The Weather at Work - An Update

[akirlu]

When I checked the weather widget for Kent this morning, it was 17º. The predicted high for Seattle is somewhere in the twenties. Happily, the HVAC tech was by this morning to check our gear, and found that one of the thermal sensors in the roof/ceiling was reading the inside temperature (somewhere in the 50s) as the outside temperature, and

Comments

[randy_byers]

That whole being cold while you're inside thing just doesn't make me happy. We don't turn the furnace on in the morning before we leave for work, so morning ablutions have been a bit of a trial these past couple of days. Feeling much sympathy for folks without power in the Northeast.

Hope you can get central heating online in your workplace. Brrrr!

[akirlu]

You might consider an oil-filled radiator in the bathroom -- that would make the ablutions a bit less awful. I need to get a new knob for the wall heater in our bathroom.

[randy_byers]

By the way, where do you get your silk finery? I guess I'm thinking of the thermals in particular.

[akirlu]

My most recent round of silk underlayers have been from Lands End because they've been offering more-or-less perpetual free shipping if you're on their e-mail list (and also because Lands End items can now be returned at Sears stores, rather than shipping), but I've also bought from, and been quite happy with, Winter Silks. Lands End also deals in higher-tech fibers for thermals, if that's your cuppa.

I just unbuttoned my blazer for the first time today

[dakiwiboid]

and am actually considering taking it off. It's usually freezing in here. I'm wearing Cuddl Duds short winter undies underneath my turtleneck, tidy black jeans and classy blazer. They don't show, and are thin enough that they don't make me look sausage-like.

It seems to take all day for this place to warm up. Of course, as soon as I take my blazer off, it'll get cold again.

At home, I'm frustrated by the fact that our neighbors seem to turn the heat up just before bedtime, when my metabolism tells me I need to be cool, so we turn our heat down. Then it's freezing first thing in the morning when I have to get up. We don't have an independent or quick heat source in the bathroom, so morning ablutions are not much fun.

[akirlu]

Yeah, I find the silk thermals are functionally invisible under clothes, and the silk knits are also low-bulk, so I don't feel like a snow-person, even in four layers on top and 3 on the bottom. Since ours is a very casual office it's mildly amusing to me that I end up dressing up more in cold weather, but all my warmest pants are the lined wool dress pants.

[akirlu]

I'm a bit of a thermal chameleon. I find that if I spend any time again in a place that gets real winter, my inner thermostat re-sets to that, and I tend to need less artificial insulation against the weather. I suspect if Seattle winters resembled Minneapolis winters, I would acclimate pretty quickly.

But Seattle's weather byword is 'mild' -- you don't normally get any real extremes. The summers aren't very hot, the winters aren't really cold, and the temperature variation over a single day isn't likely to be sharp. It's pretty clear that my set-point has adjusted to expect more of the same. What's interesting to me is that, as I talk to other people, I find that this phenomenon is pretty general. People move to Seattle from all sorts of places and by and by, they all start to get whiny when the temperature strays out of the 40-70 range. I think it's just further proof that Seattle is one of the places that was clearly optimized for human habitation.