Miracles of Science

I swear to God, my new space heater is some sort of high-tech wonder created by NASA. It has to be. Or it was made by God, for me personally. Nothing else makes sense.

One of the many reasons I've wanted to purchase a house is how absolutely and utterly miserable my apartment is in the winter. While the building has some fantastic architectural details, it also has (numerous) drawbacks. Most of the windows are single-pane glass. The insulation is pathetic at best and non-existent at worst. Shortly before we moved in, the gas radiators were removed and replaced with electric baseboard heat. Not only is electric heat incredibly expensive, if it's ineffective in largely uninsulated spaces. I've literally spent $300 trying to heat a one-bedroom + den apartment and, if I'm lucky, can get my apartment up to a toasty 55*F. Lovely!

I've tried everything. We have thermal curtains in our bedroom. I've put plastic on the windows, though mostly that just gets shredded by our cats. My mother has generously given me some bad-ass industrial style space heaters. (Ones which our ancient electrical system fried in a single season, thanks to a lack of ground wiring in our building. What that has down to our computers, my friends' TVs, etc. is a whole different story....)

And then, with this weekend's snowfall, I got desperate. It was down to 51*F in our bedroom on Saturday night. I was freezing, despite flannel PJs, multiple blankets, and two pairs of socks. In an act of desperation, I went out to by a space heater I saw advertised in Target's weekly flyer for $59.99, plus tax.

And I swear, this thing has left me feeling like Moses on Mt. Sinai. I'm half-expecting the heavens to open up and beam of light to shine on my face while the voice of the Metatron announces, "And lo, on the eighth day, God created this space heater. And it was good."

You might suspect this is hyperbole. You'd be totally freakin' wrong.

I brought this space heater home and plugged it in around 11PM last night. It was so warm and comfy, I proceeded to fall asleep on the couch. I didn't even make it to bed, I was so snuggly-toasty-puddlefied. I almost regretted leaving for work this morning. And then when I came home from my classes + science lab tonight, it was still on...

...And my apartment was so warm, I was almost uncomfortable. The heater has been placed in the largest room in my apartment, which is this weird conglomeration of kitchen/living/dining that leads through an archway into our den. Two rooms over, through the bedroom, is our bathroom. It is, without fail, the coldest room in the house. It's combination of the single-pane glass window that doesn't shut quite right and the tile floor, I'm sure. And it was 64*F in there. I know because I have a fancy-schmacy clock from Walmart with a theromometer. And it read 64*F -  a full thirteen degrees warmer than it was in my apartment the day before and a solid ten degrees warmer than I can usually get it with the baseboards cranked to high. Bear in mind, the space heater has settings from one through seven. It was set dead-center, on four.

I don't know what my electric bill will be. I'd like to pretend I won't care. (Although it's far more likely I'll cry than not.) But for the very first winter in the three-plus years we've lived here, my apartment is warm.

I don't care if it's blasphemy. My new space heater was sent by God. Try to convince me otherwise and I will you stab you with one of last year's icicles from the bathtub faucet.