A Warmer House

We spent the weekend with new friends that we met on our Peru trip: Anne, Steve, Amy, and Dean (Anne and Amy were on our trip).  They invited us to their family's lake house (ok, frozen lake house this time of year) for the weekend.  They have a lovely cabin on Crystal Lake which is about 90 minutes north of Madison.  We spent the weekend learning about everyone's family, doing some cross country skiing, assembling a puzzle, and playing sheepshead while consuming Peruvian Pisco Sours.  Given how complicated sheepshead is, consuming alcohol wasn't helping us during the game, but did make it a lot more boisterous.  While the weather was colder than desired, we had a nice roaring fire to keep out the chill and the wind died down during our cross country ski trek to make it livable.

On Sunday we headed to Madison to do a little condo shopping and then headed to Kathy and John's to watch our hometown Packer's squeak by in their playoff game.  Afterwards we had a little birthday cake to celebrate Kathy notching another year.  Then it was home to collapse and ready ourselves for the new week.

Our big excitement for the week was getting a new boiler.  Our old one had developed lime deposits (sort of arthritis for boilers) and wasn't keeping the house very toasty anytime the outside temperature dropped below ten - which happens a lot in Wisconsin.  So it was time to retire it for a new system and an improved circulating pump.  So I spent the day watching the temperature in the house go from 66° do to 58° when they finally finished.  Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the somewhat warmer basement that day.  So our new system is in and has managed to stave off the cold in the house - but it is still nippy when you step outside.  You can see the old boiler on the left below and the new one on the right.  And yes, they do look almost the same, but the heat difference between them is noticeable.  Fun fact from the installer - boilers go through color schemes just like appliances and is a good way to judge the age - especially since there is no discernible date on them.  We are apparently in the taupe generation now.