It does not look like an umbrella, but I can explain…

As I start writing this in the evening, it is -2.5C outside the neighbor’s house.  I know this because the neighbor has a thermometer that broadcasts its measurement.  And I know this again because I have a thermometer in two parts, probably the same model, which does the same.  The part that was meant to be outside, I placed in the bedroom instead.  Much to my surprise, the temperature in my bedroom stubbornly stayed well below the freezing point, except it did not feel that way and when I went and looked at the thermometer it showed plus grades.  (Each part has its own LCD display, just in case you want to look at it directly.)  So I changed the channel and continued to get the freezing temperature on the old channel.  Evidently my base station picked up a signal from outside that overrode the signal that had passed through a few walls, so it is probably my nearest neighbor.  Even so, it is a couple good stone throws away, so it was a bit of a surprise.

Anyway!  It may be -2.5C now, but it was -12C in the morning.  And who can my neighbor thank for that shift?  Today in my lunch break I went and bought yet another space heater.  Because as Wikipedia correctly points out, air-to-air heat pumps are less effective than plain space heaters when you have freezing temperatures outside.  This is because it takes a lot of energy to extract the little heat from the freezing air, but also because you frequently need to stop and defrost the outside unit so it doesn’t get covered in ice.  (Even cold air holds some water that is deposited as ice when it is cooled even further.)  The frequent periods of defrosting outside were felt inside as rapidly dropping temperature, especially at my feet.  Even with thick socks, it became quite unpleasant to sit in the home office.  And it was chilly enough that even my fingers grew cold. Not to mention having to wear an outer jacket inside.

Now that I have the space heaters, temperatures are up almost to the freezing point outside and I don’t actually need it.  But that is the umbrella effect for you. If you don’t bring an umbrella, it rains. If you bring an umbrella, the sun comes out.  Obviously it is better to have an umbrella and sun, even if you look stupid.  The real problem is that you forget your umbrella in town.  But that is unlikely to happen with the space heater.

Is it really only enough for less than a minute?

This morning, it was only -4C outside, that is to say, four centigrades below freezing. This turned out to be enough that the hotwater pipe to my shower had melted during the night.  I now had hot water in the shower!  For a few seconds.  By the time I was actually inside, the water was barely even lukewarm and it went downhill from that.  OK, perhaps this was to be expected when I had the faucets dripping all night.  So I turned them off, what with it being so mild and all, and went to work.

I was rather late at work for a number of reasons.  First off, the low quality of sleep is catching up with me.  I still woke up at 7, and spent half an hour with LifeFlow 2, the 2Hz brainwave entrainment track.  As can be expected, I slept most of the time.  Actually that may be just as well, since I am mostly using this for the health benefits rather than as meditation.  It will be many years, if ever, before I can naturally meditate during deep dreamless sleep.  But the track is definitely working even when I sleep.  Usually when I sleep in the morning (and this holds for most people) I dream a lot.  The proportion of REM sleep increases over the course of the night, and the long bouts of intense dreams in the morning are actually exhausting.  (Although they probably fulfill important psychological functions, since people who are “starved” of REM sleep go a bit crazy.)

Anyway, when I put my headphones on at 7, I don’t dream even if I fall asleep.  I saw some kind of picture in my mind’s eye early on this time, but once the entrainment took fully hold, there was simply a kind of inner silence, which is ironic since it is created by sound. Still, I was horribly tired even after 30 minutes this was, so I gave up on the first bus and spent 40 more minutes with the delta wave entrainment.  I was STILL tired, but once I got up I felt fine.  I did another 20 minutes or so on the bus.  I don’t think a relative newbie should do more delta than that in a day, seriously.  After all, people my age probably spend only an hour or so in slow-wave sleep naturally.

So anyway, I went to the second bus, but didn’t manage to stop it.  Perhaps because I was standing together with a flock of garbage can.  Today is garbage day here, and the next is two weeks from now.  Not that I could have delivered any of my garbage today even if I had the foresight to sort it and put it in the bin:  The road was still full of snow drifts, to the point that it was pure guesswork where there had actually been a road, except for a few spots.  I had managed to spade a path through the snow this morning, but these garbage cans are more than twice that wide.  So that was out.  But the neighbors, whose roads are cleared more frequently, had their bins there, taking up nearly the whole bus stop. The bus did not even slow down even though I stood there with my bus card.

So I took the next bus again, but it was not in the city until close to lunch.  Conversely, I worked two hours later in the afternoon.  Then I went to Nodeland, shoveled a path to that house as well (luckily much, much shorter) and cleared the steps, then a path to take the garbage cans to the half-open shed where they normally stand.  Yes, garbage cans seem to weigh heavily on me today.  I put back a rug I had briefly borrowed, and took with me home the bathroom scales and the content of the physical mailbox.  The post office should start sending my mail to my new address by the end of the week.  I was a bit delayed because their online service claimed my address did not match my postal number.  (Kind of like a zip code, for those in the former colonies.) My neighbors have this number though, so I think it is right.  Plus I already get mail to that address in my new mailbox.

