When my wife and I bought this house nearly 6 years ago, we made some upgrades. We put on a metal roof, replacing the original shingles, replaced the floor in the kitchen, both bathrooms and the downstairs den. We ended up upgrading the pellet stove twice and added some insulation, one of the jobs I want to do in the coming year is to insulate the garage, mostly to keep the freezers we have in the garage from becoming damaged. It's only in HGTV shows that the work to improve your home is done all at once and somehow in 1 hour. For most of us its an ongoing never ending project. One of the important improvements that I've been wanting to make but have kept putting off for various reasons has been solar panels. Now, I'm thinking that it may be time to least do something. The main reason we have been putting off this improvement was cost and how long it would actually take us to pay off the panels. I'm 60 years old now, and if it takes 10 ye...
This is not the America I grew up in. It occurs to me that those days are long gone, and that I am probably looking back on those days with rose colored glasses as well. However there was a time in America when, if two parties disagreed, they could hammer out some sort of compromise. Where opposing viewpoints were respected. Where, if a heated argument did break out the chance of violence was very low. I miss that America. Recently I was threatened with physical violence for something that I posted online. I ignored the comment, I didn't bother to respond to it. Not because I feared the person - I've no idea who they were, etc. - but because I am a pacifist. To respond to violence with more violence makes little sense to me. Plus, it's been my experience that such people are paper tigers. The anger that is felt however, by both the right and the left is very real. I can no...