As most anyone who reads this should already know, we're moving to Nebraska.  Things get started the 20th (Sunday) after church, when we load up the moving van.  We'll spend most of the day Monday driving, and then unload on Tuesday, just 3 days before Christmas.

Since this site is hosted in our home, that means an extended outage starting probably on Saturday and lasting until whenever we have internet access set up at the house.   I don't know when that will be.

Meet one of the victims in the ongoing struggle to domesticate our dog Roxie. It's a little hard to see here, but Roxie decided to make her own doggie door for the garage.  She chewed completely through the door by stripping off pieces, one layer at a time.

Admittedly, this door has no business being on the garage in the first place. It's an interior door, and it was on it's last legs even before Roxie got hold of it.  But it's what we had, and it's been there since before we moved in to this house.  One of the problems with the whole situation is that the door is an odd size; it's both shorter and narrower than is typical.  This has made it difficult to find a replacement.

Today, after much time researching alternatives, I finally purchased that replacement.  The new door will be taller, which will mean some minor surgery to the side of the garage itself, but it will make it easier to find a match should anyone need to replace the door in the future.  Not that this is likely any time soon: the new door also has a steel shell.  Let's see Roxie chew through that!

It'll be a couple more weeks before I have a chance to install (I need to borrow some tools and labor), but the ball is rolling now.

When I heard the forecast a few days ago, I decided that I needed to take today off and take the chance to get outside for a while.

So I took a vacation day and this morning when Ryan was ready to sleep for a while we set the baby monitor up in the garage, made sure it was getting a signal, and proceeded to sort through things.

It's still pretty cluttered, but much less so than it was. I was able to rig my counter-weight for the garage door again, and we also moved some plywood sheets from the van side — where it was intruding on exit space for the sliding door — to the Aveo side, which has a little more room there.

We also brought some things indoors that we should have come indoors long ago, including Melody's movie posters, her samurai sword, my old construx toys, some pictures, and other assorted items. We still have about as much left as we took in, but we made serious dent in the clutter out there.

Alice had fun, too. She played with her tricycle and in the (muddy) yard with her lawn mower toy. I think we were all happy to get outside some.

I had a headlight burn out on the Aveo today. That's the fourth one in the three years I've had the car.

The most memorable was when two bulbs went out a once. It was near the beginning of last winter, but we'd already had a lot of snow, resulting in some new pot holes. It was a particularly cold evening and I hit a pot hole. Both bulbs died at once, and I had to drive half of the way home with no lights. Fortunately daylight held until I was almost in town, but it still wasn't very fun.

Now back to the current incident. Melody was going to Walmart today anyway, so she'll pick up a new bulb and I'll put it in after work tomorrow evening.

Update: I'm getting too good at this. It only took about 10 minutes to change out the bulb. Sigh: I suppose that's not a good thing.

Here's the deal: our house is cold. Even if I set the thermostat at 80 it would still feel cold in the winter. The reason has to do with our basement. Most of the house is surprisingly well insulated for a home built in 1909. It has it's drafts, like any older home, but at least the walls themselves have what appears to be decent insulation.

The basement, however, is not. There is about a 2 foot span where it extends above the ground that allows heat to exchange at an alarming rate. Additionally, the basement is not heated (which, considering it's insulation status, is probably a good thing given our budget).

The end result of this is that it tends to be very cold near the floor in the main level of the house, and that makes us all feel cold, even if it's really pretty warm inside. So, I'm looking for ideas that will help it be warmer nearer the floor, without having to heat up the rest of the room at well.

I have already done some work towards improving the situation in the basement, but I think I've found all the low-hanging fruit there- about the only thing left is to improve the situation near the windows.

One idea I'm considering is to put some insulation between the joists supporting the main level, but I'm not sure that will help much and might make it get dangerously cold in the basement where the plumbing is. Another idea is to put some kind of canopy over the vents, to force new warm air coming from the furnace to spread out more at a lower level (as well as slow it down, so it feels less like a draft).

I'm also open to any other suggestions. And no, raising the thermostat temperature really won't help much.

Whole bunch of stuff to talk about today.

We have a new car. Well, new to us anyway. It's a '98 Nissan Quest minivan. It has a 123,000 miles on it, but it's in pretty good shape. That's still almost 15,000 fewer miles than the Lumina, and I would expect an import like this to push 200,000 miles, whereas we don't really know how much more time we could hope to get from the Lumina. We had to use a line of credit to get it, but when we sell the Lumina it should remove the vast majority of that debt, and in the mean-time we're only paying 2%.

Speaking of selling the Lumina, in preparation for the sale I needed to put a new tire on it. Apparently, it's supposed to get 'H' class tires, whatever that means (something to do with speed). Currently it has all 'S' class tires, so the tire place wouldn't sell me a tire without replacing all four with a premium model. It's not like I race the car, and it's not even my fault it currently has 'S' tires. Well, I guess I have put 4 tires on it since I bought it, but I just replaced what was there before. We left the car with my parents, since they're thinking about buying it. They're going to put it and one of their cars up for sale, and use whichever doesn't sell. So my Dad will take care of replacing the tire, and deduct the cost from the sale price.

I finally brought the baby swing in the from the garage a couple days ago, and we don't know how we ever did without it. Ryan just loves it.

While I was messing around in the garage I rigged a counter-weight for the bay door on the Aveo side. I really need a real pully at the pivot point rather than a loop, a cable rather than stiff wire, and something heavier than a paint can. In spite of all that, it really does help. I figure I can improve on it as I find better parts. I also need to do something about the side door. Hopefully I'll be able to address that this coming weekend.

We're finally putting the finishing touches on the bathroom. I've got a coat of paint on the window and door frames (need a couple more), and Dad is planning to come by tomorrow to help hang the cabinet.

I put a new light fixture in the dining room. The new one isn't as nice as the old, but this one will take standard sized bulbs, and all the sockets actually work.

Finally, I closed the storms today. While I was at it, I took the opportunity to stuff some insulation fiber in a few obvious locations. So this winter will be just that much less drafty. I also have some clear-film window insulation kit that I want to put up, but I need to borrow a hair dryer from someone first. I only have one kit, so I can only do five windows. I plan to target windows that never open, so that I don't have to take it down in the spring and can just make it permanent.