Thursday, January 01, 2009

CHilly New Year

2009 started off this year by reminding us that this is supposed to be an unusually cold winter; when we woke up this morning the temperature outside was zero degrees Fahrenheit, and I never saw the thermometer climb above 20 today.

The house is very hard to heat in this kind of bitter weather; it was originally designed as a summer camp, and the bottom story has never been properly insulated. The top floor stays reasonable comfortable, but there are parts of the house that just won't warm up when the temperature drops into the single-digits.

And then there is the plumbing. I had to crawl under the house and set up an electric heater to keep the pipes from freezing. This time I was smart and put the heater on a pair of extension cords. I sent the meeting of the two cords up one of the unused floor registers in the kitchen and stuffed insulation under it. If I need to unplug the heater (to save money!) I just lift up the register to access the cord. Particularly handy when, as will happen some time this winter, the access door to the crawlspace is covered in a couple of feet of snow. It only took me seven years to figure this trick out.

It's going to be an interesting year. We'll be moving in the cold, and probably the snow. We'll be finishing the house while we're living in it (but we've done that before). We'll be struggling with the economy (but so is everyone else). On the other hand, we'll be spending time with our children, watching Thomas finding his way as an adult, getting involved in community theater, and trying to spend more time being artists, something we've let slide since moving to New Hampshire.

It will be a story worth following. And unless we do something newsworthy (which isn't always a good thing), the only place to follow the story is right here on TheBrooksBunch.com.

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