Today is the last day of 2015 and I had a few tasks to get finished before the New Year starts with a bang.

OK, some of them can wait until the next day or two but I have a very busy schedule for January so am trying to get done what I can.

My first big task of the day was to go to the pharmacy and pick up my allergy medicine and my daily multi-vitamin. I decided that since the pharmacy was only a little more than a mile away that it would be good to walk.

On the way to the pharmacy I passed a house with a lawn full of deflated Christmas decorations. I wondered if perhaps they were New England Patriot fans and following after Tom Brady. OK, just kidding, but I saw a few interesting memes on the subject in the last month 🙂

It does look like a Christmas massacre every morning as I drive to work, and a beautiful display every night as I pass it on the way home. See the last picture in my post December Evening Walk.

On the way back I took a long detour and walked to a park where an old one room school house is standing. They use the old Lammersville School house for educational programs throughout the year.

My task when I got home was to replace my thermostat. Fortunately the thermostat did not quit working entirely, but the Cool/Off/Heat switches are wearing out. They will loose contact when it gets cold and then the temperature resets to 70 degrees. Not too bad if you don’t let the house get too cold, but I like to let the temperature drop at night or when I travel. It usually resets at about 61 degrees which is warmer than I want.

I got home from England and the house was a nice toasty 70 degrees. Now I know why my heating bill was a bit high.

The new thermostat was a bit smaller and had different mounting spots. This meant that I had to dig around and find a drill bit. Then I had to charge the battery for the drill.

Transferring the wires was not too hard and if it wouldn’t have been for having to hunt down tools the whole job would have only taken about  ten minutes.

I went with a very basic thermostat similar to the one that I had. I have never used the programmable features of my old one, and probably won’t on this one. I looked at a few thermostats which you could control with your phone from anywhere in the world and had tons of programmable features, but I couldn’t see myself checking to see what the temperature was in my house from China or Germany.

I have always liked to control my thermostat manually. If it is cold turn it up or put on a sweater, or if it is hot turn on a fan while waiting for it to cool down.

Of course, I could just set it and forget it but my schedule is too variable.

Do you program your thermostat?

Steven