Cold

I went to bed last night after the furnace had turned off, and it was 58 in the bedroom. A little cooler than normal, but not too bad. But when I got up in the morning, several hours after the furnace had kicked on, it was still only 61 on the main floor, and 63 in the basement. Usually it's 61-63 in the basement, and 67-68 upstairs. The wind was roaring! I mean that literally -- the sound of the wind around the house was enough to wake sleeping people. By mid-morning, when the wind had died down to simply "very windy," the furnace was finally able to make some headway against the cold.

I managed to force myself out in the sunshine to jog in spite of the cold. Enough layers of appropriate clothing can do wonders against the weather. I was thinking how wonderful ski masks are! It reminded me, though, of a news story we read in the kids' current events paper yesterday. (Okay, okay, so it's old news. We got behind on reading our school newspapers during surgery recuperation.) The Netherlands has outlawed the wearing of burqas and other headgear that conceals the face.

Last night at the guys' Belegarth practice, there was another group of medieval fighters using the same arena for practice. Instead of fighting with foam weaponry, these guys were fighting with wood swords. (Rumor has it that sometimes they use metal.) Because of their more dangerous weapons, they had fancier and stronger armor. I mean, these dudes were wearing cool regalia, with knight's helmets and everything. But these guys couldn't go out in public in Holland.

So if people can't wear ski-masks in the Netherlands anymore, what do they do when it gets cold? Maybe it doesn't get as wickedly cold there as it does here. But still, mightn't they need something to cover the face now and then to prevent frostbite? Or if not frostbite, simply something to make them more comfortable on chilly days? Makes me shiver just to think about being outside today for more than 5 minutes without a ski mask!

I'm regretting the lack of snow fencing again today. The county snow plows have been out on the roads repeatedly. The van was parked near the house, and I took it to town for less than an hour. When I came home, the driveway in front of the garage was already drifted about 8' wide and 2-3' deep. I shoveled it partway out, and parked the van back in that spot, to act as surrogate snow-fence. Hopefully that will help keep the drifts in front of the house instead of blocking the garage.

It's supposed to be just as cold tomorrow, but with an improvement in windiness level, we should go from windchills of -30 up to about -15. That's significant. When we were in town this afternoon, you could tell how much warmer it was there than in the country, where the wind just picks up awesome amounts of speed and then scrubs your face with sand-sized ice particles. Looking forward to highs of 10 and 15 later next week.