Heat...and COLD

Holli's Rug
Last night, November 11th, they turned on the heat in our apartment building or at least it's warm in this apartment. That's 4 days ahead of schedule and none too soon. Actually, I'm one of the lucky ones because my landlord had installed an auxiliary combination air conditioner/heater (a Haier). I might be the only teacher in Cando who has one, and I'm very grateful for it. Bill has said many times over the years that they don't turn on the heat until November 15th, so I was mentally prepared to be cold, but mental preparation doesn't do a lot to combat the actual physical cold, and it turned cold the end of September. My apartment floor is cold charcoal gray tiles laid on cold cement with very little insulation anywhere and floor to ceiling windows. The first thing I did was buy a warm comforter at Ikea which keeps me toasty warm at night. The bathroom has big heat lamps, so sometimes I turn them on and go in there to warm up. Sometimes I turn on the gas burners to warm the kitchen.
A couple weeks ago I decided it was time to use the auxilliary heater, but since the remote control is all in Chinese I went across the hall to ask Paulina to help me. Paulina is Chinese but has lived in San Francisco for years. She and her husband are expecting their first baby in January and have a beautiful 2-story apartment that they just finished decorating. Both Paulina and her husband were bundled up in warm coats when she opened the door, patiently waiting for November 15th. It turned out that there wasn't much to know about the remote control as long as all I wanted was heat and fan, but I showed Pauline how she could get a little heat in her apartment by using the thermostat on the wall; it's not much but is better than nothing. She said I was going to have a really big electricity bill if I use the auxilliary heat and I said that was OK with me. Electricity is another one of those things that we have to buy at the bank then put into a meter. I bought 400 units for 27 dollars. That should last a long time, maybe until next spring.
With 400 units of electricity in my meter, I wasn't worrying about running the heater, but I still had freezing floors and icy cold windows. Then last weekend Bill took Patty and me to B&Q which is the British version of Home Depot, so much so that it was easy to forget that it wasn't. I bought several sheets of styrofoam insulation to put along lower part of the windows. This at least keeps the cold draft off my feet. I also bought a few rugs and a finished board that I paid 93 kwai for (about $13) which I turned into a kind of buffet, shown here. Then Holli gave me the big rug that has been standing in a corner of her apartment for the past few months. It turns out that it is the perfect size and color for this space, and I now walk across my living room floor without freezing my feet.