Insulated

Last year during a power outage some of the pipes that supply hot water to my baseboard radiators froze. They froze in a corner on my house that has always been cold. I had used towels and a small blanket to try to insulate that area but it always seemed that cold air was blowing in. After reminding my landlord about this again this year and proposing a solution that he hated, he decided to have a contractor do the work. It's much warmer in that room now and the hole to the outside in the basement has been filled with insulation. Here's the work in one corner (they ended up doing all the corners in the living room):
You see the funny colored wood cut out next to the upright post? That had basically just been a hole in the floor, though it didn't go all the way through to the basement. They added insulation and closed up the hole. The contractor also ran caulk (in brown) along each side of all of the posts in the room. I'm hoping that I don't have the same freezing problem this year.

In order to be even more insulated, I've just finished the plastic on my windows. I have 5 new windows in my place - upstairs. But there are a total of 8 old windows. These are old windows where I have to slide the screen up and a second pane of glass down in the winter. Yet, cold air still blows into my house. I've done the plastic trick each year and it seems to help. I also do passive solar heating, meaning I open the blinds during the day and close them at night. This works especially well since I have a southern exposure in 80% of the windows. Here's a photo of my handy work.
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I was visiting friends from grad school. It was fun, the food delicious and the chance to catch up wonderful. But, I ended up driving quite a bit; I must give a shout out to the toll transponders... what an awesome invention.