Tag Archives: cold

Talking about the weather

Every time I find myself in a discussion about the weather, it’s not even like two sentences back and forth when this awareness clicks in my head. Shit, I think, I can’t believe I’m talking about the weather again. And chances are, I’m the one that started the conversation. It’s like, when I’m presented with another human being, there’s something inside of me that does whatever it can to avoid even a quarter of a second from slipping by without a steady stream of words coming out of my mouth.

And so I don’t even realize it, I’m just like, “Wow, can you believe how cold it is outside?” It’s such a cheap trick, because once the topic of weather is introduced, it’s a guaranteed minute and a half to two minutes of pure automatic banter. You don’t have to worry about any awkward pauses or having to think of anything especially clever to say.

No, you make a comment about the weather. Then you wait for whoever you’re talking with to respond, usually it’s something like, “I know, right?” All right you’re both on the same page, you’re both amazed that it’s actually this cold out, even though it’s February. “But the snow! I think we’re getting more snow next week!”

That was me, adding another layer to the veneer of dialogue. I don’t even know where I got that from. I probably just made it up. That’s one thing that I’ve become painfully aware of. Considering all of the nonsense weather related chit-chats I’ve been guilty of initiating, you’d think I’d at least have a dedicated tab in my browser open to some sort of a weather web site, if not several weather related smartphone apps.

But there’s nothing. I never check the weather. You don’t need to. First of all, most of the forecasts are very loose predictions. Anybody remember those three-to-thirty inches of snow we were supposed to get last week? Sure, the science is there to give a prediction of what the weather might look like ten, seven, five days from now, but unless it’s a three-day forecast, it’s probably not going to come true.

Then we finally get to that three-day window, and say something of interest is actually on its way to our area, that’s when everybody starts talking about it. My mom will tell me about snow, or I’ll be in line at CVS and I’ll see everybody in the store buying their weight in rock salt. Again, at this point I could flip open my phone and see what’s what, but why bother? It’s obvious that everybody else has done most of the research on my behalf.

It’s the weather, it just happens. Sometimes it’s raining, most of the time it’s not raining. Unless you live in Seattle, or Ireland, but I don’t, so I don’t even know where my umbrella is unless it’s actually pouring outside and I have to take my dog for a walk.

So you’d think that, considering my awareness of how ridiculous it is to talk about the weather, I wouldn’t be that guy that’s always pulling meteorological half-truths out of his ass. I don’t know why I do it. I’m looking back at my post history here on this blog, and it’s disgusting, at least twice a month I write something about how hot the summer is or how cold the winter is. It’s like I can’t even stand the idea of pause in between blog posts, so I just start babbling away about the temperature, precipitation, or lack thereof.

I’m the guy that makes fun of anybody that dares to ask me, “Cold enough for ya?” on a really cold day, but then I go ahead and ask everybody that I meet for the rest of the season, “Hey, cold enough for ya? Huh? It’s winter. It’s wintertime. It’s cold.” And what if it wasn’t cold? What if this winter were a really warm one?

“Oh man!” I’d talk and babble, “You call this a winter? It’s so warm out! I wish it were colder. I really like snow! I heard something that we’re supposed to get a blizzard in three weeks. Maybe. I think there’s like a one percent chance. I’d better get some rock salt. Do you have enough rock salt? You better get to CVS, I think they’re going to sell out. There’s never enough rock salt. Is the heat on in here? I’m freezing.”

The Polar Vortex

As I’m writing this, most of the United States is dealing with the chilling effects of the Polar Vortex. It’s freezing. And yeah, sometimes I’ll write a blog post where I complain about the weather, about how I get too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. But seriously, this is really cold. I wish I could take back everything I’ve ever said about the weather, because it all pales in comparison to whatever it is we’re experiencing right now.

I ride my bike to work every day. I don’t care if it’s raining or snowing or if it’s cold, I just bundle up, I’ll throw on a few waterproof layers in case it’s wet out, I’ll open my front door with my bike and I’ll say, “You call this a winter? Ha!”

And I did that today, but I couldn’t even get through that first sentence before physically recoiling from how cold it was. I was like, “You call this a …” and then the cold hit me all at once, the single digit temperature flooded the inside of my nose, and I’ve always heard people talk about having your nose hairs freeze upon contact with some really frosty air, but I’ve never actually had that happen, the sensation of ice forming up your nose, all the way up your head. I started coughing, I was like, “Holy shit, are you serious?”

