Temperatures in the life-threatening zone and a double round of snow.
Not much to look at, really. But pictures show how the color has been stolen from us. The following are proof; even the sunsets of yesterday and today look frigid.
Currently, it’s 24°F but feels like 14. I’ve just come in, and it doesn’t really feel like 14 degrees. It feels like the winter of ’77. I say, what difference does it make when it’s below the freezing mark anyway? None whatsoever, that’s what.
Wednesday, the heat pump went and hid from the coming cold and snow, like all cowardly pieces-of-shit scrap metal they are. The temperature in a below ground condo will always be colder than what your thermostat says it is.
That’s because heat pumps are ineffective. You see the temperature on the thermostat, and it says 69°. Okay, fine. But even one foot away, it ain’t no 69°. It’s more like 68, maybe 67. And that’s just in the living room. In the bedrooms, the most distant spaces from the thermostat, you can subtract 8° because the windows and patio doors are so drafty that they may as well not be there.
Service came out. It’s a three-year-old unit. That’s all. It wasn’t getting the job done. Most wouldn’t anyway. That afternoon late, they brought space heaters out. Those tripped a breaker.
Fuck!
No heat that night. On thursday, a contractor was brought in. He had to go out and get a new relay, and once installed, the unit was working surprisingly well. But I was wise enough to have already purchased two small space heaters on Amazon. Breaker tripped.
Fuck.
I learned quickly to use them on low setting with the thermostats set just at the point where the units kicked on. One for my bedroom, one for my housemate’s room. But I’m still sleeping under a blanket, which I detest and try never to do. It can’t be helped. And I’m blessed to have shelter and a bed at all, so I can’t say that I was really that grumpy about the whole deal. Considering the frightful plight of the homeless, I’m not just blessed, I’m living like a king.
If I have any complaints at all, one would be the time I wasted watching the movie Chariot (2022), an indie that had an intriguing beginning but then went straight to nonsense so thick that I’m here right now to dare you to watch it. It takes a really bad writer and director to put John Malkovich in a red wig and give him a totally incoherent dialog and character. At the end, I asked myself, What the fuck did I just watch?
I mean it: what the fuck was that shit?
I’m working on some retro reviews of some movies you may have missed but which deserve to be seen. In 10 years, if I do another retro list, Chariot will not be on it.
I’d rather watch Aquaman. Except, I don’t want to see that movie. Jason Mamoa did a remake of Conan the Barbarian and earned my everlasting anger. He pissed on a classic! You don’t piss on Arnold!
Kind of like Mother Nature just screwed Jack Frost and then dripped all over us: it may be wet, but it ain’t no piss!
Folks, thanks for stoppin by. Stay warm, stay dry, and be well. Y’all come back now, you hear?
Memoirs of an American Asshole 