2.09 a gallon

I've been thinking recently about the coming winter and what we will pay for heating oil. We locked in at $2.09 a gallon (thank god), but still, that's more than we paid last year. We've made our old house as weather tight as can be, with ridiculous insulation in the attic and the most efficient windows and doors, but there is no way to seal up every tiny hole in a 105 year old house. Last year we kept the thermostat at 60 degrees. Every now and then I would turn it down to 58 degrees to see what that was like. It's pretty cold for inside. It's not that we can't afford it, it just pisses me off to pay a lot for fuel. So we will use the wood stove more and dress a little warmer. I can't help but think of my grandfather when he still lived in his house. In the winter (and this was when fuel oil prices were reasonable) he would basically live in his kitchen. He had plastic hung over the two doors into the kitchen and two portable heaters in there. There was a portable heater in the bathroom and a down comforter on the bed. Seriously, you could see your breath if you weren't in one of those rooms. He refused to pay for something he didn't see as absolutely necessary. It was like a game to him, continually thinking up ways to outsmart 'the man'. I find myself acting like that a little nowadays. Husband says I'm turning into my grandfather, constantly saving things that I don't currently have a use for, but just might in the near future. Even he is starting to see the light. He made a firewood crib out of scrapwood and a few 2x4's over the weekend. I was very proud. Now I'm trying to figure out sources of cheap wood, cause it would just irk me to pay $140 for a cord of wood when we paid $90 two years ago. Or maybe I'll look into the thing that I saw in the Mother Earth News. It is an adaptor kit for your oil burning furnace, you convert to burning used cooking oil, like the ones they use for diesel cars. I can almost feel the pride beaming down at me from heaven. My grandfather bearing witness to my increasingly thrifty ways.