Merry Everything!

Our decorations this year, by night (because it was night by the time we took the pictures and I'm sure I won't have time to do it tomorrow). Mostly the same as last year, but still worth photographing.  We inherited a few more outdoor ornaments. I think our house looks best at the moment in the daytime. We still haven't quite nailed the lighting, but the candy canes, window wreaths, and hanging ornaments look very festive during the light when they're most visible.

The whole scene, this year with more hanging ornaments (and less snow, sadly):

I so badly wanted to put lights on the tree that's on the right, the one that looks exactly like a Christmas tree. We strung up our white lights that we used to use along our gutters but apparently those don't want to light up anymore. Hopefully I can snag a new set on sale so I can light it up next year. Instead, we put up some candy cane ornaments, so I think it still gets the point across.

Now could it please just snow a little? Really that's the best decoration I can think of.

A bit chilly

A few years ago, (6, to be exact) we installed a Nest thermostat as our main heating thermostat. We installed another when we added the sun room. They're only hooked up to our heat, so we don't use them for a good chunk of the year when we switch to air conditioning. But December is decidedly time for heat.

The problem is that the Nest keeps trying to be too smart. We set up a schedule where it should be warm when we get home from work, but to conserve energy, we also set up auto-away. This results in a house that knows when we are gone and therefore does not turn on the heat to greet us. This is what usually greets me at the end of the day.

And our house is so slow to heat up that this basically means we reach ideal temperature right at bedtime. So...not great.

One option would be to turn off auto-away, but of course that's there to help save energy. The next option would be to try out auto-scheduling. I think we tried it out back when we first got it but we didn't like the choices it made. But perhaps if it starts to notice what time we get home in the afternoon, it can start warming the house up in advance in time to reach an appropriate temperature by dinner. We haven't wanted to try it yet, as we enter the unpredictable holiday season, but it's something we plan to attempt in January.

Another frustrating problem with our heating - and this one isn't actually the Nest's fault - is where we have our heating systems. The first one, above, is in the hallway. We do often walk by there, but not as often as, say, the living room. And so it doesn't always *know* we are home even when we are (the whole notion of the Internet of Things is creepy, but this isn't the place to address it).

The other thermostat, which we had installed in our new room, is even worse. Look at this crazy low temperature! Why let the room drop to 58? 

Well, it isn't actually that cold in there. Without realizing what that would mean for the temperature readings, we chose to put this one on an exterior wall. And it turns out that even with decent new insulation, the wall itself is pretty chilly. So we basically just ignore this thermostat completely since it's not a true reading of the temperature in the room, and just let the other one make the heating decision. Not the best choice but we had no idea at the time.

Even when everything is working perfectly, we tend to keep our house just a little chilly (friends sometimes wear coats inside). So the fact that it's cold even for us is probably bad. But doesn't being colder burn calories or something?