OMG! CAT IN THE WINDOW!!!!!

Cat brain cross post.

Every so often, they prove it really is walnut sized.

Curiosity got the best of me: gas+ electric is a little higher in the winter than I paid in the apartment in 2007. But not 2x higher. Maybe 10-15% more. Quite reasonable. I think my furnace is from the late 80s/early 90s(?), so when it comes time to replace it, I'm sure I'll get even better efficiency.

Jesus, ita !, I can barely imagine getting some of M's presents, including a poster, back to PA. How do you wrangle a CAKE to LA from Jamaica?!

I think we keep it at 67. Dan's really skinny, so he's always cold, and I keep blankets on the couch and the loveseat.

The kitchen is FREEZING in the winter, since the last owners f the house decided to make the enclosed back porch (uninsulated) into a breakfast nook and knocked out the wall. We have foam insulate sliding "doors" there (plus a hole in the kitchen ceiling, thank you, welcome to my domicile in need of some reno) but the kitchen is always about 15 degrees colder than the rest of the downstairs. Which is AWESOME for cooking and cleaning.

The powder room off the kitchen is also an uninsulated add-on; it's nice to have a powder room downstairs, but that toilet gets COLD in the depths of winter!

Heat is 18-20C when I am home and awake. 15C at night and when I'm away.

I keep the thermostat set to about 68 in winter, but the house isn't uniformly that warm. Any higher and the upstairs bedrooms are stifling, any lower and the downstairs is freezing. Actually, the downstairs is cold anyway. I keep a space heater by my feet just to make it comfortable. I don't like wearing lots of clothes inside the house to keep warm; if more than one layer is required I bump the heat up. My heating bills have never caused me despair, maybe because I have a heat pump. Maybe it's just that my house is fairly compact.

Also, the adjoining house on the north side provides great insulation!

My bedroom is actually set at 18. I don't know why it's Celcius in there. But that reminds me I need to put a towel around the air conditioner, because it is freezing.

How do you wrangle a CAKE to LA from Jamaica?!

Two cakes, two loaves of bun, one of bread, Milo, rum, 7 bags of coffee, two boxes of tea, and two bottles of jam. That I can recall. Food-related, anyway. I've never moved more. And I'm really glad my mother held back on the third cake. My sister still gives me shit for it, but Jesus--don't they understand I have a hard time travelling? How much explaining does that take?

You all don't even want to know. There's a reason they don't let me touch the thermostat at work, and that I wear fingerless gloves all day, and sometimes a hat. And a coat. I think in the winter, I keep it around 78. Those who know me can testify that my metabolism hovers close to "zombie."

The trade-off is that I almost never use my A/C, even in the worst of the NC summer. It helps that I'm on the ground floor.

No, that's not true, I use it when guests come over and beg me to turn it on and make my apartment a bearable temperature. But it feels fine to me.

I keep mine at 58 when I'm not here and at about 68 when I am but it feels warmer. The house heats up pretty quickly, too. I have no idea what my utilities are yet as my first electric bill was for $7. I should be getting those about this week, though, I think? Anyway, I may make adjustments after that. We'll see. I hate waking up cold.