Weather Wimps

The BBQ Pit
1

My wife who is rather tough is a weather wimp.
Last night I slept under the comforter, she had the air on so high.

Come winter time, I end up sleeping on top of the bed.
Now when I lived on the third floor of my parents creaky old house, I didn’t have air conditioning.

My father who was notoriously ernergy stingy, kept the house at about 55 in the winter, and shut off the radiators on my floor under the premise that enough heat would rise up to the third floor to ensure my survival.

Being an outdoors kind of guy, I noticed something interesting. One can get used to it.

I think the term is called ACCLIMATED.

Wonderful concept really.

Spend a lot of time in a cold environment, and your body will become both used to and comfortable there.

Spend a lot of time in a hot environment and the same thing happens.

My wife and coworkers however are screwing up my ability to make myself environmentally immune.

I sit here now, in my office, shivering my ass off with my jacket on. When I go outside the heat will hit me like a blast furnace. I will be unprepared.

Fortunately jogging has helped me get used to the temperature, and usually by Sunday afternoon after a weekend outside, I’m acclimated. Of course then it’s back to the refrigerated office the next day.

Why do people insist on this? It’s stupid. Now I’m never comfortable. If we would just accept the heat or the cold we’d get used to it. Why do we keep trying to screw around with it when all it does is make us more uncomfortable?

2

What you need to remember is: There’s no such thing as cold, only more or less heat.

So, how can you be affected by something that doesn’t exist. :slight_smile:

[sub]This is what my friend Dave used to tell me when I would complain about the temperature in the coffee house. Then he would call me a p*ssy.[/sub]

3

Simetra:

I hope you punched him in the nose for it. it seems the only appropriate response.

4

Scylla, I think your wife and mine might be related. She has the AC in the sleeping chamber cranked up to 60F. It’s summer, we live right outside DC. I can’t sleep because either I’m too cold or I have the blankets pulled over me and I get too hot. I hate air conditioning unless it’s truly stinky-hot or freeze-your-nuts off cold. Unfortunately, in the lovely Mid-Atlantic, we have both. I’m from California, where the weather knows how to cooperate. 70F more or less year round, snow once or twice in the winter, then up in the 100’s with 17% humidity in the summer. Everyone else can have my share of DC weather. I’m leaving soon, and unless they send me to Viet Nam or Guinea, I’m pretty much guaranteed better weather than here.

Oh, and my wife and I have been fighting summer colds and sinus infections for the last week-brought on by decreased resistance brought on by walking from refrigerated office into air that resembles hot beef gravy, so warm and perfumed it is.

5

It’s a contrast of short-term versus long-term benefits. If we let ourselves get used to the heat, we’d be happier in the long term. Unfortunately, in general it seems that folks tend to think more of short-term benefits (“I’m hot NOW! Set the thermostat to 65 degrees!”) rather than what would be of overall greater benefit in the future.

Me, I’m just too frigging cheap to crank the A/C 24/7. :smiley:

I’ve also had the same experience as False_God – I tend to get summer colds a lot, probably from going from overly-air-conditioned offices and homes into that oh-so-fun combination of heat and humidity. That throws off my system like crazy.

6

I totally agree with Scylla about the acclimatization. I think that being outside as much as possible in fall and winter makes me much less susceptible to the cold than people who run from their house to their heated car to their heated place of business, never setting foot out in the cold weather more than they absolutely have to.

7

That may work for ordinary types with tiny ranges of climatic comfort.

My range is pretty large, but it is offset downwards by about fifteen degrees. I am one of those people who fires up the AC in the summer and is still uncomfortably hot all the time. In winter I sleep with the windows open and the heat off. I like nothing better than to wake up to a brisk 40-50 degrees in my bedroom. Or colder.

I have been trying to acclimatize myself to the heat for years. I spent one July backpacking in Arizona and Utah. I train in a small, un-airconditioned room in heavy fencing gear for eight to ten hours per week. I walk a half hour to work every morning and evening when I could be taking the subway.

But I’m still fucking miserable. And I hate listening to my coworkers complain that the AC is too high, as the frigidity of my office is my only real respite from the unyielding, collagenous heat.

Just a few more weeks. And then I’ll be bitching about the heat. :wink:

MR

8

Chuckle, grin.

Y’all grew-up wrong. You should’a spent your formative years someplace like Colorado, or thereabouts.

I’m comfortable from about 105[sup]o[/sup] to about 45[sup]o[/sup]. I may change the amount of clothing I’m wearing by a fair bit, But I don’t need any HVAC support anywhere in that range. Excess humidity is kinda rough, I’ll admit, but so what? Beyond that range, maybe I need some help, but hell, after a few winters running a Bobcat in sub-zero weather at 4am, followed by summers of pouring concrete in furnace-like temps, it’s all kinda the same.

Scylla, you need an outdoors kinda job…

<Duck & run for my life…>

9

You won’t hear me complaining about the heat. Commenting, yeah, but not complaining. It’s cold I can’t stand.

I don’t mind the fact that the steering wheel in my car is hot enough to give minor burns (actually, I kinda like it), but in the winter… brr. I think it’s that it takes so much longer to heat up to a comfortable temperature than it does to cool down to one.

10

Are you my mother’s husband? If it were up to him, they would never have either the heat or the AC on in their house. This includes the middle of sweltering New Orleans summers. He likes heat and humidity, the more the better.

What with Mom’s hot flashes and chilly spells (ahh, menopause) it makes life in their house…interesting. No wonder my brother stays in his room all the time.

