It's Cold. Mostly Indoors.: Water Edition

My house does have hot water (the control for which is pictured above), but it's one of those instant water heaters that isn't so instant so usually I don't go through the trouble of turning it on or waiting for the water to get hot to wash my hands. This does result in my hands turning bright red, hurting, and having essentially no feeling in my fingers. You get used to cooking when you can't feel your fingers, but it's probably not the safest thing ever. Sometimes when I sit down to write these blogs my fingers are so stiff from the cold that it's hard to type, in which case I shove them under the kotatsu until they are warm enough to use. The water is also sometimes cold enough to make you choke when you drink it. If you haven't experienced this before, don't worry you aren't missing out on much.

Another example of the cold being a problem with water is my shower. Thankfully, my shower does have consistent hot water, however that doesn't mean the room itself is warm. Getting into the shower is definitely a fast ordeal given how cold the air is. During orientation, the alumni from cold places gave the shower tip of turning on the shower before you get in and let it run for a bit so the room gets a bit less horrendously cold. This is something I employ, but one issue of running hot water in a cold room is it produces a ton of steam. There have been several occasions where the room was so steamy it was hard to see. Home sauna in the most unpleasant way possible. My body will also sometimes steam when getting out of the shower because my shower is in the non-heated portion of my house and it's often cold enough to see your breath over there.

Now, you may be asking, how the hell does water get this cold?!? The answer lies in the construction. My water pipes are on the outside of the house. This house was built in 1995 so it's not like plumbing didn't exist when it was built, so I can't think of any particular reason to put the pipes on the outside of the house besides cheapness of building. But seriously, who thought putting pipes on the outside of a house in an environment that stays below 4C(41F) for at least 2 months a year and gets a lot of snow was a good idea?

I present you: a visual representation of how cold the water in my house is. According to Google sensei, the best way to thaw frozen shrimp is to place it in cold water and wait for it to thaw. For me, it just turns my shrimp into giant ice cubes. I'm pretty sure that is not supposed to happen.