping & chores takes me just about a week. I start & one end, & continue to the other end. By the time I'm done, it's been days, & it's time to go to the other end & do it all over again. I get out of breath just getting dressed or changing my clothes. It can take hours to just get undressed, take a shower or bath, get dried off, & dressed again, because I frequently have to stop, sit, & catch my breath.
So there's no way I could be able to go to the burbs work on a snow blower in below zero wind chills. I've done work for her before too. So I really hated to disappoint her, & turn her down. I think I was the last person to work on that old blower, many years ago. Work is extra slow now, so I could use the money. I'm a very handy person. It's a shame. All this experience & knowledge, but my lungs aren't up to the task to do most of the work I used to make the most money on. Setting up sound & lights for a band or event? Ha! Some of those speakers weigh more than I do. And I can't climb 10-50 feet in the air with heavy equipment to mount lighting & other stuff anymore.
It's a bit warmer here this afternoon because the wind died down from 24mph to 12 mph. I was able to shut down one of the 800 watt heaters, & the place is up to 58F. With warm clothes on it feels quite comfy now. Still the wall furnace & other 800 watt heater are running at maximum though.
-4F outside, that's the expected high for today, it goes back down from here. Wind chill -22F. Last night the wind chill got down to -34F between 4-7 am. That probably explains why my place was too cold for me to get up at 7:30 when my alarm went off. Since the 1970s, I deliberately keep the alarm far enough from the bed that I actually have to get out of bed to shut it off. That way, I never overslept. This morning I let it keep going, turned away from it on my side, & laid my arm over my ear so I couldn't hear it as much, rather than get out of the warm bed.
There is no snooze button. I just can't understand the concept of it. If you wanted to get up at 7:35 instead of 7:30, why didn't you just set your alarm for it? Even when I didn't get enough sleep, when it's time to get up to be somewhere, you gotta go, & it's not negotiable. To sleep that extra 10-30 minutes means when you get up you have to run & rush like crazy, forget stuff, run out the door, & dangerously race to your destination to be on time. I like to enjoy my mornings, coffee & breakfast. I give myself enough time to have a nice morning, & still make it to my destination ahead of time even if I didn't get enough sleep. I find once you get going with a good breakfast & coffee, you won't notice the lack of sleep until you're almost done with your job or project. You can have a nap when you get home or go to bed earlier. Getting out of bed to shut off an alarm works better than a snooze. Once you're up & out of the bed, thinking clearly, you don't want the snooze. People hit the snooze button while they're still in a semi conscious state, & not in the proper frame of mind to logically decide to snooze an extra 10-30 minutes or not.
Besides, if you didn't get enough sleep, or have a hard time waking up, an extra 5-30 minutes isn't gonna make any or much difference.
My alarm is actually my old shortwave radio from the late 1970s. It will either wake me up to very loud beeps or the radio. It runs on 4 D sized batteries for the radio, & 4 AA sized batteries for the clock & alarm. I use another radio for regular listening so the batteries usually last a year or 2 in it, & it wakes me up even when there's a power failure. Yep, I rebuilt that after the fire. After losing almost everything in the fire, it's nice to have a few items left around from long ago. I believe it might be the oldest thing I currently own since the fire.
I used to have a lot of antiques, that I restored myself, including some antique radios. But they got burned up, & never replaced.
Tonight will be about the same weather. -9F expected with wind chills of -30F.
The gas & energy companies gotta be loving this. I'm sure they're all making plans to buy a bigger boat or send their kids to a better college. My heat costs were way too high last month. It looks like it will be 2-3 times higher next time.
I'm surprised. I saw a bird outside. Last year when the cold got this bad for a while all the wildlife disappeared. Last year's cold wiped out most of the animals around my neighborhood.
The dogs next door get let out to poo & pee into their back yard. The big dog would want to go back inside right after it was done when it started getting cold. But the cute extra furry little poodle would run all over the yard for a half hour before she wanted to come back inside. With this cold, she doesn't go far to do her duty, & then wants to go back inside right away. The owner doesn't stand outside with her anymore either. She watches her inside from her back window.
It's totally silent outside. Even with the windows closed I can usually I hear cars pulling in & out driveways, people talking, dogs barking, & kids playing. There's a workshop behind my building, & I can usually hear them working in the day. I live in the city, so I can usually hear sirens in the distance every few hours. It's like a ghost town around here now.
The neighbors in the building & each side of me moved out last month, because their crappy wall furnaces couldn't keep the place warm enough when it gets this cold. It's a shame, they, & the girl upstairs from me were the only ones I got to know well enough in the building to become friends with. The lady upstairs, a student moved back home in the beginning of summer.
I don't hardly hear anybody else in the building. Sooo quiet.
Betty's Pub 20.1
Topic: Sissy stuff to keep warm with during the "VORTEX"? (Read 93037 times)
