I hear you Tom. In New England the winters were cold and snowy. Often single digits during the day. Hard to work outside without freezing your fingers. And of course icicles on your moustache.
Summer wasn’t much better. Heat and humidity from the south making for sweltering days. Sticky and sweaty. Had to close the windows and pull the shades of the house to try and keep out as much of the heat as possible. And then wait till later in the evening to open them up to get some cooler air in.
The thing I love about where I live now is that the temperature range is much compressed. Winter is rainy, but mostly in the 40s and 50s during the day, rarely below freezing. Summer is in the 70s and 80s, but dry. Always cool in the shade.
The thing that bothers me now is the lack of sun in the winter. I guess my wife is tired of hearing me complain about that because she has offered to send me someplace sunny during the winter.
Interesting your now local, description MartinS.
Exactly described the Pacific west-side “wet side” of Washington, Oregon and the northwest corner of California.
I’ll let Canadians comment on SW coastal B.C. and Vancouver Island.
Here is some of the tricks we use to combat winter cloudy gloomy SAD.
Use lots of interior brightening lighting. Even during the day. The now 4th generation LED are a God-send for that.
Have a visible warm glowing wood stove. Air-tight glass fronts are the ticket for that.
Go out daily and get wet to be able to come back in and cosy up to that hot-spot wood stove. It is actually the flames and better-yet a char glow that does the psychological brightening up trick.
Still having problems then invest in one of the SAD lighting banks and do daily doses.
Ha! Ha! The city-gal exchange student signed up for high school girls Spring softball. Her teams first game last night. Cool cloudy now with raining and showering for the last 4-5 days. 12 hours stopped just enough for the well drained ball field to dry-drain out enough to play. I told her to take over wearing long sweat pants and a thick hooded sweat shirt. Wear these slipped on in the dug-out. Offered her my wool plain gray billed cap for out in the field head warming.
No, no and NO.
She even wore uniform short sleeves to be Ka-ool. All of her teammates in under shirts long sleeves. At the third inning a thickening storm cell rolled in - blowing - temperature drop - stinging wind driven spitting rain. This 1st game of the season had been cancelled twice already. They played on until a J.V. 1 hour 45 minutes limit.
The other local gals were cold sure. Happy happy they were points-runs ahead at game-timed call. Go in the books as win for them.
Next cool Spring game we will see if our Sofia had learned how to loose over-layer for the cool and wet!
I was fine standing out in zip up layers of a mix of poly and wools. Alpaca wool socks. Outer wind and water proofs. Cotton me-not in the cool and wet.
Steve unruh
Well we were finally snow free yesterday. 24 hours later 4 inches of heavy, heavy wet snow. Plenty of broken branches for charcoal making and branches hanging so low over our drive that we couldn’t drive under them right now. Very beautiful though. I have pictures but can’t share them from this computer for some reason. Not the best way to welcome the first day of spring.
She -needs- batting gloves. Cold hands and the bat stings the hands. And you can also wear them inside the mitt to help prevent stinging.
A long sleeve shirt is almost mandatory because you shouldn’t let the arm cool down. You need the muscles and ligaments warm and loose. muscles and ligaments tear easier when cold, when making a sudden movements.
Playing in the snow stinks. The ball gets wet and heavier as well. Half our team wore batting gloves on their throwing hand as well.
I mention snow because it was 70F yesterday and it is snowing today.
