cold room? --> hooker + cheap hooch = heat!
Hey, you get to find out if this is the best-case scenario.
Seriously, this sucks. Any colleagues who will have you over?
Who cares about me? What about my plumbing?! Actually, I have a space heater and blankets.
Who cares about me? What about my plumbing?!
You know, in some municipalities, even if a tree is privately owned, you're allowed to take fruit from branches that overhang public land.
I have a space heater and blankets.
You could sleep underneath a pile of Hickey Freeman suits.
Seriously, this is not funny stuff, it's an emergency. Unless you live in Miami. Can't you get someone over now?
I guess that's a second for Michael's advice.
Geez folks, he has a space heater, you don't have to baby him.
You know, I have a warm, romantic fire and the chinatown bus runs till 3am.
The space heater is good. An electric blanket would be awesome.
If he freezes to death on the bus, it's sort of a wash, isn't it?
You could warm up a couple of water bottles, tuck in your blankets tightly, and put the bottles at the foot of the bed. I've never done this, but I've seen it suggested for camping in cold weather (substituting sleeping bag for blankets).
If you start getting really cold, I'd just take a nap if I were you. It'll be warmer in the morning; just find a comfy spot.
If you don't have anything to warm the water with, use pee.
ben, the bus has a heater, you know.
9 - That sounds like an offer to warm your pipes.
ben, the bus has a heater, you know.
Yeah, but if you try to take it from the driver, there'll be trouble.
You can lull yourself to sleep with this thread from Making Light which might just have well have been called "How People Die of Hypothermia".
I've been lucky enough to never live in a house where the landlord didn't have a contract with the furnace company that guaranteed 24-service; no charge for service, just the annual fee, as I understood it. I had reason to resort to this in Brooklyn, Long Island, East Lansing, and Seattle. I think the house in Boston had the same, but we never had to use it. I think.
Never having owned property, I have no further idea about how this works or how otherwise usual/unusual this is. But you might want to look into that sort of thing, possibly.
Take very hot baths, if you have hot water. It really helps. That's one of the motives for the Japanese baths -- traditionally Japanese didn't heat their houses.
If your fingers stop working, use a pencil in your mouth to dial 911.
Who cares about me? What about my plumbing?!
For future reference, leave the water running. Along with propping open the flapper in the toilet and leaving the shower dripping.
The hot water heater should keep going which will help keep everything else warm. Just remember to keep hot & cold running.
ash
['It's not the temperature, it's the motion.']
I've been lucky enough to never live in a house where the landlord didn't have a contract with the furnace company that guaranteed 24-service
My landlord got the furnace company here very quickly when our heat pump broke. All the repairmen did was break the thing permanently, then get fired. We've got heat back now, but it took three weeks.
Oh, man, that does suck. That happened to us last year, right around this time, too. You wouldn't happen to have a fireplace...that really helped us. Unfortunately, other than that, I can't think of anything to add to what others have already suggested. I am interested, however, if the surly repair guy actually tells you that you should have been able to intuit the problem yourself.
I guess it's too late to apply for a grant to study somewhere warm over the winter?
I have no idea how cold a house has to be for the pipes to freeze
About 32 degrees Fahrenheit or so.
I once lived in a house with a poorly insulated cellar, and the pipes froze down there. On someone's instructions (the plumber? the landlord?) I opened up the faucets. The pipes carrying the water unfroze (melted, some would say) before the drain, and so I returned to the house to find the bathtub overflowing, with water running over the side, onto the floor, and and into a heating vent in the floor. When I went down into the basement to see where the water was going, there was ice all over the floor, and cascading down from the heating duct. Fun to see, if it's not your house.
About 32 degrees Fahrenheit or so.
It has to be much colder than that, actually.
The pipes should survive until morning, and then some surly repair guy can …
They might be surly. You do, however, ask people to feel your pipes.
Space heater and electric blanket = you'll be just fine. Hot baths are nice, though.
I once had the heat go out in an apartment in winter, and spent 24 hours running the oven full blast with the door open, and mostly sitting on the step stool right in front of it, reading.
Ah, it is only in the fifties.
I take back most of the concern I was feeling for your impending icy doom.
Not bolding the introductory word or phrase of your update contravenes unfogged style.
Do you have any fleece? That is good for combatting the moderately low temperatures.
I have no idea how cold a house has to be for the pipes to freeze,
Labs, I'm guessing from this that you didn't double-major in physics.
When the heat failed once over a very cold New Years weekend in Somerville, MA, a goosedown mummy bag and thoughts of Maureen Dowd kept me warm.
"I've been lucky enough to never live in a house where the landlord didn't have a contract with the furnace company that guaranteed 24-service"
Actually, I've realized this is untrue. I've lived in a couple of cheapo houses that didn't, as well as the ones I listed that did. Not that anyone cares, even me, but I hate letting a statement I realized was false stand.
