Retrofit insulation?

Dear Dr Lj,
My old house is cold and heated by expensive oil, I believe the best course of action is to improve its insulation. Blowing in insulating fluff into the attic seems like it should be an easy win. I hear this can be done to the walls too, but is somewhat more involved as it may include peeling off parts of the siding and cutting holes to blow in through. I just had another thought, take off all the siding and add a few inches of insulative thickness to all the outer walls. This of course seems like a somewhat radical measure. Any ideas on if this is otherwise a reasonable idea? Anyone else heard of this or other thins being done?

Post Thursday T-Weekend

Things to do with my parents in the Boston area.
The MIT Museum has an apparently growing annual tradition (11th time just happened) they call their "Friday After Thanksgiving Chain Reaction".
By "Chain Reaction" they mean that dozens of random contraptions full of falling, springing, rolling, swinging, turning, popping things go off in order (with some chaos thrown in) each pulling a string to start the next step. It is of course completely pointless, so maybe it's art. Also it seems to get a lot of kids and families involved entering as a team to build one tablefull of contraption, and maybe that has become the main point. I bet there are people I know who might have fun scrambling together some pointless but flashy contraption as part of such an event. Or maybe I'm just nostalgic for they days when I did such a thing in high school.

While we were in the neighborhood, we saw the museum, and I got my picture taken next to one of my favorite robots:
( cut for images and extended rambling )

Veggie Planet brunch in Harvard Sq has the waffle I've been wanting for months. It was grainy and had nuts and fruit and all the syrup I could drizzle on it. Yum.

Other things to do with parents: movies (Get Smart, none of us had seen it, I was expecting dumb-funny and it had that, but it was also kinda good; Wall-E, they hadn't seen it, I now own the DVD), board game (Rumis), and lots of sitting around quietly reading our books or other things like that (they're Minnesotan). I got through Watchmen while they were here. Now I can go see the movie if it ever gets through legal.