blankets

Within 15 minutes of my 6:00 am flight from Austin to Baltimore, I knew it was going to be a long, COLD, 3-hour trip. I'd already turned off the overhhad vents to stop the frigid air from blowing on me, and contorted myself into a ball on my seat trying to stay warm. As I visualized myself lounging in the hot sun, my light slumber was interrupted by a "DING!" coming from some seat ahead of me. Two rows up, a passenger had depressed the flight attendant call button to summon the Southwest Airlines crew member. "May I get a blanket?" the woman passenger asked. Like me, she must have felt the…

Note: This is a revised version of an article I wrote for ye olde blogge about how to keep warm if you need to. Despite the fact that I believe people should use a lot less energy, I am not proposing here that people in cold climates go cold turkey on supplemental heating ;-). This post is, instead, about *how to survive* if you find yourself without heating fuel in a cold climate. Why do you need to know this? Because it happens, and more often than you think. How could it happen? Well, you could live in a place that requires minimal supplemental heat, and have a sudden, unusual cold…