i aten't ded, as they say

So, I realize I haven't posted anything since whinging about the cold. I haven't actually died of hypothermia or anything like that!

Complaining to LJ got me two good effects: firstly lots and lots of friends commented or messenged me with comfort. I still feel slightly guilty about complaining that my central heating was working less than optimally when, since I am in the mood for cliches today, Some People Have Real Problems. But it did me a lot of good, since venting saved me from just giving up and bursting into tears, and then I felt really loved because everyone was so nice, and all those positive things gave me the spoons to contact my landlord and say, look, when you fixed the heating a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't actually fixed, plz hlp. My landlord is lovely and agreed to come the following evening and fix it again, treating any indoor temperature of less than 20 degrees C as a housing emergency. So he did, and now my living space is all lovely and warm and I have amazingly more energy and my mood has totally turned round. Yay warmth.

I've had kind of an awful week work-wise, in that my experiments got absolutely nowhere. Not gave the wrong result, but gave no results at all, and that included a 12-hour stint on Monday. Bleh.

However, now I'm at the airport waiting for

cartesiandaemon's flight to get in and looking forward to a fun and relaxing weekend with him. I am going to have a teaparty on Saturday, I think, but otherwise just stay in the nice WARM flat and enjoy my Beau's company. (I am not generally this devoted a girlfriend, to come all the way out to the airport to meet my visitor, but in this case I was teaching in town until 8, and didn't really have sensible time to go home and come out again, and I didn't think I could abandon

cartesiandaemon to navigating night transport on his own.)

Other good news: I had a wonderful time at the inaugral Limmud (pluralist Jewish learning day) at the weekend, and didn't post about it because I was too depressed by the cold flat. But I shall post some snippets of learning from that next week. I got chatting to someone I thought I might have offended the first time I met her, and it seems that she's cool with me and is even coming to the teaparty. Also, this evening I taught a really good class on "the future", so I'm pleased about that too.

Between the course I was on last week, and being cold and then stressed this week, my wordcount for Nano has gone to hell. I think I have around 40K, but I'll count up properly after this weekend. Hey, it was a fun thing to do even if I didn't win.

From:	curious_reader
Date:	November 28th, 2008 01:25 pm (UTC) 15 hours after journal entry

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I am glad you are all right. At least Swedish houses are properly insulated and in good condition not the English houses. All you need is heat which will stay in the house. I still have problems with damp conditions in that studio flat. Even the wardrobes are moldy. I need the heater constantly although it is not that cold. Otherwise I like living in London and enjoy the communities and the learning opportunities. I learn leyning now. The female Rabbi who teaches us was on Holiday for a while. I find it very hard to put the notes into practice.

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From:	livredor
Date:	December 3rd, 2008 12:33 pm (UTC) 5 days after journal entry, 12:33 pm (livredor's time)

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Thanks, it was sweet of you to comment. You're right that Swedish houses are well insulated; even when I had only the emergency backup and no general central heating, it was always warmer indoors than outdoors, and even when it did get unacceptably cold, never drafty.

I really do wish England would get some building standards; it just isn't acceptable to be building new houses in the twenty-first century that waste so much heat. Just because it doesn't get that cold in England, doesn't mean it's ok to waste fuel and contribute unnecessarily to climate change. I'm sorry your flat is damp, though, that must be really annoying to live with.

I am not sure I could bear to live in London, even for the sake of a lively, active Jewish life. Basically, outside London I have as much money as I need, since I don't spend very much, but in London I would be really poor, and not be able to afford decent accommodation let alone have any money left over for fun stuff. (The "London weighting" of salaries is a joke.) I mean, even

lethargic_man, who is really quite well paid, has to live in a tiny, badly built flat, let alone anyone who doesn't have a good professional job.

I'm excited for you that you're learning leyning. It is really hard, and I think the only way to learn is as you say lots of practice. I could never do it, because I can't hold a tune, but it's always great to have people in the community who can.

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