swimming

It is cold and raining in Berkeley. We need the rain. Even with the rain, CA veers hazardously close to chronic drought.

It feels very very cold to me. I am surprised that I shiver, that my feet are icy all the time, when it is only fifty degrees outside.

When I first moved to the Seattle area, I had two or three of the coldest winters of my life before I adjusted to the climate. It did not get frigid cold in Seattle and Puget Sound but the air was densely humid, fog rolled around. This was especially true when I lived on an island but also true in Seattle.  I was not only cold all the time but the air was so damp that things hung to dry, inside where it was dry and warmish, could take days. I learned clothes need some dryness in the air to dry and there aint much dryness in Puget Sound.

N. CA is a bit warmer than Puget Sound but SF and the East Bay are also much foggier. Living down on the peninsula, in Silicon Valley, in Mountain view, when I first moved to CA. It is meaningfully warmer and dryer in Mountain View. Plus my apartment down there had its own heater that I controlled. Here, my building is super green with the heat in the floor. Supposedly I control the heat with my thermostat but I do not. The building sets the temps. I can hit the thermostat to raise the temp but that rise lasts, maybe, half an hour and it takes that long for the heat to rise, and poof, it goes back down.  So my place, now, is nearly always chilly. 

I wear wool socks all the time. Up in Seattle, I wore two pairs all the time but summer. There is a real, hot sticky, muggy summer in Seattle. There is not hot summer here.

I just looked up at the title to my post. I was going to write about swimming. Hmm. . . what was I thinking a few minutes ago?

I kinda like swimming in the rain but when it is very cold, for here, it is harder to get out there, for all the pools I have access to are outdoors.  Walking from locker room to the pool, even without taking my pre-swim shower, is frigid. And walking back to the locker room,  which is when I believe my feet go frigid, is hard.

Oh woe is me. A Third World problem, eh?