A Personal Observation – House Insurance = Pain in the…

After some discussion, Husband and I have decided not to renew our house insurance with the present company. Money doesn’t grow on trees so if there’s a chance that we could save some money, I’m all for it.

The biggest obstacle with house insurance is heating. Way back in the 80′s and 90′s, oil was $10 a barrel, so heating oil was relatively cheap too. When we moved in here, there was an oil furnace, but we found outlets for electric baseboards. Oil furnaces burn hotter and it can heat up a room in a matter of minutes. I loved it. Heat up the room and turn it off, but then oil got stupid expensive and we had to stop using it. Thank goodness the hookup for the electric heat was still working. We don’t have natural gas out here and we did toy with the idea of propane. So now have baseboard heat in the main part of the house, and a woodstove in the extension.

That was another bugger. Wood stoves. You can use them as a secondary heat source but not a primary. Burning wood is cheaper than electric and a lot cheaper than oil, but you can’t get insurance for a house that uses wood as a primary source of heat. Even out in the country. I like wood heat. It makes the extension feel so cozy and the warmth penetrates everything. And I do mean everything. The wood in our walls have dried and twisted out of the cornerbeads. Husband wasn’t impressed.

I can understand why it’s harder to get insurance with just a woodstove. Chimney fires can happen easily, especially if you don’t know how to burn wood properly. Considering every year people die in fires started with candles, it doesn’t surprise me it’s difficult.

 Anyway, I found a good price. Will save a nice chunk on house and auto. I’m happy.

A Personal Observation: To Wifi, or not to wifi

I love the internet. I think it’s the best thing ever, but for me, it has a drawback. Namely the way I get it. For you who have your ISP through cable or unlimited, I envy you. I have wifi which mean I’m charge for data usage. This can be troublesome when it comes to high usage websites like YouTube or Facebook, but I will admit, it’s a hell of a lot better than the dial-up internet we used to have.

Our bills have been large. Nothing really big, but large enough. I had a bit of a disagreement with my a rep from my ISP over the fact that the biggest package they have is for 10 gigs. Actually, I think I told him it was disgusting his company didn’t have packages for bigger usage. When we first got our highspeed internet, their reps told us we could down load up to sixty thousands web pages per month, but I’ve come to realize their calculations are obsolete. Some web sites for companies are so content heavy that and flashy, I wouldn’t be surprised if I used half a gig just loading the page. He asked us about our browsing habits; if we played a lot of online gaming or did Youtube much. Sithboy and I have one Facebook game each, that we play and rarely go on Youtube (maybe once a week for each of us?)

I’ve cut down my usage in the last couple of weeks. I have too. I allow myself online only in the morning, to check stuff, and except for blog posts (maybe) I’m going to try and stay off for weekends. This is the reason I haven’t been on Twitter for a while too. My apologies, but that program has to be a data suck, so it’s off limits. There is an upside to this self-imposed internet restrictions-I came up with another paranormal story. The working title is A GHOST’S STORY. Maybe with all this free time, I can get even more writing done.