utenzi

Sometimes you don't know when you have a good thing. Sure, we had a very long and very hot summer. And autumn was pretty damn warm too. But still, how could I have complained about the cold two weeks back just because we were having a few nights of below freezing weather? Now we've had a week in which it was often below freezing all day long and the next week isn't a whole lot better---and right now it's 17f outside and still dropping. Supposed to get down to 13f! The weather in December is a lot different than what we had been having. That's for sure. I turned on the light I have under the house, am dripping a couple of faucets, and have turned up the temperature in the house to 68f. All this just to keep my water pipes from freezing. These southern homes aren't built for temperatures in the lower teens. :-(

I wanted to wait until November 1st to turn on my heat this Winter but it's looking like I'm not going to make it. For the first time, this morning it was below 60f in my bedroom and that's usually the point at which I turn the heat on each year. I took the picture to the left when I got home from work tonight at 7:12pm (a grant is due this week and we've been staying late every night lately). When I went to bed last night it was 61.8f inside and 38.6 outside, this morning when I woke up it was 59.4f inside and 34.2 outside. 13 hours later, when I arrived home it'd only dropped 0.6f degrees to 58.8 but I bet tonight will see that fall at least 3more degrees. It's supposed to dip down into the low 30s again tonight.   Brrr! I think I'll be turning on the heating system when I get home tomorrow night. I'd have done it today if I'd gotten home earlier. The system is stinky when you first turn it on so I want to have the windows open and me outside---so ...

In sensitivity to those who really ARE dying, I have to admit here I'm just being a weenie about a cold. I started my symptoms yesterday around noon but thought it was just my normal sinus problems. Around 3am I was awakened, literally, to the possibility it was more serious by 4+ hours of fever that had me shivering even under all my blankets and down comforter. I like to be warm, what's it to you?! This next section is from the The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas' website: As temperatures dip, cold season starts. What do you do to fight the fever, sneezing and runny nose? Because there’s still no comprehensive cure for the common cold, we still just have to treat the symptoms. Over-the-counter medications can help you deal with the congestion, sneezing and fever that come with colds. One thing you shouldn’t do, according to doctors at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, is rely on an old piece of folklore. “Feed a cold, starve a fever” ha...

Everyone who takes Echinacea recovers from their cold. Of course everyone who doesn't take Echinacea also recovers. That's the nature of the disease. It can make us miserable for a few days, but with the exception of vulnerable folk with compromised immune systems, everyone gets better after those few days. So why take Echinacea ? Perhaps you have too much money and want to spread it around a bit. LOL Or more likely, you just feel like you have to do something. This is particularly true of parents who hate to see their kids suffering. But if you have to do something...why not try chicken soup? At least it tastes good. Colds are caused by rhinovirus and many drugs and treatments have been tried over the years to either cure the disease or make the symptoms more bearable. Echinacea and chicken soup are just two of the many things tried. In fact medical studies on echinacea were done as far back at 1908 when two articles were published on that subject in The Journal of the America...

It's damn cold in here. My heat isn't working. AGAIN! I was at my girlfriend's place for the weekend and when I came back home it was 55f in here and the heat was on but no hot air was coming out. This has been happening every now and then for several weeks but it's difficult to get it repaired when it's not consistently not working. Up to now it's just been the electric coils that would sometimes not work but this time the heat pump isn't doing its thing either. That's why the title on this post. I turned off the heat a few times tonight since sometimes that's all it needs to get going again--but not this time--so it's staying off for the entire night and I'll see what happens in the morning. It's 53f in here now and since it's hovering at the freezing point outside, it'll be around 48f in here by the time I wake up. Getting out of bed in the morning will be quite the challenge! I've owned this place for 3.5 years and the HVA...

Most of last week I was having really bad headaches. Now I always have sinus headaches to one degree or another but these headaches felt different. I think I narrowed down the reason for them to it being related to dry air. Yes, dry air. I've heard other people complain that dry air would give them headaches but it'd never happened to me before but after having horrendous headaches last Tuesday through Thursday I went to Wal-mart and picked up a $25 humidifier. It's a cute thing with a water tank that holds something like 3 or 4 liters of water and uses heat to create the mist. It also has this little cup in which you can put smelly stuff to scent the mist. I'm using eucalyptus. Anyway, this seems to be working well. Last night I woke up 4 times with a headache and each time I leaned out of bed, over the humidifier, and breathed in the steam directly for several minutes and the headache went away. It's like magic! The negative part of all this is that I really can...