Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

I've started a new endeavor. Not sure anything will come of it, but as my mom always said, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." So, I'm venturing. We'll see if there's anything gained. I have tons of photos on my computer. Just tucked away in folders. Every now and then I'll open the folders and go through them. I thought about printing them and making albums, but I'm really the only one who would enjoy flipping through the pages. I thought about having a couple put on canvas to hang on my walls, and I still might do this. Then I thought: Why not put them on a photo platform and see if I can make some money from them? For the last six or seven months, I've been thinking through if I should try this or just let it go (yeah, I tend to take a long time to come to some decisions). I talked about this with the kids, and they shrugged, giving me the standard young person response, "You do you." So I'm doing me. A couple of days ago I finally...

The really, really old furnace I ran an experiment through the month of March. I turned my furnace off on March 1st and kept it off (except for a couple of days when Lovely Beautiful Daughter was staying with me), just using the fireplace to warm the house. I wanted to see if 1) the fireplace would actually heat the house and not just the living room; and 2) what this would do for the gas bill. While my February gas bill wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, it was still on the high side. The furnace is old and inefficient. It's definitely time for it to retire. What I found was the fireplace will warm the entire house. I got into the routine of turning it on around 6:30 am and letting it run for a couple of hours. The blower chased the chill out of the air quickly, and I found I was very comfortable for several hours after turning the fireplace off. Then I'd turn it back on in early afternoon, letting it run again for a couple of hours. Then around 7 pm I'd tu...