09:43 – I just got back from walking Colin, who has the squirties. I wore just my hoodie, since the thermometer said it was 47F outside. I’m sure that’s correct, but it didn’t account for the wind, which was gusting up to 25 or 30 MPH. The cold cut through my hoodie and my sweat pants. I have my own metric for wind chill. I subtract one degree from the nominal temperature for each one MPH of wind speed, which yields an accurate “feels like” temperature for me. That means it felt like 17F to 22F out there, which indeed is what it felt like to me.
I did laundry yesterday as usual. Barbara is cleaning house today, as usual, although with all the stuff sitting around packed up she’ll only be able to do a quick run through with the vacuum and clean the bathrooms.
With only a week to go, we’ve still got a lot of stuff left to pack up. I actually thought about renting a storage unit up in Sparta so we’d have somewhere to pile stuff until we can get into the new house, but we might as well spend our time down here getting stuff packed up and then just move it directly to the house once we have it. Barbara said there’s no way she wants to move this stuff twice.
Barbara got a lot of the science kit component inventory boxed up and stacked yesterday, and will get more done today and this coming week. I’ll be working on other stuff, including making sure we have what we need up there to have functioning computers and a TV once we’re up there and have Internet service working. I also need to call the Blue Ridge Electric Co-Op tomorrow about scheduling them to install a propane tank and heater in case we have a power failure. We’re going to get an unvented 25,000 BTU/hr heater, which is enough to keep the downstairs den and bedrooms at normal room temperature and keep the main floor warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. The biggest propane tank they had when we visited them the other day was 100 gallons, which is enough to run a 25K BTU/hr heater running 24 hours a day for about 25 days. I’m going to see if they can install a 250 gallon tank instead, or even a 500 gallon tank.
Back to packing.