I came home around 22 (10PM) and took a warm shower. It lasted almost a minute. OK, perhaps not quite that long.  But almost certainly half a minute at least, I think.  With no dripping faucets. Is the hot water tank really that small?  That just doesn’t seem right. Anyway, by now the temperature outside had dropped to -10C, and is still falling. So it’s either dripping or freezing for the water again.  I could use the wisdom of Solomon now.

But right now, I think wisdom is going to bed.  We have a video meeting early tomorrow, and I can’t reasonably expect to suddenly have perfect sleep quality after just a couple nights. The train, after all, is still not racing past.  Plus, I have a randomly (?) occurring pain in my right side from time to time today, which may wake me up if it continues into the night.

But that which does not kill us, gives us something to write about!  Are you soon fed up with these slices of life now?

No longer complete chaos. At least inside.  As for the weather, read on!

More slice of the same life as yesterday!  Will these slices of life never end (before life does)? I have words that should be spoken, before they are lost forever!  But each day now is just moving this and moving that.  Last night I came home at 22 in the evening, and it probably will be no earlier today, since I at the very least need to go to Nodeland to set the garbage cans back before they snow down.  I set them out to by the roadside yesterday for the last time.

The last time of everything is significant, because it reminds us of eternity.  Although hopefully I won’t spend an eternity hauling garbage cans, no matter how much I may have deserved it.

Back to this morning. I had woken up several times during the night. I wonder if that was when the train didn’t come thundering by – I used to live by the railroad track for 4 years after all.  Even after that, I was up, out of my pajamas and into my work clothes well before the plumber arrived.  If I had been female, I might have briefly wished for a more advantageous attire, for the young man who showed up was excessively cute in a boyish way.  He would surely have melted the heart (and brain) of most any adult woman.  He was also quite competent and fast, despite his young age.  (He looked like he was just recently out of high school, seriously.)

Not only did he change the part of the shower where hot and cold water are mixed (this was the part that was leaking badly) but to a safer model where the temperature and the quantity are decided by different knobs.  (The original had a single handle that you moved in two different dimensions, a recipe for disaster if you ask me.) Unfortunately, when I checked after he left, there was still only cold water.  No doubt the hot water pipe had frozen in the meantime, even though it only travels under the floor for a few inches, while the rest of the length is in heated rooms.  With the cold water itself being so cold that it has to move or it freezes solid, it looks like I won’t be showering again until spring.  Now that’s bound to be a learning experience.

ADDING: It is now 20 (8PM) and I came home a little while ago.  The weather made it crazy to try to get to Nodeland and back to the city and then home.  Buses come and go at random times. I was surprised to see the bus to Mandal arrive at the usual time – but it turned out to be the bus that should have gone an hour earlier!  He decided to drive through Møll anyway, since he was leaving at the time when the bus to Møll was leaving according to the plan, and there were passengers waiting for that one.  Because of the bad roads (snow until past 4PM and wind even after that) we took quite a bit longer than usual to make it home.  There was a line of cars out of the city, which it almost never is at that time of the day, and it lasted for quite a while.  Even after that, we could not go full speed.  It is anybody’s guess whether the evening bus is even going, and if so, whether I’d be home before midnight.

The snow is predicted to start again this evening. But even if not, the wind is still building drifts and banks.  The road to this house, which was opened on Sunday, is gone again. Just gone. A few places can you see that there is a disturbance in the snow, but mostly it looks like the dunes of Sahara, only in white. A small drift was building against the door, but I removed it and it has so far stayed away.  I wonder if one day I will have to exit the house through a window.  If so, I will try to make sure to have it photographed.

Thoughtful ghost from the game The Sims 3.

After work I went back to the old house to vacuum and wash some, as well as look for things we accidentally left behind. All of this happened, and it will probably take a couple more days of the same. I had left the hot water tank unplugged when we left, so there was only cold water. That certainly limited that part, though I vacuumed the carpeted rooms, all except the kitchen and bath. There were actually a few bags worth of stuff we had overlooked, incredibly enough.

But most noticeable was the eerie feeling I had while I was there. It was the same place I had called home for four years literally to the day. (I moved in January 30, 2006 and moved in here January 30, 2010.) But even though it was the same place, it was not. It was mostly empty, of course, but memories remained. I felt like a ghost, or Schroedinger’s cat, there and not there at the same time. It was kind of unsettling.

And amid my memories and the emptiness, I repented. Repentance is central in Christianity, you know. So I suppose being an ordinary Christian means doing ordinary things and then repenting them. This I did now. Vacuumed, remembered, repented, and prayed.

I have much more I would say, but I came home at 22 (10PM) and sleep was not too deep last night either. Tomorrow morning at 8 the plumber is supposed to come and fix the shower that only gives cold water and that at all times. I don’t particularly want to be in my pajamas while greeting the plumber. Your pajamas may vary.

One good thing about repentance, you don’t actually get more unhappy from it. The loss of self-esteemed is countered by a surge in gratitude. There was a time long ago when I felt I did not get what I deserved. I still feel that, only now I am very, very happy that I don’t get what I deserve.