Halfway down the Danube

Crisp and clear

The weather turned cold this week.

Mornings are cold and clear and frosty -- walking to the bus with Alan, we can see our breath. Afternoons are warmer, but still nippy. We're definitely on the back half of autumn now.

The cold snap started on Election Day, oddly enough. We stayed up late. I took the next day off, though I had to go into the office in the afternoon. I was wrong in my predictions, but that's fine. I did win one bet.

Anyway. Our house has no thermostats, so the heat is either all on or all off. All on is pretty powerful in some parts of the house, much less so in others... our bedroom may be uncomfortably warm, while the upstairs bathroom is close to freezing. (Claudia has put little rugs on the tile floor to make it tolerable to bare feet.) Similarly, the kitchen is toasty, but the TV room is quite cool. It's a Soviet-era house, modernized only partially -- some windows have double-glazing, for instance, and some don't. Come January, we may have to close a couple of rooms off.

Meanwhile, when the heat in the master bedroom grows too stifling, someone has to turn the heat off for a while. The heating system is in a shed in the back yard, so someone has to go outside to flip the switch. This someone is not always me, but there is, shall we say, a trend.

Anyway, the shortening days are lovely. Not complaining.

Posted by douglas at November 10, 2006 03:32 PM