It's zero degrees here, but with a wind chill of about -20, you should hear the wind beating my house. My son's bedroom is above the garage and it was only 49 in there! Luckily he likes to sleep in the basement next to the furnace!!
And we have two parties today, one for a kid and then an adult pre-Super Bowl party tonight. We have to drive about 30 miles to get there in this awful weather. The wind is going to push my van all over the Highway. Interstate 80 btw!
Today will be our coldest day in a long time, probably below zero and the wind is howling! Our warm up doesn't come until Thursday with a high of 23!! Crazy! I wish I had a fire place.... cozy
So Tina, how were the parties? Was the driving okay? That's the worst part of winter for me - the dangerous driving conditions.
My husband is hogging the fireplace today. He's hunkered down in the family room watching football related stuff - not my cuppa tea, lol. We had a gas fireplace installed a few years back and we absolutely love it. No more splitting wood, ordering it in, piling it up.cleaning out the hearth, etc. I was sort of hesitant since we'd always had wood-burning ones everywhere we've lived and the kids grew up with them. But this gas one is great! No complaints at all. It even looks like the real thing, and can increase the temperature in the house by several degrees.
It's cold here too, Tina, but not as bad as Chicago. I don't know the temp right now, but it's supposed to go up to -13 this afternoon. As long as it doesn't snow again until my son gets back from skiing later, I'll be okay. It's always a worry on those damn roads! I insist he take my Buick and not his little Grand Am for his weekend trips, just because it's so much heavier, and it has the seat warmers - the best thing about the darn car, lol.
I used to be a winter person, too, Jojo. Not any more, though. Both my husband and I were fanatic skiers and had the kids on the slopes before they were even out of diapers. Every single weekend, from mid-December through Easter, we'd be on the road up to our ski club each Friday afternoon and then again on Sunday night back to the city. Then one Sunday, after a 5 hour drive through white-outs and blizzard conditions (the trip ordinarily took 2 hours), we decided we'd had enough. We sold the cottage, dropped our membership and haven't been up since. We don't miss it at all. However, the crazy kids still do it and lament that we sold our place up there. They didn't have to pay for the damn heat, hydro and cable, the taxes, the ploughing, the membership fees, the maintenance....all the fun stuff. We figured we saved enough every year since to take the entire family to Hawaii for two weeks, although we've never done it, LOL. They aren't interested in spending two weeks in the trpoics when they could be on the snow. GAH!
Although I can see the mainteance costs would be high, I would love to have a little winter cottage. That sounds like so much fun! I've never been skiing before.
However, methinks a 5hour drive through a blizzard would turn me on to the warmer weather.
The day party wasn't too bad, it was at the YMCA and it was very warm inside. And the evening party went well, except the drive home. Our car had been outside for 3 hours and it was so cold to start up and drive home, the steering wheel was cold half the way home. And the car was making a funny noise, which had me on the edge of my seat the whole time, thinking something was going to blow!
luckily we got home, only to wake up this morning with a frozen water line!!!!! ARGH, worked on it all day, cut a whole thru the wall and blew a blow dryer on it, Finally it thawed! So for the next 4 nights we're going to have to run the water and flush the toilets every couple of hours. And for next year we're going to run the vent to the garage, which is against code here in Illinois, but we have a friend in the furnace business....
The only place colder than us right now is Minnesota and northern Michigan! I want to move South now!!!!!!!!!
And btw Go Bears!
Isn't someone from Canada on this board?? must be in long underwear!!
Isn't someone from Canada on this board?? must be in long underwear!!
Tyger and I are both from Ontario. She's down in south western Ontario across the river from Detroit amd I'm on the north shore of Lake Ontario. The weather here isn't very severe as a rule, and much of the snow we'd get is dumped onto Buffalo because it's on the south side of the lake, LOL. But 45 minutes north of us, and right through the route to ski country, is a huge snow belt. It can be snowing like mad there and nothing is happening here at all. And that's a good thing!!
Jojo - we made those treks to ski country for a really long time, more than 20 years. We had seen horrible accidents, hit black ice and spun out...all sorts of hair-raising things. But that last blizzard did us in. It wasn't the first one, for sure. I can remember more than a few times getting to the cottage on a dark Friday night after a heavy snowfall and the plough guy hadn't gotten to our place yet. We had a really long driveway, so we'd have to leave the car on the highway and hike in through waist deep snow hauling 3 kids and 2 dogs, then all the groceries. Often the fuel would have run out and we'd have to build a fire and huddle around until the damn oil truck would get to us. (The oil companies up there treated weekenders like second-class citizens. It has changed in the last couple of years as Intrawest has taken over a large public ski resort and is turning the town into a Disneyworld horror, but that's another story. It's slowly becoming the typical bus-boy/millionaire horror story there, thanks to the developers.) So the romance of a weekend winter place does have its down-side, lol. Anyway, we don't miss it. I'm happy we did it while the kids were growing up, though.
My husband just announced that with the wind-chill tonight, the temperature will be minus 30 (Celsius). Ugh.
It's 15 degrees in my corner of Massachusetts today, without the wind chill factor. I don't want to even think about my utility bills after this cold spell with me here trying to stay warm.
My father is coming over later to scrape off my car and to run it for a while. I just got off of the phone with the doctor's office and they told me 6-8 weeks recovery! OMG, I'll be nuts by the time I'm sprung! They also told me that I can't drive until the end of week four! I'm not even supposed to go to the grocery store... I didn't open my mouth about my planned trip to the mall tomorrow to get my nails done. I have got to get out of this house!
KaeEll wrote: It's minus 15 but sunny today, so I'm not complaining! I'm even venturing out later today to run some errands. It's winter...what did we expect, LOL!
What kind of car do you drive, they must make them better up there in Canada and homes too. On the news so many cars broke down, I'm glad I stayed close to home. And I still can't believe our water line froze, I have a bone to pick with my builder!
I have a Volvo, S60. I don't have a garage, so I'm really hoping that mine turns over alright. It's only a year old, so I'm not really anticipating problems in Massachusetts.
Hiya, Tess! Maybe you could have your dad take you for a little spin around town - the drive might relieve some of the cabin fever.
LOL, I'm watching Y&R on the Newfoundland TV network this morning and they're giving the road reports etc. I just decided to stop complaining about the weather here in southern Ontario. I love Newfoundland in the summer, but I really don't think I could deal with all that snow and cold from November until May. Ack!
