I can’t believe my baby sister is finally living on her own. We have about four years between us, so now that she’s just out of college, I’ve settled into a pretty stable publishing career. She just landed her first job, and my parents and grandparents helped her pay for the first and last month’s rent as her Christmas present. The place is small, but it looked really nice on the walkthrough. As I’ve been living on my own for eight years, she begged me to come to every apartment showing with her to insure she picked the right one. I told her that even though the price at one could be higher than the other, it can be worth it depending on the type of heating and the condition of the apartment. She settled on quality over size, with a little studio apartment that has gas boiler heating. The radiators go across the bottom of the walls–baseboard heating. I told her while it didn’t look the prettiest, it would work, and gas was always cheap. Oil can fluctuate, and I’m not sure she’s ready for the responsibility of filling an oil heater tank and constantly moderating the fuel level. But she called me during last night’s cold snap complaining that her apartment was too cold! No matter how high she turned up the thermostat, she couldn’t get warm. I had a free night, so I threw on my boots and drove over to her. She was panicking that she would have to call the landlord, but this wasn’t the case at all. My little sister, who was determined to unpack and settle in on by herself, had blocked all of the baseboard radiators with furniture. After an hour of rearranging, her apartment started to heat up and all was right with the world.