This morning my sister told me, that she was "in a barometric mood or something — that unsettled stormy thing." I’m sort of feeling the same way. After a rather balmy week, it’s suddenly looking gray and forbidding out there. Brr.
However, here at the old homestead, we are feeling vastly more prepared for nasty and/or cold weather. After eight long years of having a less than optimal heating situation, we finally have genuine warmth upstairs. We got a new pellet stove installed in our living room to take some of the load off of the overworked old pellet stove that lives in the basement. The new pellet stove is really quite adorable and makes being upstairs a vastly more pleasant experience. It’s sort of phenomenal to not have to brace yourself against the blast of cold air when you ascend the stairs. Wow.
At the same time, we also got a new wood stove. Our old one was about 25 years old and creepy. Starting it was an exercise in frustration. I can report that wood stove technology has improved dramatically. With the old one, I’d spend 35 minutes staring at the smoldering wood, poking, rustling, rearranging, and praying the fool thing would decide to finally flame up. With the new one, you heave some paper and wood in, open the vents, light it and WOOSH. It’s really quite awesome. The new stove is also quite a bit bigger, so we could potentially have a fire that lasted overnight. Or at least more than 45 minutes.
So hey, it may not be nerdy, but being warm is the biggest news that’s happened in our household in a long time 😉