Cold, Hot, Trivia, Radio Darts

It's been a crazy last couple of weeks. We had a system come through that gave us some insane winds for a few days. One day last week it was -15F and blowing up a storm-- wind chill of -54F. That's just nippy, any way you slice it. I hate that kind of weather, but you pretty much have to get used to it in the winter.

I have a longer "commute" than many in Mac Town. I have to walk from my dorm to building 155 for breakfast, then down to my office in B159. See earlier posts for references to the "Crairmaster" between meals and work. I broke my previous record and got twenty laps in one day! The Heavy Shop took away the antenna riggers' truck that I had, so I was a complete pedestrian. I had a lot of errands to do around town yesterday that took me around/through the Crary lab, hence the high count of stairs climbed.

This may all seem very strange and pedantic to someone in the real world, but it all makes sense down here. If I didn't include a regimen of doing the stairs on a regular basis, I'd be even more of a couch potato than I would ordinarily be. Face it: twisting screws on radio casings is not a workout.

After our frigid week, the wind stopped blowing. The wind almost NEVER stops blowing around here. My workplace is an old Navy building, poorly insulated. The amount of heat produced by the boilers is usually about right for the ambient conditions.

If the wind dies completely, there is no feedback loop to tell the boilers to take it easy. We experienced some -2F days lately with no wind-- it got hotter'n hell in my building! The summer Comms boss's office is the worst then. It was 92.7F in there when I got to work on Wednesday. I opened the front door and all the windows to try to get it down to a tolerable level.

The town needed some volunteers to move some furniture around. As a fool, I signed up. I helped move extra wardrobes and dressers out of the dorms into a Milvan (cargo container, like you see on ships.). I got so hot from moving all the heavy furniture that I was all sweaty. It was still fairly cold outside (by Real World standards, about 0F) that my hair froze in a crazy array of crispy crinkles. Whenever I went inside, I'd have to doff my rabbit fur hat to keep from passing out from the heat.

I've never gone from so hot to so cold, so many times. I thought my skull would crack!

I have a theory (unsubstantiated by science, so far as I know...) that going from a cold environment to a warm one is the root of our crazy spaciness, as we all experience it in the throes of winter. (http://www.sciencestorm.com/award/9418466.html). Our bodies are saying "Oh, it's really, really cold out here!", "Oh, you know what? It's really, really warm in here!" several times a day, which seriously jacks with our endocrine system.

So far, it hasn't been that bad. The days are days, the nights are looking more like nights, and the sun is definitely going down.

If I could only figure out a way to shoot darts!...