The first hit is always free. Pretty soon they'll start talking about getting your stove working "just a bit better", and maybe cleaning your ducts, maybe a gas fireplace... you end up hauling a space heater and an extension cord with you everywhere, but at that point you're beyond caring what people think... your family give you these sad looks as you explain away your burned lips and hands that you're just trying to stay warm. At that point you might start getting secretive about it and start "hitting the pipe"... the water pipe that is, cranking up the hot water heater to scalding and just lingering in the steam with a bunch of horny bears (wait sorry that's a different story).
Eventually you know you've hit rock bottom when you're stealing people's catalytic converters and tapping your foot in the bathroom at the airport to buy just a few more cans of sterno. I quit cold turkey and had the whole furnace ripped out and I used the money to pay for a whole pile of blankets. Sometimes the old ways are best. Don't buy the hype about "getting warm", just because Hollywood portrays it as glamorous and normal. There's a reason our ancestors came to Minnesota, to stay free of the warm weather that has ruined every great civilization. I mean look at the whole Mediterranean, the Spanish Empire crumbled when they discovered the Caribbean and everybody just hit the beach, Carthage couldn't survive a single ski vacation in the Alps, Alexander's whole empire dissolved once the Greeks started lighting their cheese on fire (just to get it that little bit warmer), Rome was sacked by a bunch of proto-Vikings who were less concerned with keeping warm than keeping it real, Visigoth style. The Egyptians got it: when they were trying to stay cool wearing just a couple strips of white cotton that breathes and looks effortlessly sexy, they built the pyramids.
Shivering (and loving it),
Rufus
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