MY LIFE - JANUARY

Social Experiment #300 - Wednesday, January 22, 2003

It would seem to me that figuring out a thermostat would be much easier than it has been. Now, conventional wisdom says that you set the thermostat for a certain temperature, then when the temp falls below that set mark, the furnace would kick on automatically and warm the house up again.

Evidently conventional wisdom does not apply in this house. The thermostat has generally been set at 75, yet the heat doesn't seem to kick on until the temp in the house falls below 65, which is quite frosty for an indoor environment. Not even kicking the setting up to 80 has made a difference. The temp in my room has been a balmy 62.4° for much of the night.

It's quite irritating to be shivering in your own house when you shouldn't be, but such is the way things go in the life of a Kreal. On top of it being around 60 inside, we've had another setback in the adventure of plumbing. Now that the new section of pipe is in place (we had a minor incident that was caused partly by the workers dumping plaster down our drains), the attempt to snake the pipe was thwarted by another unexpected event. Well, I shouldn't say unexpected since it's only be 15° or colder outside for the last three weeks.

We had frozen pipes. Yes, that does tend to complicate matters a bit, especially when you consider that snaking a pipe requires you to be able to move the thing through the pipes. Frozen water impedes that progress.

So now there's a space heater in the basement, attempting to thaw out the pipe so that the snake can be run through, the pipe sealed up, and water returned to our house. Then, I won't have to run to Super K-Mart at 2 in the morning because I have to pee.

I also remembered another facet of being home again. I had forgotten just how annoying Simba can be. Not only does the cat think he's still a kitten by his attempts at climbing on my shoulder, but he thinks he's the most adorable cat around. Sure, making all these noises and rolling around is cute, but when it's 3 in the morning and you're trying to sleep, him chirping and pulling on my door is not exactly what I want to deal with.

The best part is we have just half the cats here right now. Two are still at the hotel room, along with the rest of my family, and two are with Lori, who's still not on good terms with my mom. I find this to be funny simply because Lori has no right to be treating my mom the way she has the last few years. I guess when my mom asked about the two cats she has, all Lori said was that they were fine there.

I'm not sure, but I don't think my mom wants to know how the cats were doing. I really hope that she gives them back and I don't have to get involved, but I have a feeling it's going to come down to us going over to where Lori's staying and getting them ourselves.

It bothers me so much because I know the only reason she's doing this is because she's mad about being told she wasn't allowed to move back in. This is her retaliation towards my mom and it really makes me mad, not just because I like the two cats that she's keeping, but because those aren't her cats. Those are Teresa's cats and Teresa's not exactly happy about this development either.

It's just one of those situations that should never have happened, but is happening because, well, Lori feels slighted I guess. I don't know why. All she has ever done is use my mom's house as a storage center, not an actual place to live and sleep. It's not like she's ever really actually stayed here for prolonged periods of time, and when she was here, she just made a huge mess and made things more complicated for us.

But hey, it wouldn't be a normal day if there wasn't some sort of dispute.

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It's been insanely cold the last three weeks. From what I know the average high this month is around 22°, but for the last week and a half, the average high has been 17°. The warmest it's been this month was around 45°, but that was like the first few days of the month. Since around the third or fourth, it's been nothing but under 25.

There's also been a lot of snow. Over the last 10 days, it's snowed 9 of those days, yesterday being the lone exception. Even tonight, it snowed just enough to give us a coating. It's never a big amount of snow, but it's enough to be a hassle, plus 9 days where you get at least a half-inch does add up a little. I would estimate there's about 6 or 7 inches on the ground right now.

The best part is it isn't supposed to get any better in the next few days. The highs? 18, 19, 23, and 21.

I'd like to hear those thoughts on global warming again, please.

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I still can't get a hold of Jessica. I have no idea what to do at this point. If she's around, she's not showing that she has that much interest in me since she hasn't tried to call me. I'm just frustrated with this because this would be another case where there was interest at first, but nothing came of it.

On another note, I did hear back from Erin, a girl I briefly saw back at the end of August. Turns out she's dating someone else right now, which would explain why she wouldn't return my calls.

I swear, I get no breaks in this dating thing at all.