This warm winter

I hate this warm winter. Since moving to Virginia, I have developed pollen allergies, and have been unable to go off Zyrtec for more than a year. We had no winter last year, and we have yet to have a full week’s freeze. Oh, we’ve had one or two cold days and nights, but mostly, I’m still wearing my spring jackets—or none at all—when I go out.

Except when I read things like this, it makes me glad that I have to take a stupid pill every day:

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil fell to a six-week low in New York and a one-year low in London as mild U.S. weather curbed heating-fuel consumption.

Home heating demand in the Northeast, where four-fifths of U.S. heating oil is used, will be 40 percent below normal through Jan. 11, forecaster Weather Derivatives said today. Prices also fell on signs an Energy Department report today will show that U.S. fuel supplies gained last week. Prices are down 6.9 percent in New York, the biggest two-day drop since Dec. 1 and 2, 2004.

[…] Crude oil for February delivery fell $1.44, or 2.5 percent, to $56.88 a barrel at 10:11 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $56.77, the lowest since Nov. 17. Prices are down 10 percent from a year ago. Yesterday, oil prices plunged the most in 20 months.

Above-normal temperatures will cover the eastern U.S. from Jan. 9 through Jan. 13, the National Weather Service said yesterday.

Okay. For this, I can take my allergy pills. I have a high copay, but still, my paying an extra $20-30 a month compared with OPEC not getting extra billions? I’ll take it.