Whew!

Getting this moved over was for some reason more of a pain in the butt then it should have been and I still cannot figure out why the blog.html file was so jacked or why I could not just re-publish that alone and fix it. I tried deleting and then republishing and in the end I just deleted the whole directory, re-created it and republished to it using my own FTP.

Christmas is upon us!!! Looks like the snow will miss us which bites as I was really looking forward to a white Christmas. It will still be nice without it, but we have not had one in many years and thought it would be cool for all the kids.

Shopping for an 11 year old is a pain in the butt. Especially when they make a list with items we would not buy for anyone. We explained to our oldest that while Saint Nicholas existed but that Santa Claus is not real and that all the presents come from us. It was not about ruining Christmas or anything like that it is about the spirit of Christmas and what we as Catholics believe. The true spirit of Christmas is not the load of presents under the tree or getting everything on your list but spending time with your family and giving of yourself, not receiving. Christmas in our house has always been extra special as my fathers birthday is Christmas day and we are reminded of Christ who was born on Christmas day and how he gave freely of himself for others.

The pain level has been fairly high for being on the meds but it is from the osteoarthritis as our high temps for the last 24 hours was I think 15F(-9) and it looks like the high for the rest of the week is about the same. My leg feels good though and the numbness has been minimal for the last day which is always nice as trying to walk on ice with it is difficult. I am waiting for the doctor to approve my handicap placard and I told him if he does I would prefer the temp one just for the winter/cold months. We get a ton of ice here and when we are out my walking across an uncleared parking lot can lead to disaster. I don't know how a broken rod or screw feels and if I am lucky I will never know. I am also getting more sleep then I have been but it is not restful sleep, if that makes sense. It seems like I am up and down to go to the bathroom often or I just wake up and cannot get back to sleep for a bit. In an 8 hour night I might sleep for 5 hours or so.

One thing different this year is the back TV room is warmer. It was an addition to the house and whoever built it did a poor job. We had a strong draft in here last year and the temp was a good 10 degrees lower then the rest of the house. They only installed 2 vents which happen to be on the outer wall above windows so they are almost worthless, the windows are the bare minimum to qualify IMHO. Last year they developed ice on the inside as did the sliding glass doors. My dad came out a bit back and helped me insulate around the doors. When we pulled the molding off there was a 2" gap all the way around the door and header that had NOTHING in it. We stuffed it full of insulation and it has helped immensely. While it is still cooler back here the draft is gone and the temp difference is only 2-3 degrees. He also pulled off some of the switchplates and found that they too had nothing to insulate them. He and my mom spent 12 year renovating a house that is 160 years old so they learned a ton of stuff about how poorly people will do a job or worse how many corners they cut for the sake of saving a few dollars. Our back room is also over the old root cellar (my house is about 100-110 years old) and while there is a vent in the room to prevent the lines from freezing over, there is no isulation above it which is the floor to this room. I am going to grab some R-19 or so and roll it in and then cover that with some cello-tex as well as stuff some insulation in a few of the crawl spaces we found behind the old coal furnace.