Another Odball Perfect Solution

 We never needed it until recently, when our TV cable company downgraded us from two remotes to one. They even enforced it, not by requesting the second one back, (heaven forbid germs or such!!!) but by reprogramming their system to only respond to one, period. If we tried to use the second, either nothing happened or everything went bonkers. We only found out, not from some policy change or a mailing or any other communication, but from our need to have them send a technician out to stabilize the system in the family room and then coordinate one remote to it. 

We were invited to toss the other remote away to avoid the need for another call. I did, but since we started trying to fix the problem ourselves by replacing the batteries in both remotes, I claimed the batteries back first. Yep I'm cheap that way. (Mom would be proud!)

Now the problem became a human one. Both of us were used to having our own remote right at hand. We needed new habits so the remote was handy for whoever needed to use it. We sit next to each other, in separate chairs, with no table in between. I have a table off on the other side for all those things which get set there. He has a shelf unit on his side, next to the wall. What does sit between us is a tall lamp with a pull chain we both can reach, plus a small box for recyclables and a wastebasket for trash on the floor. We remain close enough to reach out and hold hands when the notion hits us.

The problem was we never knew where the remote was. Who had it last? Was it in a hand, or on my cluttered table top or one of his shelves? Had it dropped on the floor or between seat cushion and chair? Of course it's black, and we keep the light to the minimum needed. There's a lot of black items  on table or shelves. The fumbling around meant time spent in the hunt, especially annoying when a phone rang and the TV was too loud for a conversation, or one particularly grating voice said anything, any time. For some reason, when undirected, the TV likes to come back to that channel by default. One of us may have dropped off to sleep, or left their chair for any reason. A dozen times a day it became a nuisance to have to hunt for that remote.

Putting some kind of table between the two chairs just wasn't going to improve anything. That set-up is perfect for what it does. On occasion, when we remembered, the remote got left on the arm of the chair before we abandoned it. It might end up in trash or recycling! Or just on the floor. Any way it was relocated, it would be out of sight and a hunt would ensue.

I had a thought, but examining it from all angles, I decided it had to wait a month since what I wanted, deciding it would be perfect, wouldn't be available yet. It was a very seasonal item, even if it could be found in the perfect size. I wasn't sure if it even existed, since the normal use of the item was in a much, much larger size. So I waited and we both put up with the inconvenience.

The latest shopping trip produced the perfect item. Now all that was needed was a spare shoelace. I'd just tossed a pair of shoes, saving the laces, but they were an obnoxious yellow/black combination. Luckily a hunt for them failed to produce any. To the rescue, Steve had a spare lace, solid black. Perfect! It could hide against the lamp pole. 

The pole had a quirky design, with a flat square at the top as a base for its long finial, which both hid under the shade and supported it. That's what gave me the idea in the first place.

The lace ties around the the finial on top of that square, then with its excess length wound around the corners of the square so it always hangs down in front of the pole, equally reachable from either side, convenient to both of us, before going through the loop at the top of a tiny 5" Christmas stocking to hang at the easily reachable height for both of us. A folded paper towel fills the toe, snugged inside it horizontally. The remote sits on top of that towel, sticking up out of the stocking enough to be easily grabbed rather than having to dig down inside to find it when needed. The whole thing doesn't interfere with the pull chain once it's moved back to the front,  done once the picture was taken of course.

So Merry Christmas to us year round now. We just have to learn this one last new habit of putting the remote in its new home immediately after use. Check in with us in a week if you want to see how that part is going! Steve just fell asleep on his show, remote in hand.

I may decide to buy a few more of those tiny stockings. That loop looks to be the part that wears out. Those aren't designed for long term use. I could experiment with reinforcements for the inside of it like a reinforced tape. A safety pin might do it as well. Hmmm.....

Ahhhhh, Finding My Music Again!

 This started in an email conversation with a friend who was a concert pianist, retired with severe back issues, and is still in demand for concerts in her local group of friends and associates... at 94. They want full concerts. She's thinking perhaps 20 minutes. As somebody who's known too much pain in my own life. I tossed my encouragement into the ring that she do what she loved and what she can, and stop there. If they need more they can find other people with other musical skills and fewer infirmities. 

