(no subject)

[mamadeb]

There may well be spammage from me today. Sorry.



It's very, very cold outside. At least, by my definition of very cold, which is temperatures in the Fahrenheit teens. Actually, the Fahrenheit twenties counts as very cold so far as I'm concerned.

Therefore - *layers*. That's leggings and tights, and a turtleneck under a polo shirt, and I even layered my hats. Which means that I put my winter hat over my headscarf. Get to office, take off hat and still wearing scarf. And my coat has a hood. So, quite honestly, I wasn't all that cold.

I'm being specific about the cold because of a post in fanficrants where someone was shocked that a writer considered -3F to be very cold. She converted it to C wrong, so she thought it was -10C, and she grudgingly admitted that might be considered coldish. (Excuse me. It *is* -10C now, and, well. See above.) And, honestly, NY? Temperate, not warm. Actual temperature is -19C, which I think even a Canadian might consider chilly.

Although, I'm not sure. I keep thinking about a scene from Anne of Windy Poplars, which discussed whether the temperature was 0 or -10F - because she didn't know if she needed her muff or not. *Blink*.

People do have different cold tolerances - my friend from Michigan walks around in a suit jacket when the rest of us wear winter coats, which jonbaker calls "Northern machoness". And the poster had a point - don't say temperatures in stories. Say relative heat or chill. "It's so cold out there!" works better as dialogue, anyway.

But the tone was weird. Granted, she did have first the scale wrong, as she admitted - she started with thinking it was -3C, which is about 27F, and so. Still cold, actually, to me but, okay. It's the tone of disbelief that anyone would consider it cold that got me.

Comments

[rachel-wilder.livejournal.com]

There do get to be different perspectives, but you're right...there's no reason to get totally outraged about such things! We're having a bit of a heat wave here today. It was 9 F when I left for work and will get all the way up to 25 F today...which is about 50 degrees warmer than it was when I got up on Saturday. But, I'm pretty much used to this kind of weather, so I unloaded my car on Sunday without a coat, running in and out of the house while it was about -10 F. But, when I lived in DC, it felt horridly cold when it got below 30 F and when we had a week of temps around 10 F, we got a day off because it was too cold and was requiring too much energy to heat all the buildings...so it's all relative.

Another thought...those of us who live where it's very cold are a bit rude about it...we love that we're tough about cold weather and constantly throw it in other people's faces even though we hate the cold too!

[mareklamo.livejournal.com]

those of us who live where it's very cold are a bit rude about it

Same goes for me about the heat. When my fiancé visited me in the tropics, I kept wondering why he was sweating all the time.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

it depends not just on the person's background, in my experience, but also on the season. in march, when you've been slogging through single-digit F temperatures since before thanksgiving (east side of cleveland, woo!), and suddenly you get a day where it's like 40F, you take off your jacket and roll down the windows in your car. and then you catch a nasty cold, of course. but, dude, 40! it feels balmy. whereas of course along about september, the first day the temperature gets back down as low as 75 is cooling off.

[stella-by-moor.livejournal.com]

You're right about people having different temperature tolerances: as a Californian, anything below 60F is intolerably cold to me.

[reginagiraffe]

Heat can be deceptively hard, too. My niece came to visit us a couple of summers ago. We were blithely enjoying the 95 degree (F) weather but she was getting sick (literally) with the heat. She's from NH where it'd been in the 70's.

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

I just got back from Berkeley, where 40F felt balmy to me, but everyone else was wrapped up and miserable with the cold. Expat New Jerseyans were complaining, which just amused me to no end.

I did revel a little in being able to deal without extra clothing, but I know that my reaction to heat makes other people laugh (anything over 80 and I'm doomed to being miserable), so I tried to be nice about it.