• Weight: 284
• BP: 128/83

We’ve barely gotten into the autumn season and here we’re already gearing up for winter.  Just yesterday puppy removed the air conditioners from the bedroom window as well as the window downstairs, they’ve been stored away until next spring.  Too, puppy has started the process of bringing in the lawn furniture, storing away the bbq grill and rearranging things in the garage to bring the car in so it doesn’t get snowed on, whenever it becomes time for it to snow around here.  At least this year there won’t be problems with the driveway, since we had it re-paved 2 months ago.  For the last several years puppy has had to deal with potholes, and an increasingly uneven surface to run the snowblower on, and it’s been a pain more than a few times.  Now, with the new macadam surface, and all the holes filled in, it should be pretty easy to clear the driveway, no matter how much snow falls on it.

puppy has also brought out his winter wardrobe from storage, and has begun to lament that he’s not going to be able to wear shorts for much longer, what with the temperatures falling down in the evenings, and needing to keep the temperature in the house to a manageable level.  This coming week the furnace will be getting it’s annual cleaning, so that the heating system will be as efficient as it can be.  A couple years ago our local plumber mentioned that the furnace is probably getting to the end of it’s useful life and should be replaced with a more efficient model; unfortunately that’s going to cost a pretty penny….puppy and his wife looked into other options, like a central air/heating system, but at a starting cost of about $10,000 that turned out to be a less than viable option.  For the time being, it seems puppy and his wife will rely on the old tried and true of weatherizing the existing house and plugging the leaks wherever possible, instead of heating all of outdoors with a new system.

Finally, puppy will be putting up the lawn mower for the season, as well as getting the snow blower ready for it’s run in the coming months.  Like last year, the weather people are saying that this winter is going to be rife with significant snow, cold and so on, just like they were saying for last year.  As it turned out, last winter was unusually warm, and we had very few snow days.  So much so, that puppy’s utility bill went down to the point that his monthly bill is going to be approximately $50 less than what he had been paying in 2015 (puppy is on a budget plan through his local utility), consequently should it continue to be warm (due to global warming or some other phenomenon) he should be saving even more money over the next 6 months.  Wouldn’t be the most terrible thing in the world, and he’d be able to plug that money into a visit to his Miss in 2017.  Something that both he, and his Miss are looking forward to.

All in all, there’s still many things to do in order to be ready for the first snowflakes to flit by, but puppy thinks that this year, at least the car won’t be waiting until mid November to have it’s place in the garage, puppy is slowly getting better at his habit of procrastination.  He’s not quite there yet, but he’s making a good effort not to do it so much.