Still, I don’t know, I’m stubborn, I figured I could tough out the fifteen minute bike ride. But I wasn’t even halfway there and I was regretting my decision. As I pedaled up the Queensboro Bridge, this arctic wind punishing me, trying to blow me down from the other direction, it made my face hurt, really badly. Even though I had gloves on, my fingers were losing all sensation. With one hand grabbing the handlebars, I concocted this ridiculous routine of blowing into my fist, then using that hand to deliver about a quarter of a second’s worth of warmth to somewhere on my face.

How do you live like this, Northern Canada? When I got out of work, as I walked to my bike totally dreading the ride back, I took my left hand out of my glove for just a second, just so I could do a quick unlock and start pedaling back, and I didn’t even know that this was possible, but the actual lock was frozen. It took me like five minutes just to get it through the hole, and when I did, there wasn’t any turning. It wouldn’t budge, it was completely stuck.

So I just ran for it, fuck that shit. If I had stayed outside just standing there, fiddling around with a bike lock for any longer, I wouldn’t have made it. If someone wants to tough it out overnight and try to pick the lock, be my guest, because if you’re willing to brave that type of cold just to steal what can only be thirty or forty bucks worth of bike parts, you’ve earned it, all right, you obviously need it more than I do.

And so I finally made it home. I stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way back, and all I’ve been doing for the rest of the day is sitting here buried under five layers of sweatshirts, I’m drinking coffee and I’m eating donuts. That’s it. I’ve already eaten like six donuts. Because no way am I ever going outside again unless I’m protected by a layer of warming fat. All of these hours of running and exercise, and what do I have to show for it? I can’t stop shivering. I’ve already taken like three hot showers, and my feet are still cold. No way, the next time you see me, I’m going to be morbidly obese. I’ll be fat, but I’ll be warmer. And whatever, I love donuts. I could sit here and eat donuts all day for the rest of my life. Bring it on Polar Vortex. Is this as cold as it’s going to get? Ha!

You call this a winter?

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, and of course it’s below freezing now, but whatever, at the time it was warm and wet:

It’s already December, but we haven’t had any serious winter weather yet. There have been a few cold days, but there hasn’t been any bitterness to the chill, no temperature you’d be able to describe as bone-chilling. And the past few days have been pretty rainy, so it’s like, I’ll go outside, I’m wearing what I think should be appropriate mid-December gear, a sweater, gloves, a scarf, and it’s all too much, it feels like it’s maybe pushing fifty degrees, I’m starting to sweat, and my feet are getting wet through my sneakers.

And I try not to let my mind focus on things that I really can’t control, but I wonder what the Northeast is going to be like if we keep having warm, wet winters. I remember a few years ago, we had one of these autumns that was almost tropical. I read in the newspaper this article about how these giant mushrooms were growing all over the city. Of course you had groups of starry-eyed foragers going on about how much money they’d have had to spend on shitakes if they hadn’t had the good fortune of stumbling into some rotted log in the park, but the fungus was seeping into peoples houses, weird oblong-shaped shrooms were sprouting from the cracks of people’s walls.

And this is just the start, right? Pretty soon we’ll have giant palmetto bugs year round, I mean, they have those in DC, it’s only a matter of time before those more tropical pests move up north. And what about snakes? Are we going to get snakes? Isn’t black mold a really big problem? How do you tell black mold from regular mold?

I’m sitting here freaking out about how I’m not going to be able to survive the gradual change in temperature, but right now, today, it’s actually pretty cold out. I think me sitting here and finally feeling a chill inside my house, inside my body, it’s what prompted me to think about the weather in the first place, about the lack of winter. It’s already December and on this one particularly cold day, I’m feeling like it’s the oddity here.

But I think I like winter. I don’t know. It’s always great up until my knuckles start cracking and bleeding from being too dry. It’s just like the warm weather. I enjoy it until my skin starts breaking out alongside my temple. I don’t know what my body wants, really, because as soon as the temperature starts to swing in the other direction, I’m only afforded a brief window of comfort before I start reacting negatively to the climate.

