No heat yet

Almost immediately after Myles' party last weekend the weather took a turn to the cold, damp, and grey.  Okay, so it was really an overnight change, but it was very close.

It's been cold this week, cold enough for us to break out the long underwear and Randy to start wearing his Uggs to work. I teased him a little for buying real Uggs in the US last winter (though, in his defense they are not the regular Ugg style but heavy-soled) but the last laugh was on me.  His toes were toasty all winter long, in every unheated and minimally heated place he went (like work, the mall, our church.....).  I am looking at these Uggs for myself, though I'll have to wait until Christmas to get them ( or maybe these ones--the combination of living in Beijing and entering, ahem, middle age means I will probably never wear cute shoes ever again). The ladies at the Ugg store in Beijing laughed at me for wanting them in my size. "These only come in women's sizes," they said to me, laughing and rolling their eyes.

At night we've been running an electric space heater in our bedroom, and, of course, that means we are all together, family-bed style, to keep warm at night. We've had more heaters, but now we are down to one.

I've blogged before about the heating system here in Beijing. In what is now annual tradition for us, we are waiting for the city to turn on the heat. I scan twitter and other blogs for rumors of an early start to heating season.  Daily we've watched our neighborhood smokestack, and this week we've noticed small puffs coming from it. Our radiators are still cold, but this could be a sign. Test runs are not scheduled normally until November, but could this mean something?


We watch and wait. And wear lots of layers.

In the meantime, I'll be happy for Danielle who was successful in persuading her husband to get their heat turned on this week (though she was aided by her properly bribed children).  These past weeks you have been like my sistah in waiting for the heat.