Saturday Tweets: Working Dogs and Expensive Raccoon Meat

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  1. The article on heating just warmed my heart (pun intended) because I’ve been harping on that idea for years, mostly with limited success insofar as my hubby and sons are concerned. When I am in charge of the thermostat I set the kitchen at 55 degrees, which is warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing here in the cold North; the rest of the room thermostats are set at 40 so they don’t click on at all. If you’re still not warm enough, I say, wear your long underwear; that’s why you’ve got it. For this my beloved calls me the Heat Nazi. (“No heat for you!”) Over time, one gets used to lower temperatures and it is not as bothersome, especially if you keep moving.

    In the evening, we do fire up the wood stove and fill it just before bedtime so the house is tolerably warm when we get out of bed in the morning. All in all, even though we live in a very cold climate, we use only about a cord and a half of wood from late October until mid-April.

    But really, nobody explains cold quite like Garrison Keillor:

    “Some friends from the Confederacy came to visit us in St. Paul last week when the temperature was around zero and so we had to haul out electric blankets and crank the thermostat up to 68, but they still felt “chilled” and so I made them go for a walk outdoors, and when they returned, they felt warmer. They only needed to get perspective. Cold is not so cold if you compare it to actual death.”

    The rest of the essay is here: http://www.salon.com/2009/02/25/cold/

  2. The article on warming yourself and not the room was interesting, but I’d like to add a comment in the “everyone is different” file.
    I’ve been wearing layers of clothing since October

    2 pair of socks(hand knit woollen ones)and wool slippers
    Undershirt,sweater and another sweater.
    Long underwear
    Fingerless gloves
    and an afghan when I’m sitting knitting(more socks)and a heating pad at my back.

    And sometimes I put a hot water bottle at my feet.

    I haven’t added a hat yet, but that might come.

    We keep our house at 72 degrees.
    If the temperature were to be lowered I would be miserable…and cold.

    In the summer time,my husband is always the one to turn on the air conditioner

    everyone is different

    • We had a friend visiting from Chicago this week. When it dipped to the high 60s I put on a stocking cap. She laughed.

    • I was dismayed at that story, too. I’ve had raccoon and it’s not bad! Never paid $10/lb for it tho. Maybe they’re charging extra because you get the meat *and* a free pelt.

  3. Back in the early 2000s there was a site http://www.changingtheclimate.com/ that offered free templates or purchase of stickers that proclaimed ‘I’m changing the climate! Ask me how!’ and were intended on being put on the bumpers of gas-guzzling SUVs. It was vandalism then, and the bike lane stickers are vandalism now. With the current state of technology you can easily snap a picture of the offender, with license plate in frame, and email it to your local PD. Placing a sticker on private property? Dick move even if well intentioned.

    • I also prefer a more stoical approach to urban cycling. Bike activism is best reserved for city hall, not the streets. I sometimes think I should put a disclaimer on these lists of tweets or be better about framing them. I put some out to spark a discussion, not necessarily because I agree with them.

    • Indeed. I very much understand the drive behind something like this, but I watched a video of someone getting laid out for putting a sticker on some guy’s Escalade. There’s already enough tension between cyclists and drivers.

  4. Kind of unrelated but I would love some “I blocked the sidewalk with my car” Stickers. I’ve lost count of how many times I have had to walk in the street while trying to get my son down for a nap in the stroller because some idiot thinks that the part of his driveway that crosses the sidewalk is the perfect place to park.

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