Working up some Body Heat to Stay Warm... Friday, January 8

It's Friday night and we have officially ran out of heat in Big Bertha, the one heater at the front of the club.  We have a tad left in the other heater but will need to conserve it for Free Train tomorrow, 6-8pm.  The coal heater just got a few shovels of new coal so it will take some time for that to heat up again.

No oil keeping the heaters going, no coal burning, both not keeping me warm.

The lack of heat kicks me into one of two modes: ultra lazy mode or crazy busy mode.  Ultra lazy mode means I either huddle around the super sonic small space heater under my computer at the juice bar or head to bed early and curl up in a tight ball in between my thick blanket and the electric blanket.

Tonight I went into the opposite of ultra lazy mode, I went into crazy busy mode.  I did laundry, I vacuumed, I rearranged the club gloves.  And then, when that wasn't adequate enough to keep me warm and I started to frown at the thought of having to change into frozen-like clothes, I then headed to the treadmill.  Worked up a good sweat  clocking in 3kms and then headed to the shower.  Putting on cold clothes after that late night intense run seemed almost refreshing... key word here being almost.  By the time my shower was over the electric blanket on my bed had heated up and so I was toasty warm from there on out.  I've done this three times this week.  I'm overtraining for the sake of staying warm.

Don't feel sorry for me, that's not the point of me randomly rambling about the lack of it.  It's just me trying to find amusement and humour in a situation that otherwise would leave me screaming and shouting out not-so-nice words in a multitude of languages.  My father emailed me the other day, after a conversation I had had with him on New Year's Eve.  "Did I hear you correctly, did you say you and Snickers were both under the covers when you were talking to me on the phone?!"  Yes, yes we were.  Seeing your breath as you lay in bed may be funny but waking up with a super chilly nose and frosty ears is rough, so under the covers we slept and stayed until we had fully committed to waking up for the day.  I must note here that it's not as bad anymore.  For awhile there our original electric blanket had died and we were trying to toughen up and just deal with it, accept it, but Snickers noted a sweet sale at the store the other day on electric blankets and he couldn't resist buying on.  Oh the temptation of heat.  It lures me to go outside and venture to random places that I wouldn't naturally go to, like neighbouring stores where they crank the heat, and it makes me dilly-dally in such places.  The local shop keepers think I'm being super friendly, but I originally just came for the heat.  The added interesting conversations and random cups of coffee were pure bonus.

Most people come home and peel off the layers, get more comfortable.  I come home and put on more layers, that's me getting more comfortable in a 4 degree building.