Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 28, 2019

When I left northern Michigan, I was aware of Dante’s lowest level, and I firmly believed (and still do) that that was the place I was leaving.

Does this mean that Mrs Olsen’s class IS the lowest level?

And just who is telling Frazz what to set the thermostat at?

I didn’t need Virgil to tell me to get out of New Jersey winters!

Committees who meet in cozy conference rooms make the choices based on last year’s heat/ac budget. Actual weather has little to do with the choices. Was a ‘victim’ of that kind of economy for 25 years. Was not fun.

“If you’re cold, put on a sweater!” “If you work hard, you won’t notice the cold!” “It’s only cold if a polar bear asks for your coat!”

The thermostats at my office are controlled by menopausal hot-flashing women and fat men wearing suit jackets. … Yes, I keep a sweater at hand.

Jeff Foxworthy had a great take on upper Illinois: “You might be from Chicago if…you talk about how it’s going to WARM UP into the TWENTY’S.”!!!!!! Another one of them; …if you find yourself going 70mph on snow-covered interstates, when it’s snowing-and-blowing and you are not concerned over conditions. (There’s a whole list of them, but, lately, these two apply. Just got done shoveling/snow-blowering 6 inches of light-n-fluffy off of 1" of ice.)

Cold classrooms mean fewer sleepy students. At least in the winter.

It was warmer the other day in Juneau then it was in Chicago so the Alaskan super cold may be a thing of the past due to climate change doesn’t matter that’s why I moved to the South

For 3 minutes of solid spoofing on office thermostats, go to the College Humor website and look up “Women’s Winter”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2NNm8MTboA

There are some school sites in the nation’s second largest district (#UNIONSTRONG) that have had a/c-heating “trouble calls” go “in the system” for years.

I know for a fact that if you put a wet paper towel on the thermostat in the classroom the heat will come on.

I’m ashamed to admit that Canada is getting soft with regard to the cold. Last week my grandson’s school bus was cancelled due only to the temperature – at a balmy -25 C (-12 F)!

Time to break out the long janes.

dang, curiosity got the best of me.http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html

Fire and Ice is about how we treat each other in our relationships.

Frazz14 hrs ·

Full disclosure of what you already know: I am not quite right. I might even be way off plumb. It depends on whom you ask. I do seek out extremes. But I hang around enough of the kind of people who search them further out that I feel like a bit of a piker sometimes.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ve been working on cold-water swimming for a number of years now. Some people rave about the mental and physical health benefits of icy submersion, and I’ll concur with their claims. But honestly, that’s not why I do it. Not why I have the daily cold-shower routine, not why I have the 55-gallon ice-water barrel in the back yard, not why I head for the lake and swim “skins” as soon as I can get someone to swim with me or kayak alongside for safety’s sake. I do it for a few other reasons, or maybe more like a reason and a couple of sub-reasons:

(1) I just happen to like open-water swimming, and some of the swims I like best, or aspire to, or can be done without extensive travel, happen to take place in cold water; and

(1.1) The swim crowd I run with, and agree with, doesn’t necessarily look down on wetsuits, but they do acknowledge the obvious, that neoprene is a tremendous assist, not only keeping you warm, but keeping you buoyant. (Imagine if you could run with a device that subtracted a third of your body weight.) It feels more like real swimming without a wetsuit, because it is. And if purity or simplicity is your thing, you can’t get much more one-design than a Speedo, goggles and a cap. And finally,

(1.2) Let’s be honest, if you’re not good enough to stand out by doing something other people can’t, then you do stuff other people won’t.

So, I’m willing to do what I have to so I can do what I want to. And you can, in fact, adapt to longer times in colder water than you ever thought. But all that said, I totally get what Dante and Frost were getting at. T-t-t-t-t-totally.

At the school where I worked as a janitor, it was the head teacher that adjusted the heat, not me.

Mrs Olsen is the coolest.