We’re into the “meat’ of January, and I have already found it, on several occasions, difficult to stay WARM!

Is it layering? Is it physical activity? Is it one of those blankets they use to wrap hot water heaters we talked about last week?

What’s your secret? How do you stay warm?

As you’ll hear in Episode 29 this Sunday, there are several ways to deal with the problem of heating costs.

Cristin Siebert endorses insulation for the attic, and Debby Wan likes the thermal wrapper for the hot water heater. (Which sounds so comfortable, I’m considering having myself wrapped next winter.)

Any other secrets for saving money while keeping warm?

We recorded Episode 29 on Sunday at Modern Apizza, and one of our guest editors was Cristin Siebert.

We met Cristin when we were recording Episode 13, just after last summer’s power outage, and I have been thinking about how serious the loss of power becomes in the cold weather months.

Which inspired today’s featured question… What should you have on hand for a winter power outage?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments – and please click the “Post to Facebook” box if you’d like to share with your friends…

Suzi Craig described her guilt over not recycling “every paper towel”. (She calls it “re-guilt”)

I know where Suzi’s coming from. We want to do the right thing. We want to model good behavior for our children. But how much recycling is reasonable for the average person, and what, exactly,  should we be recycling?

As Duo would say on his Facebook page, “Discern and Discuss”!

At last week’s meeting at Manjares, the obvious topic of conversation was the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene. [For my money, that was a Hurricane.]

Meteorologist Matt Scott shared his secret (and Sarah her disgust) for toilet flushing when you’ve got well water and no power. (You pour a bucket of water in there. Or, in Duo’s case, “Champers”.)

Now we turn to you: What are the most important things to think of – or have on hand – in case of a weather emergency?

Everyone has one: the quick, easy delicious dinner, and we had a lot of fun batting ours around during this week’s editorial meeting.

(In a perfect world, they’re all healthful, easy to prepare, and go nicely with a buttery chardonnay. For Duo, the the on-the-go architect, the solution comes in the form of the pre-cooked chicken from Stop and Shop.)

So, what’s yours?

When you purchase food, you assume it’s fresh. (Or that it’s so filled with chemicals that nothing – save the chemicals themselves – will hurt you.) Then there’s food that’s gone bad: it either smells or has stuff growing on it – and unless we’re talking about expensive cheese, these are pretty good indications it shouldn’t be consumed.

What we’re concerned with, however, is the stuff you’re just not sure about; like the chinese food that’s been in the fridge four days – or the half a Gatorade that sat out a few hours. (And let’s not forget the salad dressing you remember purchasing during the Bush administration.)

Have YOU ever experienced the difficulties associated with “food gone bad”?

From Ann: “I’ve had moles in my yard for many years. Help! I’ve tried to get rid of grubs, and I have a lot of earthworms. Cat liter (used) works for the short term. Any suggestions?”

Ann, I feel your pain. You see, years ago, our lawn was selected by a mole (or moles) as the equivalent of “beachfront”. I will not be of much assistance in this matter – at the time, I paid the lawn guy to embark on a campaign of “shock and awe”, and while the results were aesthetically pleasing, it troubled me that the landscapers placed a small sign containing a pesticide warning on the front yard.

Let’s write a happy ending for Ann’s mole saga. Is there a product one can use that doesn’t have a skull and crossbones on it? Please contribute any and all “molepertise” in the “Comments” section…

My intrepid co host Duo Dickinson commented the other day that he needed advice on coping with an auditory (and structural) assault on his home by a woodpecker. (Or woodpeckers.)

We called Patrick Comins, Director of Bird Conservation for Audubon Connecticut, who told us you can keep the birds away from your house by hanging suet in the back yard: “It seems counterintuitive because you’ll actually attract more woodpeckers to your yard that way, but I have a couple of suet feeders in my yard, and only once have I had one pecking on my house, and it [was] for a very short period of time”.

In addition to providing us with good advice and entertaining woodpecker stories, Patrick supplied us with two important links; click here to read a fact sheet on “Dealing with Woodpecker Problems”, and here for “The Checklist of the Birds of Connecticut”.

One of the things that screws us up in life is the fact that we often end up doing something the way we’ve always done it, without stopping to think about about whether or not it’s really the best way. In my case, it’s an ongoing insistence that the proper method for cleaning your kitchen countertops is with a sponge.

I know where my dedication to the sponge comes from. My mother used to wipe everything with the kitchen sponge, including our faces. Unfortunately, it has recently been pointed out that  kitchen sponges provide a rich breeding ground for stuff like bacteria, which would explain why I still remember exactly how that sponge smelled back in the days of black and white television and rotary phones.

My wife insists on using paper towels and/or those pop up wipes, but this ends up feeling wasteful and just, well, wrong. Thoughts?