First thing: Cold showers are really good for you, and my recent reading of Seneca the Younger has proven that cold showers aren’t just a modern fad. Although he mentions it many times elsewhere, here are two passages from his ‘Letters from a Stoic‘:

“Remembering my training as a long-standing devotee of cold baths, I dived into the sea in just the way a cold-water addict ought to–in my woolly clothes.” [Letter LIII]

“After this..I had a cold plunge..Here I am, once celebrated as a devotee of cold baths…” [Letter LXXXIII]

I’ve been taking cold showers almost every day since August and I can’t imagine going back. Sometimes I go full-cold for the entire shower, other times I wash in warm water and end with cold water. Either way I always get at least 60 seconds of cold shower and have enjoyed up to 5 minutes. Aside from the health benefits, the feeling when you get out of a cold shower is absolutely euphoric. 

Second thing: Until this past year I had never heard of John Crowley’s masterpiece, Little, Big. A mix of folk, fairy, and fantasy–I can honestly say I’ve never read anything like it. While there are countless reviews available online which try to substantiate the adoration most readers feel, I’ll give you my quick schtick about this book: Crowley’s writing is gold.
Sure, the storyline is fine (if not a bit dry), but the author’s ability to communicate sentiments and intimate moments of nostalgia is uncanny. Crowley does to story what Raphael did to paint, elevating the most banal and mundane to rich levels of beauty and human significance.
It’s not an easy book to read. The narrative has often felt obscured and elusive (perhaps by design), but the voice is so compelling, so pleasing that one is urged onward.
Below is just one of the bits I’ve underlined:

“Smokey was wrenched awake by some internal motion…the hour was useless four o’clock in the morning. He shut his eyes resolutely for a while, unconvinced that sleep could have deserted him so completely. But it had; he could tell because the more he watched the eggs of color break and run on the screen of his eyelids the less soporific they became, the more pointless and uninteresting.” 

Third thing: The dry winter air has really been getting to me over the past two months, much more than in past years. (I think this is because I am at home most of the day now due to the pandemic.) My ‘dry air’ symptoms (mostly skin-related) were getting bad enough that I decided to turn my house into a greenhouse.
The first thing I did was buy a $12 hydrometer from Amazon. I started to test the relative humidity of different rooms in my house throughout the day and found that the untreated air in my house averaged 30-32% humidity, well below the 40-60% generally recommended for healthy skin (Harvard recommends 60%!)
Next, I purchased two additional room humidifiers ($37 on Amazon) to augment the one I already had, positioning them strategically around the house. Augmented by periodically boiling water in a stock pot (be careful if you do this!), I’ve been able to keep my entire house between 55-60% humidity throughout the entire day.
BONUS: With the higher humidity, I can maintain the same comfort level while running my thermostat two degrees cooler. The saved me about $25-30 in energy costs last month.