Ice Ice Baby

Not Vanilla Ice, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

So, as you may have heard, a huge part of the US has been dealing with bitter cold and snow in places that don't usually get much or any. The good news for me is that I happen to live in a place that didn't get much snow this time around and knows how to handle it most of the time. The bad news is that we've been dealing with some damn bitter cold here the last ten days or so. There were a couple days in the middle of all this where the high temperatures, and yes, this is the overday high temperature I'm talking about here, was -10 Fahrenheit. The nighttime lows and wind chill factors were significantly worse.

It was bad enough here that we just spent this last weekend here under a wind chill warning. The weather service issues those when the wind chill gets down to about -25 or lower. When it gets like that, exposed body parts can freeze in ten minutes or less, which means it's not safe for anything, really, to be outside if it's not necessary.

In years past, I've done little bits about this where I've mentioned that it can have adverse effects on vehicles as well as people. That kind of cold makes the battery less effective, and makes other parts work harder, too. I was sort of hoping my car would be one of the ones that didn't start, just so I could possibly not have to go out in the cold.

My reasoning for that is that as I've gotten older, I've started to experience more ill effects from having lasted as long as I have and making poor lifestyle choices along the way. I've had arthritis in my left leg, especially, for years now, which is something that reacts badly to cold weather. I've needed to slather lotion on my feet at night in the winter since I was in high school, really, since they dry out to the point where they crack and sometimes bleed if I don't.

Things have gotten a little worse the last couple years. Tuns out I've got something called Raynaud's syndrome. In a nutshell, if I let my hands get too cold, especially when I'm stressed out over things, I lose circulation in my fingers, causing them to go all numb and turn white. Not a particularly fun thing to deal with, really. I'm going to recommend doing one's own research on this one, if you're interested, but keep in mind, it's like so much of medical related topics, there are pictures, and therefore, perhaps not for the faint of heart.

The good news on that end is that my folks did manage to talk me into getting a pair of heated gloves to help keep my hands warm in this cold. Money well spent, I think, because it's already been a big help on a couple of these cold nights.

The downside here is that I've had trouble getting motivated for much beyond going to my day job. That's why I haven't done any video game stuff lately, and I have yet to do my YouTube video for the month. I have a few things to talk about, and not just the whole passing interest in the pudding boxes I mentioned in my previous post. I'll try to get to that before I forget about them. Hopefully, that'll be when I get home from work the day this post went live.

At any rate, the weather's going to be a little more seasonable for the forseeable future, which means I'm at least hoping to be more up to doing all this Internet stuff I do in my spare time. See you soon, with something, folks.