Fifty thousand things to do

So the house is mostly painted, and stuff partially unpacked, and I've had some time to strike a few more things off the honey-do list, like work in replacing the light bulbs in the house, then mow the lawn, rake the yard (that took two days).  At last estimate we had 11 trees, but after some thought I think those large trees at the back of the property might be ours too.  Fortunately those two sit back enough back there that the leaves they shed just drops back into the foliage at the edge of the property line.

We finally have proper TV and internet around here.  No more frustrating moments of sniffing out free wifi!  We ended up getting a 6mbps pipe and 200-some channels including BBC and a whole slew of documentary channels, and a 4-channel DVR.  We've already programmed to DVR to record a bunch of documentaries, because we're nerds.  Unfortunately the service provider screwed up royally on the delivery - we were supposed to have it installed between 1-3pm but nobody showed up until close to 7, and the dispatcher didn't tell him it was a new install so he ended up doing the install til 9pm.  He was pretty apologetic and quite professional, taking the time to do things right, but customer support will have plenty to hear from me on the pre-installation service.

Back to the house.  This house is remarkably energy-efficient.  The original owners had just about done everything right, from adding the insulation pads to the outlets on the "outside walls" to the nice insulated windows.  The heater would kick in, heat the place up to its preprogrammed temperature, shut off and it'd stay that way for quite a while from there.  I'm very interested to see how this house does during the winter, but I'm quite optimistic.  I also replaced almost all of the light bulbs downstairs and in the basement with CFT bulbs, so that lowers our wattage from 60w to an average of 20w.  Now if I could just get my hands on some solar panels we could really be making a dent in our power bill.

It's getting late now and I should get to bed since I've spent the last two days doing crazy house stuff, and didn't really get to do any "me" stuff.  Come to think of it, I haven't really had a relaxing weekend since we got the house, but to be honest I really don't mind.  Sure I spent the weekend raking the yard when I could be watching some TV, or working on a model, or reading that book Dori got me; but it's quite nice to be to be working on it.  The alternative would be not having any home improvement to do at an apartment, which doesn't sound very attractive any more.