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.

My crazy neighbor S barely uses the heat or ac. She's been known to let the house get down to 45. Of course, she grew up in a house just heated by a woodstove (her parents wouldn't run the furnace) and no ac. In the winter, she slept in a snowsuit, boots and winter coat under multiple quilts. Summer, she slept on the porch. Her version of normal is a little whacked. She attributes her parents' insanity to her dad having grown up in an unheated house in England. I just think (no, actually, I know) her family is just a little nuts. I'm continually amazed at how normal and well adjusted she is. She DID have horrid taste in men, but landed the best boyfriend ever, so that's off the list now.

She did concede this past summer to allowing her awesome boyfriend putting in an ac unit in the bedroom and he gets to control it.

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.

That sounds like travel torture.

Aaand, just found out my SIL's grandfather died. She's had such a shitty fall and winter. And now she has to go deal with her cracked out family, and I predict it gets ugly if he left anything to her. She doesn't anticipate he did (he was a cantankerous old coot) but she was one of his favorites, despite her parents essentially disowning her (he asked her "What the fuck is wrong with these assholes?" even as he was living with them!) and he just adored my brother and the boys. Uhg.

Ugh, poor her.

And holy foodstuffs, ita! Although I wouldn't mind some bun and cheese.