(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

[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.