One of her points was that the music wasn't just playing the notes, it was the beauty and meaning behind it. I never managed to produce good music - just ask my band teachers or senior-high choir director who insisted I needed to sing through my nose! - but could harmonize well singing. I was a dependable second soprano. As for an instrument, my parents picked out the coronet for both my brother and me, which neither of us really took to. I stayed in band because its big thing was marching. I could do that, keep rhythm and straight lines, and follow the formations out on the football field easily. As for music, I have always appreciated what other people made, with the strong exception of family birthday parties where each member follows their own tune and no two people blended. YIKES! OUCH!!!!! (Sorry, family, if you resemble that remark. Maybe not so much if you can't tell.)

Early musical education was school and church choirs. In school itself I recall two pieces we were taught: The William Tell Overture (aka the Lone Ranger theme) and "In the Hall Of The Mountain King". Later, when TV finally arrived in my life, there were the Merry Melodies cartoons, where one could watch Bugs Bunny swaying on the back of a mule into the Grand Canyon accompanied by Ferde Grofe's music. Occasionally in the church hymnal a name popped up over a hymn, like Bach. Or a holiday concert presented The Messiah," which Daddy commented he used to sing baritone for in his church when younger. I never had the opportunity to sing it, or even a selection.

In short, I had the typical woefully ignorant musical upbringing American kids were presented.

At some point I discovered Beethoven, or at least the name, and when Reader's Digest (typical in-home reading fare) offered the collection of his 9 symphonies in a boxed collection of 33rpm records, I asked for it. And got it. The only issue was no record player, so for my 12th birthday I got one. Then, having a few days home from school after an appendectomy, and hearing Peter Paul and Mary introduced to the/my world singing "Lemon Tree" on the Today Show, I took my tiny stash of get-well cash to the local record store and bought that album. I had just enough left for another inexpensive record, asked the owner what, since I liked Beethoven, he would recommend that I might like. He suggested Tchaikovsky's 4th, likely because it wasn't selling. I took both albums home and played both relentlessly, the Tchaikovsky driving my older brother nuts! In defense, it did sound best when LOUD. He thought it sounded best when silent. Oh well. He's had decades of not hearing it since then.

Years passed, I mostly stuck with classical and folk. No rock & roll for me, no Beetles, but yes mostly to PPM, Smothers Brothers, Chad  Mitchel Trio, and Christmas collections. Once or twice Andy Williams. I can still hear in my mind "and roses and roses and roses of love." My brother might also in a fever dream or nightmare. (Sorry.)

Adult life brought little income and less time to listen to "MY" music. Eventually I found a career behind the wheel of a car, still not much help as we were obliged to listen to dispatching radio, not car radio even if it had been playing my musical choices. Life changed the day the company switched to computer dispatching. We could turn on our car radios again!  Being in Minnesota, I finally discovered public radio! Depending on my mood, I could listen to reliable news or classical music, wherever in the state I was.

A whole new world opened up to me! The musical selections were properly announced: name, composer, orchestra, and interesting tidbits behind the creation of the music, the composer, or even the occasion the recording was played for and recorded from. (Ever heard of Prince Albert Hall? I finally did.) I learned about Joshua Bell and Yo-Yo Ma, Rodrigo, Rachmaninoff,  and so many others. As funding allowed, once my car had a DVD player, I started bringing my own new favorite selections with me, so stepping out of the car no longer meant loosing chunks of a piece but merely an interruption.

I decided never to apologize for my listening choices. Especially not for them not being the current rage, like heavy metal, or rap, or for not "following" whatever current trend or artist that "everybody" loved. Lady Who? What football star's famous girlfriend Taylor Something?

The email conversation reminded me of one piece of music I hadn't heard in years. I fell in love with it for both the music and the odd driving beat. It's one by Rimsky-Korsakov, known to most only for writing Scheherazade. This one is Russian Easter Overture, sometimes with the word "Festival" inserted. It varies between a lyrical musical theme, and that unique driving beat, eventually combining them. I could play that to distraction as well, but again life intervened, between heated storage damaging CDs and other issues and activities. 

Having been reminded of the piece, I Googled it, found it on YouTube... and played it. Twice, of course. It's under 15 minutes. I also bookmarked it for future enjoyment. I suggest it for you if you haven't been introduced yet. There may be a potential new fan out there.

Meanwhile I think it's time to hunt up some Rachmaninoff Second Piano..... Or hey, have lunch! It's gotten late! Bye!

The Doubter Found Proof

Steve is full of stories about his family. His father worked for construction companies which dragged the family all over the western half of the country. It was a boon for learning geography and loving the Rockies, but tough when his schools changed much too often. His Mom and older sister were his heroes in many ways, doing things like arranging for him to play trumpet with Satchmo on a bar stage after official closing while he was still legally too young to be there (but Sis's date was a policeman and made it officially OK by supervising him), or when hearing that a school fundraiser / bake sale had no cakes to offer, stayed up all night to bake and frost a dozen of them, no cake or frosting the same as any other. His younger brother was born when he was in his middle teens, and Steve treasures a photo them both at Four Corners, elder spanking younger in four states at once.

