This week: The Weather Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.
—Samuel Johnson
Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!'
—Robin Williams
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
—Mark Twain |
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Now is normally the time when I rant about April Fools' Day. I can't do that this year, because I'm going on an adventure that day, and I don't want to jinx it.
Instead, I'll talk about a related topic, one certain to generate controversy and divide the world: the weather.
It's early spring here in the only hemisphere that matters. Birds are chirping (they used to tweet but left the platform in disgust), flowers are spitting pollen, and, just yesterday, I got dive-bombed by a bumblebee. So, yeah... spring.
Spring in my area is kind of like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get. Warm and sunny? Warm and cloudy? Cold and rainy? Hurricane-force winds? Thunderstorms? Sleet? A blizzard? Well, it doesn't matter much, because I have the privilege of living in a house and being able to set my thermostat how I please. In reality, this means setting the heat to 74F and the a/c to 78F and leaving it like that all year.
Not my dad, though. My father was one of those clichés who insisted on absolute, fascist, autocratic control of the thermostat.
We weren't poor, exactly, but my dad was a kid during the Great Depression, and therefore absolutely hated to spend money. Our heating (oil furnace) was supplemented by wood stoves, which he had free labor (me) to provide the fuel for. As for air conditioning, don't make me laugh. We didn't have any of that newfangled stuff.
How cheap was my dad when it came to heating bills? Let me give you an example. Originally, the thermostat was located in the northern part of the house, a part that was, generally, colder than the rest of the house. Having the thermostat there made that particular room barely habitable in the winter (did I mention he also insisted on 64F?) while the rest of the house was quite pleasant, but only if you were sitting right next to one of the wood stoves.
When I was, I don't know, 7 or 8 years old, he moved the thermostat to right across from the kitchen: the absolute warmest part of the house. This had the effect of keeping the south side of the house barely habitable, with the northern part, where the thermostat used to be, covered in ice.
Worse, his iron-fisted control of the thermostat extended not only to temperature, but to time of year. He wouldn't set the heat based on outdoor temperature, but by the calendar. Every year, on the spring equinox, he'd make a big deal out of turning off the heat.
Inevitably, we'd get a cold snap in early April. "Dad, it's freezing! Turn on the heat!"
"But it's spring," he'd protest.
"It's twenty degrees outside!"
"Put on a jacket."
"I can't feel my hands."
"Go chop some wood."
"There's five feet of snow!"
"Shovel's in the basement."
Now, every time I look at my state-of-the-art, digital, programmable thermostat, displaying its nice, friendly "74" in big fat numerals on its screen, I smile.
After all, I got the last laugh. |
Some funnies for your vernal (if you live in the One True Hemisphere) enjoyment:
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Comedy: March 29, 2023 Issue [#11880]
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