11

Ahem. May I just say that when I get hot enough to sweat for more than about 5 minutes, I get headaches that would kill horses? Thank you. That said, I don’t expect anyone to go out of their way to accomodate me. But I also don’t acclimate to the heat.

Cold, OTOH, I love. I’ll walk around outside with 6 feet of snow on the ground in short sleeves.

12

This only tangenitally related, in the sense of “Climate control oddities of my parents,” but my dad refuses to use a fan. No matter how hot it is. He insists that fans actually make it hotter, because the fan’s engine is generating heat, thereby infitesimally and imperceptibly raising the temperture of the room. You just “think” you’re cooler because the air is moving around. “Wind chill factor” is apparently a foreign concept to him.

13

Hijack – that means your probally one of the many Americans that live in a constant state of dehydration. Not enough to truly affect you until you lose a bit more fluid. That why when you step outside to sweat you get a headache…do you get sick to your stomach if your out for a long time? Mind if I ask what and how much you drink on a daily basis?

14

After a winter in New England, it’s a little strange to see everyone prancing around in flip-flops and shorts when the weather goes above 50.

It’s even stranger to have your visiting s.o. mention how freezing it is while wearing several layers when you are in a t-shirt and sandals. Ah, the things you get used to.

15

Since I do not like winter, i enjoy summers. Except today, it was in the high 90’s with matching humidity, and all I could do was stay in bed. I work at night, and am ok then, because the AC is cranked at work.
While everyone else is cold, i am copacetic, even happily chugging sodas.

I had a killer headache yesterday, and muscle cramps no matter how much i drank. I only had i soda at work, and also drank juice today. The dog days of summer are grating on my last nerve.

16

What I cannot understand are the people who keep their houses at 60 degrees in summer and 85 degrees in winter. If 60 degrees is comfortable in summer shouldn’t it be comfortable in winter too? And if 85 is comfortable in winter why not in summer?

Personally I hate the heat. But I’m perfectly happy to turn down the thermostat to 60 in the winter. The only time I like a little heat is just when I get out of the shower…then warmth is good. But I can’t sleep when it gets over 80 degrees…

17

There’s nothing better than sleeping in a cool to cold room under a nice thick comforter. If you can store a side of beef in the room for long periods without spoilage, the temperature is just about right. The only caveat is that it’s much nicer to stay in bed rather than getting up.

Fresh air is part of it, and the temperature, I think, as
well. Many people I’ve known remark they’ve never slept better when camping under the stars, and the fresh air must be part of it.

Unfortunately, my roommates in school and the military never agreed with this philosophy for some strange reason, and insisted on closing windows up tight and pegging the thermostat to the high side, which always resulted in my waking up with covers thrown off, eyelids glued together and the beginnings of a good respiratory infection. Ick. I hope they all keel over from meningitis some day (kidding)

18

Like Scylla I grew up in a house that was either stiffling in summer or freezing (to the point of 1/2" frost on the windows) in winter.

I prefer cold weather to hot. If it’s cold I can always put on more clothes; if it’s hot I can only take off so many clothes before I get arrested. To me sleeping weather is being able to snuggle under two or three layers of blankets with only my nose an mouth showing.

When I lived in hot climates, though, I rarely turned the AC on - in Miami I was just fine with the windows open so a breeze could move through. Same on Oahu, but I DID turn the AC on whe the trade winds quit. I just found it odd to have my sunglasses fog up when I went OUTSIDE. Hell, our barn has a tin roof and I spent many a hot, humid afternoon stacking hay bales in a space where a breeze couldn’t extend its cool breath.

That said, the weather we had up here in MN til the weather broke early this morning was fucking horrible. I cannot remember, even during the drought the DC area has when I lived there, EVER experiencing weather as hot and humid as it has been the past couple of weeks, and was quite happy to take refuge in air conditioned comfort.

19

The thermal energy radiating from the fan motor is negligible, as you say. However, your dad is still correct about the air actually being hotter. The molecules are moving faster; they possess a higher kinetic energy, how could they not? Still, he’s all wet when he says that you just “think” you’re cooler because the air is moving around. You are, in fact cooler. Because the air is moving across your perspiration-moist skin at a faster rate, more evaporation is taking place at your skin’s surface. The thermal energy necessary for this evaporation to occur (called Latent Heat of Vaporization, IIRC) is being removed through your skin is coming out of your body, and is leaving you cooler. Q.E.D. So, while your dad seems to be full of hot air (you should pardon the expression) with his “explanation” of the fact that the room is hotter. Is it possible that he has no functioning sweat glands, and therefore cannot perspire? Because, if that were the case, he wouldn’t be able to be cooled by running a fan, and he’d have to actually chill the air.

20

Scylla,

I have to disagree with your OP. Everyone’s thermostat is a little different. Some people’s bodies can regulate temperatures better than others. As a rule, large people have more trouble with heat than smaller people and can handle cold better than small people. This is the reason that most couples, the man generaly wants it warmer in the house than the man. (These are generalities, not hard and fast rules.)

One persons cooling mechinism works better than others. Case in point is the recent tragedy with the football player. He died because his body couldn’t throw off the heat fast enough. All of the other players were fine. In fact he was the only one to have reportedly been sick from the heat. All of them were in decent shape. But, his body couldn’t cool off as well as the others.

Yes, people can acclimate some to different climates and temperatures. But the human body functions best at a specific temperature. For most people this is around 72F while wearing light clothing. Others have a lower or higher ideal. Some have a wider comfort range. Humidity can also have a huge impact on this.

Be thankful you have a greater comfort range than most people. Try to be understanding of those of us who don’t.