Chickadees and icicles

[jhetley]

Sunny today, temperature up near 40 F, so the snow is packing up and leaving. This produces icicles on roof edges, which proceed to glint in the sun. We need to redeploy the window-sash prisms for the winter -- an assortment of glass that throws rainbows all over the room, but we have to take them down in the summer when we want to, you know, _open_ the windows. Rainbows in winter are a goodness.

Also chickadees. They flit around and scold us and the cat and nab seeds and fly up into the maple to whack them open, dropping hulls all over. Makes even the coldest, grayest morning a little brighter.

Great North Woods survival tip of the day: Beware of black ice at night. Melt during the day, refreeze on road surfaces or sidewalks when the sun goes down.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

So it recycles the same air already inside the house? Hmm.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

Yeah, their furnace doesn't have an exterior intake.

And steam radiators are an enclosed system.. pipes that have hot water run through them and radiate heat. Actually, several heating systems rely on radiating heat through pipes. Others are hot air, and it wouldn't surprise me if newer types do have exterior air intakes, but I just don't know.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Look, we're Yankees. Once we've paid to heat that air, we're not going to let it get away easy.

Our heating is oil-fired* hot water, big cast-iron radiators you can snuggle up to on a winter morning. Sometimes we sit on 'em.

*Originally coal-fired boiler, retrofitted with an oil burner back in the age of the dinosaurs.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

They had radiators at the university in Vienna, in 1972. I remember people sitting on them. My apartment was heated by coke and coal, which had to be lugged up five flights of stairs in fifty pounds sacks. Not fun when you weigh ninety-five pounds. Every morning, though, the landlady opened both sets of windows and put the bedding in them, whatever the temp, unless there was actual precipitation.

[quilzas.livejournal.com]

The cast-iron radiators are also nice to warm up your snuggly sweater on.. or dry gloves n mittens and such.. Good cat perches too, from what I've seen a friend's cat do.