wintertime

... and the livin is freezie. The temps have been gradually dropping over the last few months up until two weeks ago when we got a nasty cold snap. We were relying on the furnace to thaw us out for those first couple of weeks in the mornings. I had just refilled my propane tank about 2 weeks prior when we ran out again. Normally my propane lasts about a month which made the furnace the obvious culprit, and underscored the need for an alternative heat source. My neighbors turned me onto a popular space heater w/thermostat made by Lasko. I ordered mine thru Amazon, and can't say enough good things about it. The furnace and Lasko are on par in every way except that the Lasko is much quieter and uses less of it's required fuel to operate. This unit isn't ideal for boondocking since you'd be required to run your generator all night to power it, but it has it's advantages for those on shore power.

There is one other thing that came out of this experience. My sister learned that she, as an Amazon Prime member, can invite family members to share in some of the Prime benefits. Basically she sent me an invite from her account which grants me free two day shipping and prime early access to deals (30 minutes) for one year. So if any of you out there have family member with Prime (that doesn't hate you) they can sign you up so you can get the free two day shipping. Granted most of the time I'm not in a rush and use super saver shipping instead. However not all items qualify even for that whereas I see these items listed under prime. For example. I've been wanting to make spam musubi for a while now, but kept avoiding it because my spam cuts were always uneven. And yes, I'm aware of how trivial this is but I like my spam cut evenly. It was possible to now order and not have to pay equal or more than the price of the item in shipping costs. 

Things at work are progressing very well for me. And just for fun I even made it into one of our success story adoption videos (40 seconds in).