Its zero degrees outside right now at 10am. That's up from -4 when I first opened up my office this morning at 8am, temp in my office at that time was 54. I get my temperature reading from the Weather Channel Desktop, so I don't really know how accurate it is. Well close enough!  I have quilts over the plastic over all the windows in the house. But the sun came out a short time ago and my office was SO DEPRESSING! Like an underground cave. So I thought I would check and see if I could safely open the quilt on the side where the sun is shining. I felt the plastic and it didn't feel too cold, so I am doing a temperature check. So far, the reading at the window is 60.3, which is very close to what the temp is on my desk (61.2) so the quilt stays open for now. I need my daylight! I know, 60 degrees indoors may sound cold to most sane people, but right now I am comfortable enough because I just sat down. In a little while after I have been sitting at my desk for awhile I will probably get chilly and have to add to the layers of clothes I have on. I am going to try and not turn on my space heater if at all possible. I looked at my electric bill last night and it is up 81% from this time last year!!! That's because Caitlin moved back in and it is really necessary to have the space heater on in her room upstairs. This is what I am wearing right now: thin turtleneck shirt sweat pants my extra long calf length hoodie 2 pairs of socks my new suede slippers Caitlin got me for Christmas
In a little while I will have to add: hand warmers (made from socks, I am so clever  ) vest under my hoodie maybe a hat Last night I wore some slippers to bed and my new thick and lined fingerless gloves. Those gloves really help, and the slippers kept my feet warm, which I have been having a problem with no matter how many pairs of socks I wear.
We try not to run the gas furnace a lot. There are several reasons for this. The main reason is that the damn thing is over 50 years old as far as I know. A few years back the thermostat quit working. We replaced it with several thermostats, none of which worked. We had the gas company look at the furnace the first year it stopped turning on and he did something down there and it worked for that first year,but the next year, stopped working again. By then the gas company didn't do house calls any more and we didn't want to spend money to have someone come tell us the whole thing needed to be replaced. We discovered a trick to get it to work. There is a handle on the gas pipe next to the furnace. Turn it down and the furnace runs. Turn it up and the furnace turns off. We have been doing this for several years now. So because we have to go down the basement to turn it on and off, we don't do it very often. The first couple of years, the furnace would run continuously until the handle was turned down. So we had to be extremely diligent about remembering to turn it off. This year, for some unknown reason, the furnace began to cycle on and off. It only cycles off for a few minutes, but it does allow us to be able to run the furnace for a longer period of time before we go turn it off. Needless to say, we still only run the furnace in the morning to warm up the house and once or twice during the day, depending on how cold it really is. This is why we keep a space oil heater in the living room and in my office, and this is why my office was only 54 degrees this morning, and why our house is always colder than most people could stand, and why our electric bill is high and our gas bill is low. Well in the time it took for me to write all this, my knees and toes have begun to get cold. Wish I had a fireplace in my office!
|
