October Came With a Cold Blast!

Although the leaves are just beginning to turn yellow and fall from the trees, and the calendar says "fall",  the mercury dropped on the first of October and I don't know about anyone else, but I'm thinking "winter".  I saw snow when I was leaving my Russian lesson the other day and we now bundle up in our winter coats and scarves.  I think they're right about their prediction of a cold winter this year!

Every day I've been checking the radiator in my room in hopes that it is warm.  We don't have control over our heat in the city.  Someone turns it on - usually in my apartment on October 1 - so far it's a week later than normal -  and someone turns it off usually sometime in April.  They keep it very warm in the winter - the temperature is usually between 75 and 85 degrees, and in the spring as the weather warms it can be in the 90s.  If you're too hot, you open the windows, too cold - close them.  Everyone else I have spoken with already has heat.  This morning when I woke, in my half-asleep state I thought a toilet was overflowing in my bedroom, but then I realized it was the "glug, glug, glug" of water in the radiators.  That's a good sign.  Means the heat will come on soon - but not yet - I checked!

My much-watched radiator