mamadeb: Writing MamaDeb (Default)
[personal profile] 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 [livejournal.com profile] 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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-01-18 07:27 pm (UTC)
reginagiraffe: Stick figure of me with long wavy hair and giraffe on shirt. (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.

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