I’m in South Carolina, and one year I went to Maine for a week in the summer to learn how to sail a schooner. One day, the captain came in to breakfast and announced loudly and sadly, “It’s gonna be a barnburner!” It was 80.
Yay! Furnace is running and water is flowing. I guess the pilot light burner head was just crudded up with carbon. The guy did some other maintenance for me as well. It wasn’t too expensive either. I’ll keep their name around for future business.
This weather is just nasty here. I have an eighth mile gravel driveway that we can’t clear. It’s uphill at the end, so we can barely get out. The streets aren’t anywhere near as clean as they would be in Chicago. Worst of all, it rarely snows here, so all of the stores are out of sleds. I have a perfect hill for my daughter, and she loved the sled in Chicago. 
Just some ideas.
How about a big plastic tub or lid ? An ironing board? A big, flat piece of wood? A folded up tarp? An inner tube? A spare tire? A bathtub mat? A folded up shower curtain? A big piece of cardboard?
Hate to see the daughter miss out on some sliding of one form or another.
Well, we’re talking about an 18 month old, so I don’t expect her to hang on to anything odd. I know she likes sleds, because I took her out in Chicago. It needs to be big enough that she wont just drop off of it. Luckily, I got some good advice from my co-worker-in-law (My wife’s coworkers wife), on a new sporting goods store that opened Sunday. I got the last one they had. Literally, I got the display. Yay again!
Tomorrow, I will light the wood stove in the basement, and even at these temperatures, we will hardly use any propane at all. This is going to be a great winter.
Glad to hear that !
I am making a mission of burning all the firewood we have left.
One upside of hurricanes is that all the oak trees they blow down in your yard make for much “free” firewood.
In the past 4 or 5 years, because of hurricanes, I keep the living room like the tropics in the winter with just all the “free” firewood. The downside of course is that all those majestic big oaks in the yard are now gone
Bad side effect of the cold, dry weather here: I looked out my window last night, and realized that the bright, flickering light was the house across the street burning down. Everybody was safe, but the house is done for.
It’s not that bad today in the Upper Mississippi Valley. Six degrees above at noon. Clear sky, bright sun. Maybe 20 inches of snow on the level from the pre-Christmas and post-Christmas snows. Sort of pretty. Took my mid- afternoon smoke break without an overcoat. But yesterday my four-wheel drive got impossibly stuck trying to park behind the office. It’s January. It’s what we expect. It will pass. Maybe by April. Maybe not.
That’s what ice storms are for here.
How would you like to be on the other end of that microphone? Some earnest young reporter has been told by her witless boss to get a story on good advice for the cold weather. Many a time I wanted to stand in front of the “news” microphone and make smart-ass comments. We always tried to turf these floof stories to the next guy over, whether it was cold weather, hot weather, pollen, lightning, or any other half-a$$ed idea where common sense was much more valuable than our “advice.”
Most of them are half covered, you can still see the tops of their hats and other assorted odds and ends that they carry
It was a bit nippy here the other day. Around noonish it was -20 F and my car wouldn’t start. On the plus side, it was sunny with no wind, so it was tolerable.
Most DQs here are open all winter now. Only the smaller ones that are drive-in types that don’t serve the full hot menu tend to close. I think it’s up to the owners. The one where I live has gone through a few owners and used to close for three months, then it was one, and now it doesn’t close at all.
We joked around about wanting something to warm us up a bit, so hey … how about ice cream?
I was wearing mittens while driving yesterday, and my fat fingers accidentally hit the A/C button while turning on the heater. The A/C ran for about 15 minutes before I noticed, and that was only because I saw the indicator light. Heck, it was still warmer inside the car than outside.
All bus services have just been cancelled in Dublin due to dangerous road conditions. We had snow today but that’s not really the problem. We’ve had 2 weeks of solid freezing conditions and the frost has built up on most raods and become ice/black ice.
A bus skidded on the main street in Dublin and nearly toppled over(we have double deckers).
Like shark fins?
Went through the Burger King drivethru Monday for lunch - they had a sign up saying that they were very sorry, but they couldn’t provide any soft drinks because their drink lines had frozen. *That’s *a first.
I know that I live in Minnesota, and that it gets cold here. And I like winter, but this sub-zero shit sucks. We usually have 1-2 weeks of really bone-chilling cold every winter, so here’s hoping that when this ends (whenever that is), we’ll be done and back up into the 20s and 30s for the duration.
It was warmer in Newfoundland than in Atlanta yesterday; sorry, Southern Dopers, but it made me laugh out loud. Just remember this next summer when I’m bitching about dying in 30ºC weather (86F). 
Good, good. That means they can’t see you coming when you sneak over with the liquid nitrogen. One good squirt of that, the gnomes shatter, and your neighbour will think it due to the cold snap. 
TEN inches of snow here in usually-balmy southern England. It started at 6pm yesterday and, apart from a couple of 10-minute breathers, carried on at varying intensity till 4.30pm today. Beautiful stuff - I love snow and this is the most of it I’ve seen on the ground in the 32 years I’ve lived here.
Running the A/C while using the heater is a good way to defrost the windows.