More lessons I've learned from my houses

1. When buying a house, it's all about location, location, location. Try to avoid buying the house that's in the lowest spot on the street, because in the fall you'll end up with everyone else's leaves, in the spring you'll end up with everyone else's rainstorm runoff, and you'll end up with everyone else's litter year-round.
2. Pessimist's corollary: Don't buy the highest house on the street, either, lest it be struck by lightning and you find out that your homeowners' insurance doesn't cover acts of god.
3. Just because the previous owners installed replacement windows doesn't mean they bothered to caulk around them. After two years of feeling a persistent draft on my neck when sitting on the couch, I finally bought a couple tubes of sealer yesterday and took care of all of the uncaulked windows. Took maybe 45 minutes, and I swear the house is warmer already.
4. When caulking windows, doors, or anything in the bathroom, about 75% of the caulk ends up getting scraped off when you smooth down the bead. This is unfortunate, but normal.
5. Most of the quick and easy repairs recommended to improve the insulation in your house are neither quick nor cheap. The caulk wasn't terribly expensive, but I went through six packs of those little foam things that are supposed to keep drafts from coming through the light switches and electrical outlets, and I haven't even finished the first floor yet. And the estimated cost savings per year if I do the entire house is about $15 ... we'd better be here for another few years if we want to get our money back on the foam.
6. If you insulate your home up to the current suggested R-values for your area of the country, you can deduct part of the expense from your federal taxes. But only if you install the stuff in 2006 or 2007, so check http://www.energytaxincentives.org/tiap-consum-home-shell.html for more information. There's also a tax rebate for installing more efficient heating and cooling systems, and links to some of the state tax incentives for energy conservation.
7. Am I the only one who finds it funny that the electric company sponsors a program that is designed to help consumers use less of its product? That's like tobacco companies running smoking cessation programs, or Weight Watchers selling food. Oh, never mind.
8. Good teething toy for toddlers? Phillips head screwdriver.
9. Jason needs to be careful what he says, even in offhand remarks. Yesterday there was an article in the newspaper about "reseasoning" your house - that is, reorganizing furniture and using different accessories when the seasons change. "So, when are you going to reseaon our house?" "Well, there aren't many ways we can reorganize the furniture in most of the rooms, so probably 'never.'" Then he goes and takes a 3-hour nap, during which time I manage to move my entire office out of the (unheated) porch room where it normal resides, and put it in the (heated) dining room. And I think I've worked out a way to reorganize the family room so that the couch is away from the drafty windows and over the heating vent instead. Dude, next weekend will be one horror show of moving dusty furniture, unplugging and replugging electronic equipment, and then me deciding I liked it better the original way. Sounds like fun to me!
10. Preferred order of doing the fall clean-up tasks: a)trim the bushes, b) blow the leaves and bush trimmings out of the flowerbeds, c) mow the grass, d) weed the flowerbeds, e) put all the terracotta pots and weather-sensitive yard stuff away, f) put the hose away. It hardly ever gets done in the right order, so usually I end up blowing out all the leaves from the flower beds, then deciding to trim the bushes, so I have to rake out all the clippings again. Add to that the fact that all of the various trees surrounding our property drop their leaves at different times over the course of two months or more, and you've got a homeowner who has a leafblower in her hands most of the fall.
11. Leafblowers are not quite as easy to use as they look. First you have to remember to try to blow everything with the direction of the wind, because otherwise it comes flying back almost as fast as it left. Then you have to take into account that it's easiest to blow leaves downhill, but most of the time the leaf collection point is somewhere uphill from where most of the leaves are. In the end, I don't think leafblowers are much faster than raking, but they sure are easier on your back.
12. If you let it dry out for a few days first, dog poop will go airborne when confronted with a leafblower on "high." That's one of the many reasons it pays to stay upwind of the leaves you're trying to blow.