Baby, It's Cold Outside! Winterizing Tips

It's a fact of life in Wisconsin: as the temperature drops, our heating bills rise (and stay plenty high for a good half of the year!). Winterizing your home is a simple way to keep heating costs manageable while also keeping you warmer and cozier. Some big ways you can impact your home's heat efficiency are also expensive: replacing old windows and doors, and insulating homes built before WWII. We're going to ignore those and focus on low-cost and DIY alternatives that may seem small, but can make a welcome impact.

1. Draft dodgers for your doors and windows:

Photo credit: A Little House in the City Blog

You can purchase these through online crafters via Etsy, on large retail sites, and in stores, but you can also DIY for fairly cheap. Blog tutorials abound on how to create draft dodgers; all you need are the materials to do it and basic sewing skills. Some (like A Little House in the City) use rice as filler while others use beans, dry popcorn, or quilt batting.

2. Pick up a window insulation kit, caulk, and weatherstripping.

If you're not in the market for replacing your windows, then these three things will help make them as efficient as possible for keeping warm air in and cold air out.

3. Switch your ceiling fans to "reverse."

Photo Credit: Look Up/Hunter Fan Company

This may sound silly, but if your ceiling fans have a reverse switch, use it! The clockwise motion of a ceiling fan on a low setting forces cool air up and warm air (which sits along the ceiling, because heat rises) down.

4. A little insulation in the right places goes a long way.

If you have a house built before WWII, you might not have insulation. In these cases, even if you can't afford to insulate your entire house, consider hitting the "easy" places: the attic floor and the basement ceiling. Up to 25% of heat loss occurs through the roof and 15% of your heat goes into the ground. Insulation can greatly reduce those numbers.

Happy (almost) New Year!

2009 was a good year. A lot of progress was made on the expansion front, both in “concrete” terms—building plans, drawings, cost estimates, etc.—and in “soft” terms—building connections to the community. We are always looking for suggestions and other feedback, so please let us know your thoughts on expansion!

Visits and check-outs were both up and demand for the library’s computer stations was up significantly. We had some terrific programs during the year, and another hugely successful summer reading program. The Winter Reading Challenge is in full swing right now, and plans for the Summer are already in the works.

Our collection was further weeded in 2009, a process begun in December of 2008, and nearly all areas of our holdings have now been weeded. While still short of stack space, the weeding has allowed us to add new titles and formats to our holdings and even provide us with a little space to grow into until the expansion is ready.

Thanks to the generosity of many of our patrons we are closer than ever to our fundraising goal, plus we have some new CD racks, a beautiful “Tree of Giving” in the lobby and will soon have wireless printing. It’s been a great year, and we’re looking for even better things in 2010!

Happy New Year everyone!

Fun Sites for the Holidays

Here are a few websites to visit for some Holiday frivolity:

• Elf Yourself. From the clever folks at JibJab, with underwriting by OfficeMax to keep it free, elfyourself.com is a fun, and surprisingly easy (they've really improved the interface from last year) way to send funny holiday emails to your friends and family.
• Chin Carolers. They don't sing the entire song, unfortunately, but they do know the refrain from an awful lot of holiday tunes. (Hat Tip: Lois Duckey)
• Tracking Santa Claus. NORAD tracks Mr. C's progress around the world.
• Design Your Own Gingerbread House. Pretty intuitive and inventive. Allows for truly artistic creations, or just plain silly stuff, like adding a fish to your gingerbread house.
• Christmas eCards. A variety of cards are available: some funny, some religious, some animated. 123greetings also has non-Holiday cards-- all for free.
• Christmas Screensavers. If you want to make your computer more festive, this is a good website for you.

Most of these sites have advertising of some sort or other, which is why they are free, but the intrusion level isn't too bad. Have fun!

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful

Seriously, this has been one of the worst Decembers I can remember in terms of the weather. Snow, cold, wind, repeat. For variety sake, the order gets mixed around a bit, wind, cold, snow, repeat. Ai Carumba, it's like a broken and annoying record.

Fortunately, it is warm inside at the Library and we will be open today, Friday and Saturday. Stop in and stock up on snow books... or perhaps, books about the Bahamas.

Speaking of broken records, does this sound familiar?: Outplay the opponent most of the game but allow them to hang around, give up a big play and lose the narrow lead late, then stage a furious comeback that either falls short or which is subsequently given away when the special teams and/or defense completely fails to do anything useful. Ye gods the Packers are frustrating and annoying to watch this year.

Fortunately, the Bucks actually look to be decent to good this year. Not anywhere close to the level of the Celtics or Cavaliers, but certainly a playoff team, and possibly a 2nd round playoff team if they can get up to the 5 seed.

Okay, I'm off to shovel. No, seriously-- a good inch has fallen since I came in this morning.