dry skin, and air conditioners

After three days of applying and re-applying a skin "healing cream," my fingers are basically back to normal. In particular, typing doesn't hurt my fingertips, my hands just generally look better, and I'm not carefully avoiding touching anything acidic (like oranges). Now I need to remember to keep using this lotion (though not a dozen times per day) even when nothing hurts and there's no obvious damage.

This is I think a recurrence of a problem I'd had in previous winters, possibly made worse by the couple of days of using space heaters while we waited for them to fix (replace) the boiler.

Also, we had someone come today to remove the air conditioners from our windows and carry them down to our basement-level storage area. This is the same person who put them in the windows when we first moved in (we never got around to removing them last winter, which was a mistake, because having them in the windows let cold air leak into our apartment). He again arrived later than he had originally said he would; he may just be over-optimistic about Boston traffic.