I dread letting go of summer, but I love this time of year. Brings up associations with leaving home, going to school, being on your own (theoretically), sipping your first beer in the woods around a campfire with strangers, fogging up the windows in your old 66 Mercury with someone you barely know.......Ahh youth!!!

We reluctantly turned on our heat last night. Brrr, indeed.

My wife would deem you a wussy. Her policy is that there is no heat on in our house during the baseball season.

My kids root for playoff & World Series sweeps. They don't care who wins, just win fast.

In the Spring, she used to keep the heat on until the first game of the season. But as oil prices rose, she cut off our burner when Spring training started.

If prices stay this high, we may be looking at a "pitchers & catchers" cut off date.

Brrrr. No wonder my kids looked like Smurfs when they were small!

Okay, I gave in. With oil prices over 55$ a barrell a friend of mine called and asked me if I wanted to split a load of "free" seasoned firewood. (convenient deal for her, as I have a POS truck). The "seasoned" wood consisted of rotting bug ridden wood interlaced with old doorframes and copper wire. Undaunted, we loaded the truck up, I left her with the choice pieces and took the rest home. Determined to start a fire last night, I used up every old newspaper in the house as well as half a bottle of charcoal starter. Very impressive blaze for approximately 45 seconds! The next two hours were spent trying to calm down my Chihuahua who will need countless months of therapy from my fruitless attempts at opening and closing my front door trying to stop the constant bleating of the smoke alarm. Woke up this morning to temps of low 50's and the smell of the aftermath of a forest fire.
I think I'll stick with natural gas and sell my blood this winter.