Besides, the ones that didn't were pits. (I've been in this tiny studio apt for the past couple of years.)
Since my wife and I aren't too bright, I believe the first winter after we bought our first house we went on vacation for a week and turned the heat completely off. Fortunately we had a friend coming over to do work on our house while we were gone. He realized what we had done when (a) it was really cold inside the house and (b) he noticed that our big goldfish was swimming in a tiny amount of water, the rest of its tank having iced over. He turned the heat back on to 50 or so, and told us later that our pipes probably would have frozen, and our house would have been flooded with water, within 24 hours. Somehow my wife and I had never heard of this "frozen pipes" thing. The fish, by the way, lived for some years after that.
Our power went out this morning, but happily only for about an hour.
Well, my sister-in-law's grandfather fell asleep in a snowbank and lost 1 or 2 joints from each finger. You can buy a livable house around there for $3,000.00, though, if you're not a sissy about cold.
There is something to be said for living in a place where you can be reasonably comforatable year-round in a house that has neither a furnace nor an air conditioner.
There is something to be said for living in a place where you can be reasonably comfortable year-round in a house that has neither a furnace nor an air conditioner.
Something to be said twice, even.
Damn. Tried to fix the typo on preview and somehow managed to post both versions. I blame George Bush.
Our power went out this morning, but happily only for about an hour.
Did it bring back coffee and a newspaper?
So whatddaya want, LB, a groan? Would that make you happy?
Ooh, a banning! Round up the villagers and torches!
I was actually just hoping that everyone would wince silently. But getting banned is good too -- I'm still well behind SB.
I thought that kind of thing was supposed to be hissed.
I think that LB should be traded to Little Green Footballs for a fucktard to be named later.
I want coffee and a newspaper, thank you.
And there is EVERYTHING to be said for living in a place that doesn't require heating or a/c. Although, really, very few places actually *require* a/c. Adobe and a good cross-breeze can deal with a lot of heat.
Adobe and a good cross-breeze can deal with a lot of heat.
And when adobe is unavailable, beer is significantly better than nothing.
SWEET LIFE-GIVING WARMTH UPDATE: What luck! There was a genuine problem (a leaky seal between fuel line and pump) that required a (simple, but tool-involving) fix. Thanks, home warranty!
Damn, I was looking forward to you liveblogging death by hypothermia. Seriously, glad it was an easy (and it sounds like free to you) fix.
Adobe and a good cross-breeze can deal with a lot of heat.
I actually had to look up "adobe." The only Adobe I know is Acrobat.
Adobe / abode. And underutilized play on words.
I actually had to look up "adobe." The only Adobe I know is Acrobat.
What, you never saw Pee Wee's Big Adventure?
Adobe / abode. And underutilized play on words.
Parental/paternal/prenatal is a cool set of anagrams. There is or was a brand of bottled water named "Great Bear." When I looked at it I was struck by the fact that each of the two words has a homonym that's also an anagram of the original word.
What, you never saw Pee Wee's Big Adventure?
Nope.
More anagram fun: after Shilpa Satoskar left my law firm to move to D.C., Peter Katsaros moved into her office. "Satoskar" and "Katsaros" are anagrams. What are the odds of that?
The Great Bear commands us to greet beer with the phrase, "grate bare!".
I want to market a brand of soda called Groot Beer with the slogan, "Groot Beer: great bare!" and pictures of naked people slurping beverage through phallic strawa.
(Sorry -- a bit pretentious to use the Latin plural of strawon -- if I was going to I should at least have italicized it.
Tell me, Osner, what declension is "strawon"? Near as I can figure, the only one that could work is third, as strawon, strawinis, in which case, the plural would be strawina.
Maybe you were thinking of the Greek?
I am outclassed and will retire.
I am outclassed and will retire.
Sic semper, uh, pedantis.
Ex verboro meo declinatio verbi "feles, felis" progreditur sic:
feles, felis, feli, felem, fele
feles, felium, felibus, feles, felibus
My Latin grammar and vocab are both shot to hell. Not only did I think that 'Cat' should have been nominative, I also thought that 'felis' was the nominative singular.
(I contemplated finding an online vocabulary list and trying to translate that last, but figured finishing up my time and getting out of here was a better idea.)
The Perseus Project has a searchable Lewis & Short.
I have not read all of the comments, but I did want to add that the Perseus project also has a Latin grammar that you can search. I believe that it is Allan and Greenough.
Also, thiis. "Shortly after his father's death in 1960, the eighteen-year-old Delany dropped out of his first year of City College and at nineteen married a high school friend, a talented eighteen-year-old poet, then at NYU, Marilyn Hacker."
It encompasses. As would a similar sunnary of my own life, and probably yours,
I was thinking of noting the piece to Bob, but I thought it would be over-obvious. It's still great, though.
I remain an egg.