Heat Please

 I'm talking weather today. Good grief! It  took a huge nose dive into freezing over the weekend! On Saturday it was -17F degrees when I got up around 9am. The floors were so cold I needed slippers. Our furnace was working very hard to warm the house up. It ran continuously the whole day. The warmest it got in the house was 58F. By the time it was evening and I was in the kitchen cooking dinner I could not stand the cold any longer. I dug out the wood stove. In other words, I pulled all the flammable stuff away from and off the top of it so it could be used. Then I sought out the husband and told him I couldn't stand it any more and we should be using the wood stove.

He went out to the garage and got some fire wood and brought it in the house and started a fire. It made a HUGE difference! We've been using it every day since. Saturday morning was the coldest, but it's been well below zero every night and days are getting barely into the single digits over 0. Bitterly bitterly cold. It's been years since we've had cold like this.

We have a great heating system as long as it doesn't get below 22F degrees out. We have a heat pump which is a very efficient way to heat a house. When it gets below 22, though, it doesn't work because it's too cold. As back up we have what has turned out to be a gutless electric furnace. I'm so glad we have the wood stove!

Speaking of last week. One of my Christmas presents was a powered portable car battery charger. It can be used to start the car if the battery dies. I took it out to put in my car's little trunk. My Prius is a hatchback, and under the floor is what I call my little trunk. It's just some storage space where I keep a few things like a can of tire inflator, bungie cords, the original license plate frame that came with the car, and stuff like that. 

Anyway, when I opened it up it was completely full of bird seed and bits of shredded insulation! Our local squirrel is using my car for winter food storage! I cleaned out over half a 5-gallon bucket worth of bird seed. I threw it out because it had insulation mixed in it which isn't something I want to feed the birds. I need to find some way to get that squirrel to move somewhere else!

Rumor has it that the temperature is going to go up into the 20's tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

Live long and prosper. \\//