Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Well, the good news is the new furnace is much more efficient than the old. After a full month of having it run, a comparison of this November over last November shows less natural gas usage, like 18% less usage. And this is with running the fireplace, too. Last November I didn't have the fireplace installed, so it was just the furnace heating the house. Through this November, I used the fireplace quite a bit, so both it and the furnace were consuming natural gas. The fact the two still used less natural gas over the old furnace makes me incredibly happy. I feel like my quest to leave a smaller footprint is happening. The bad news is the price of natural gas this November is double the price of natural gas last November. When I saw the change, I was speechless. Twice as much. Seriously. This country is going absolutely insane. After lamenting all of this to a close friend yesterday, she said, "Well, I know you don't eat bacon, but it's now $13 a package, and that's...

With just a couple of days remaining in the semester and the bulk of the grading completed, I've turned my attention to starting the big summer project: painting the house.  I am so excited. And I'm in no hurry. I have all summer ahead of me. So I've started the scraping work, just taking my time. I decided to begin the process on the back side of the house since it's in the worst shape. That's the west-facing side, so it gets a lot of wind and rain pelting it. I've made some good progress over the last week. Last evening when I stepped off the ladder after scraping the fascia board, I felt such satisfaction with the amount of progress I've made so far.  Before I can continue on to paint this side of the house, though, one section of cedar shingles needed to be completely replaced. The old shingles are so rotted that a layer of wood came off with the paint. I figure this isn't a good thing, so new shingles it is. A quick run (as quick as can be living 30...