I’m probably just complaining too much. I know that I’m freaking out. I’m sitting here by the window and I can feel the winter air through the walls. For everything that I complain and worry about, I still can’t imagine how human beings dealt with the weather a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. If I get too cold I can just hop in the shower, steam myself back to homeostasis.

But how did the pioneers deal with winter? You spend all of this time chopping down trees and building yourself a house out of wood, and then the winter comes and you’re freezing and you’re wet and you’re stuck inside that box of wood, insulation hasn’t been invented yet, and so if I can kind of feel this not-even-that-wintery weather through the walls of my modern house, I can’t imagine a log cabin or whatever providing much comfort against one of those historical winters that you just know had to have been much more severe than the seasons are today.

And I always think about George Washington, that famous painting where they’re all crossing the Delaware on Christmas. Like, Jesus, that had to have been freezing, icy water sloshing up over the sides of that boat, and what did they make winter coats out of back then? Animal pelts? There’s no way that they could have been even close to as warm as I am with my contemporary double-layered jacket. I have waterproof boots, wool socks, man, those guys must have been miserable for months at a time.

I wonder if those soldiers in that boat knew that everything that they were fighting for, it would all lead to this, our modern world, where some guy gets to sit at his computer and write on the Internet about how he’s afraid of wild mushrooms or about how it’s too warm this winter. If I were in their position, I would’ve been like, fuck this, this shit’s crazy, let’s just all move south. Yeah, we’ve got to deal with snakes, and palmetto bugs, and spiders, and malaria, but cold wet feet for three months at a time? And what happens when we finally cross that Delaware, we’ve got to go to war? Battlefield injuries with no antibiotics? Yeah, sorry General, I’ll be back in just one second, you guys get in the boat without me, I promise I’ll be right back.

Three showers, three pairs of jeans

I’m having one of those days where I can’t get comfortable, like I got dressed in the morning, but my jeans, I don’t know how to explain it, they just felt greasy, and I’m not a dirty guy, I wash my clothes somewhat regularly. Shirts, totally, I only wear them once, and jeans, even though I get multiple days in between each wash, I’m not one of those people that goes a whole season without washing. I’d say once a week, two weeks, tops. But still, these were like especially grimy, I don’t know, so I took them off and put on a clean pair.

But I still didn’t feel right, I tried ignoring it, but an hour, two hours in, I figured, all right, you know what? I can’t let this go, for whatever reason today I just can’t get comfortable in my pants, I took those pants off, I hopped in the shower, even though I had just taken a shower, I needed a clean start, another fresh start to the day, even though it was coming up on lunchtime.

And this shower, I usually don’t take two showers so close to each other, but it was so comfortable, maybe it’s because the seasons have recently changed, we’re getting our first few really crisp days of the season, like not cold enough to warrant a coat or anything like that, but definitely a sweatshirt. Heat? I don’t know, I don’t know if the heating has kicked in yet. Although, now that I mention it, I think I was supposed to get the furnace serviced. I think.

I was thinking all of that in the shower, and it just felt so good, like a sauna, I lost track of time, when I got out, my skin was raw, and when I found a third pair of jeans, these ones absolutely clean, they just chafed against my legs, it was really itchy, a violent, persistent itch that, not even five seconds after I stopped itching it, it would start up again, I just kept sitting there and squirming.

So, and I never do this, because I’m just not in the habit of doing it, but I got undressed and I started applying my wife’s moisturizing lotion, like a lot of it, by the pumpful, this stuff comes in these giant, I’m talking big dispensers, like you’re totally supposed to use a lot of it each time, and it felt great, finally the itching subsided a little bit, cool relief against my over-washed skin. I thought to myself, I don’t know why I don’t use this stuff more often. I guess, yeah, there’s a little bit of a stigma, like it’s a girly thing, a daily moisturizer. But so what? What am I that bound by ridiculous gender distinctions, that I can’t use a product that’s clearly doing something right here?

