The First Winter in Boston
Although the first winter isn’t really over yet, I think the “worst” is now behind us. Accordingly to the Bostonian natives, 2006-2007 Winter is a sham, and can’t really be considered winterish. We hardly gotten any snow, and the temperature dipped at the lowest to about -15 Celsius (5 Fahrenheit).
For heating… due to how my room is setup, I can’t really employ my real heating unit. When Craig, our landlord, told me that installing a French door to separate my room from the living room, is going to take a week of hard core construction, I passed and told him I would survive with just a curtain. I bought a small energy hungry space heater, and whenever I get real cold, I would turn it on for a bit. Normally, I’m sitting in my room at about 15 Celsius (59 Fahrenheit), and it’s not so bad with pajamas, sweat pant, hoodie, and gloves on.
When I did go out whenever it’s real cold, I would have on my PJ, the outer “society accepted” clothing, and my super heavy London Fog Arctic-Certified … winter jacket thing. Of course, gloves, hat, scarf are almost always a necessity prior to going out. I remember in the beginning, I would just wrap my neck with the scarf and it kept falling off. So Ricky taught me the “GQ” way of wrapping and it hadn’t failed me yet =) Canadians really know their Winter stuff =) Since I came up to Boston, I have bought a couple waterproof boots, another scarf, and a pair of gloves. Though mama kept telling me to get a new jacket, I don’t see why I need to with the super warm jacket that I got already. Hell, if I’m really cold, there are times when I’d go out with a SARS mask. Heh, people always look at me funny whenever I wear those out. It works really well though, and protects the nose from falling off!
The cold weather outside hadn’t really bothered me and it wasn’t until it snowed rather heavily one day last week did I realized I didn’t like the transition between snow and non-snow that we were experiencing. I think snow is fine ~ walking on snow and feeling the crunch crunch crunch beneath my shoes is a pretty neat feeling. However, the problem comes when the snow melts and reforms into ICE! ARG! What pain it is to walk on ice and slipping constantly. Then, there is the melting ice puddles that’s hidden by the floating ice… ooo those are just evil! I’d walk and try to get on the sidewalk, and though I thought the ice look pretty firm, and when I stepped in… boom, my boot went in up to my ankle! Good thing the boot really was water proof…
To be sure, I haven’t seen a real winter yet with a few feet of snow. I haven’t made a snow ball like I did last year when I interviewed here in Boston, and I haven’t made a snowman/snow angel yet. I supposed all that will have to wait until next year cause the chance of getting another heavy snow session isn’t really high anymore. But the greatest problem that I have with winter in Boston, got to be the dryness of my room. Earlier, I just placed an order for a humidifier, and I hope this will solve the problem of my winter itch. I can’t begin to tell you how itchy winter itch is… hell, I think it’s one of the major reason why I got a furuncle in the first place. I scratch scratch and scratch, resulting in an weakness in the skin allowing Staph aureus to develop. Oh well, that’s life!
