The next few days

We just learned how we will be spending the next few days. We already knew about tomorrow, but starting Saturday, we will move down to Shutesbury for a few days to stay with Savanna while Katie and Brendon go to Ox Bow Lake in the Adirondacks for a week. Tomorrow we are hosting Jim and Pat Haine for lunch on the deck - a date which grew out of our visit with them earlier this week. We enjoy them very much and that will be a nice time. Then later in the afternoon, a staff person from Friends of the Sun will arrive to look over the possibility of installing a propane stove in the basement. This has been an ongoing dilemma as to what we should install as a backup to our wood heat. We looked into a mini-split, but there were just too many potential problems and uncertainties with that option, not to mention a very large initial cost. There is really no ideal solution. Propane is cheaper to install, but costly to operate because of the price of propane gas. But it is a low maintenance system. Wood is the cheapest source of heat at the present time, so we will continue to use it as much as we can, and use propane when we need to. If we could get a Mitsubishi mini-split we might go for it - that's what Jim and Mary have, and they like it very much. But they are not serviced in our geographic area. We would have to get a Samsung, which is what the company offers which does work in our location. But they are something of an unknown as to maintenance, and if John and Cynthia's experience with their Panasonic is any indication, we could end up spending a lot of money on a big headache. It is a hard decision.

A Samsung Mini Split