But then I got dressed, I put on my clothes and everything felt grimy again. Was it the lotion? Because, yeah, I’d expected there to be some lotion residue, but this, I couldn’t imagine it had been this bad before. I tried to put it out of my head, that whatever slimy sort of sensation I was feeling under my jeans, whatever, it was a hundred percent clean, just clean skin and fresh moisturizer.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for more than five minutes or so. But what can I do, I mean, a third shower is out of the question, that would be such a short-term fix, because I can’t handle any more hot water, not today, I’ve got to let my skin rest, replenish some of those natural oils or whatever. But a third shower, I probably should have thought out my day a little better. I wanted to go running, but, you know, I’d need to take a shower after, so I probably shouldn’t.

So I don’t know, I think I’m just going to stay in for the rest of the day, I could probably get away with not doing anything, in which case, I guess I could just take a really quick third shower, I’ll change right into my pajamas after. Do you think this is going to count as a sick day or a personal day? Because, it’s definitely something physical, right? Or am I worrying about it too much, in which case it would be mental? If I get a doctor’s note, am I going to have to go to a dermatologist? Do I need a referral from my primary care physician? Shit, do I have to get dressed again? I can’t get a grip on the day, I’m just, I can’t get my shit figured out.

I like it ice cold

I want my ice cream cold, so cold that my tongue shouldn’t even be able to touch it, not safely. I want you to have to take it out of the deep-freeze freezer, you’ll actually have to put it in the microwave just to take it down a bit, just a couple of degrees, to where it’s still way too cold to touch, I still can’t lick it, I’d still get a major ice-burn on my tongue if I attempted premature contact.

And then I want the spoon to be warmed up, not in a microwave, obviously, you can’t put metal in the microwave. Maybe I could find some sort of a composite spoon? All right, give me a spoon made out of the same material they make hockey sticks and golf clubs. I want it to be light, like ultra lightweight, so now OK, you can go ahead and throw it in the microwave for a minute or two.

If you haven’t already, you should go ahead and buy two microwaves, because I don’t want to wait around while you’re messing with different power level settings for the ice cream and for the spoon. I want them both to be warming up at the same exact time.

All of my soda has to be ice cold too. Also, the carbonation has to be really powerful. But more importantly, really, really cold. But only slightly less important, the carbonation. Don’t talk to me about freezing points, I want a colder-than-ice Coca-Cola that somehow hasn’t turned into a block of ice. I’ve seen it done before, it was science class in high school, or a science TV show that the science teacher showed us on one of those days where she didn’t feel like teaching, it was something about not disturbing the liquid, or putting something inside of it, and it’ll stay liquid.

You know that sensation you get when you first take a sip of a really ice cold drink? Like you can feel it working its way down your esophagus? I want that with every sip, not just the first. And I don’t want to feel it just in my esophagus, I want to feel it all the way down, snaking its way through my intestines, that refreshing feeling chilling a path throughout my whole digestive system.

My soup also has to be really cold. I don’t care what time of year you’re supposed to traditionally eat gazpacho, I’d like it in January, February, if there’s an unseasonably cold stretch through March or April, I’m going to order gazpacho then also, along with other summertime soups, watermelon bisque … I can’t think of any other cold soups, but I know they’re out there, and again, ice cold, I want you to serve me a whole tube of Sensodyne as an appetizer, something to really numb up my gums, I want to hold a big mouthful and really let my whole head cool off.

Iced coffee, iced tea, ice, ice cold. And don’t bother with the regular ice cubes. I want ice cubes made out of iced coffee and iced tea. It has to be cold brewed, by the way. I don’t want anything that’s ever been heated up. I mean, yes, to some extent, I’m always going to have to acknowledge the fact that the earth was formed out of a ball of cooling molten rock, but that’s just it, it’s cooling, it’s getting there.

My favorite planet is Pluto. My favorite sport is ice hockey. If I got to choose a superpower, it would definitely be ice powers. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about talking about any of this nonsense. Give me a hot soup, go ahead, I’ll ice you dead in your tracks, that hot soup’s never going to make it over to my table. And then next idiot server who even thinks about sending over another bowl, he’s going to think again. He’s going to bring me the coldest one they’ve got. And then – zap! – ice powers to make it even colder, and I’ll be able to take it, no frost-burn, no Sensodyne, just straight up cold, colder than all of the Coors Light in the Rockies.

Because seriously, I can’t emphasize enough, I really like my stuff cold. Make sure you tell the chef, because I’ve got a thermometer right here. I’m going to use it, and I’m going to send it back. It’s all just a matter of how many times I’m going to send it back. Got it?