He also was born early enough to hear stories from "Gramps", his greatgrandfather, about his mother dying on the Cherokee Trail of Tears when he was just a baby. The babe was then rescued by a George Hibbs who raised him as his son. Steve heard those stories over and over until they became locked in his identity, part of his history, another story he had in his pocket to entertain and enlighten people he met. Eventually the ancestral line passed through his mother, one of many children, providing him with numerous cousins, some of whom embraced the story, while others denied it. By then being white was their identity and family story. Steve held fast to Gramps's stories, listening to them as close to the original source as was available to him.

In his early 20s, his mother, along with an aunt and her young daughter, were killed when their vehicle went off a steep mountain curve. Excessive speed for the curve was considered to be the cause, and the three are buried in a cemetery in Montrose, CO. We visit it when going through the area and he buys flowers for his Mom. Fortunately his little brother was in a different vehicle with their father, and his sister had left the nuclear family for the Marines. Steve was old enough at that time to also be independent of the family's moves, working his way through college.

By the time I started hearing Steve's stories, he and his brother were states apart, their father remarried and had more children. I met him when he was in a nursing home. We were on a trip out west - just friends then. Eventually I met his new siblings at a huge family reunion years later, still just very good friends, and got a feel for how united and yet how scattered the family had grown. Nobody seemed interested in some old story about some unlikely ancestor, though Steve clung to it. He'd grown up listening to Gramps and the stories, and he believed. His younger brother, now out in Utah and raising his own family, would argue with him about them being just stories. It had grown"fashionable" and "interesting" to a lot of people to claim some Native American connection, and just as popular to totally debunk any such connections. 

His little brother was one of the debunkers. Being Mormon, and working for years in the ancestry records that the church was collecting, he'd found no connection to any of Steve's tales. Now finally retired, even more busy with church duties, he was digging deeper, following more leads. Last night he surprised his big brother with a phone call, laying out the chain of connections he's finally found that prove to his satisfaction the the Cherokee ancestry is valid. He and Steve are both  1/32 Cherokee, along with all their relatives connected to their mother's large family. I know one of those cousins- and his wife -  as we stop there most time we travel anywhere near Rocky Mountain National Park. They live on the flatland east of it and offer great hospitality when we can stop by. Steve's kids are 1/64th, and at least one is happy with the "official" validation. 

Steve is now looking into seeing what is needed to put the family into the rolls. There is no expectation of benefits from the heritage, like some tribal members get, say, in Alaska. It's more of a declaration of acceptance, that they are really family, that one lost to the tribe on the Trail went on to have  a full like and produce more generations that were lost.

There is also a teeny bit, brother to brother, of "I always told you so!"

The Old Tree

Steve recently changed doctors, not because he found any fault with the one both of us connected with when we relocated to this area, but because his insurance company announced it was parting ways with him - he'd had an expensive year - and the company he located to replace them informed him his current doc was "out of network".

And they call this "Advantage" Medicare! Advantage only to them of course. The approved doc is only half the distance away from us, and she also is approved by this year's insurance. Since he'd be covered visiting her immediately, he went to his "get acquainted" new doctor visit, and has been getting his lab work there now as well. Even better, instead of the former clinic having only two handicap parking slots, meaning many times I drop him at the door and go find distant parking, now he leaves the car one space either side of the  new clinic's front door, simply making it easier for both of us, since I can assist him inside if needed, or out when he's feeling drained.

They have a large lobby right as you walk in, which has a wall-sized set of windows in its waiting room facing the same lake we're around a curve on. Irregularities of the shoreline mean we can't see the clinic from home, nor home from the clinic. But what we can see through that huge window area is an old tree near the lakeshore. In our two visits, I've never seen a leaf on it. Just the "bones" of that magnificent old survivor, if survivor is what it is. It was already fall for our first visit, so I can't tell if it shed its leaves weeks ago, or years ago. 

From the window it's downhill, standing in front of the rest of the shore, the lake, the far side still holding muted color in scattered trees, but mostly the ever moving clouds, some frustrated artist rearranging  the tree's background minute by minute. The area is cleared well around it, so it owns that piece of shore.

 It caught my eye the moment we walked in for the first visit. It held its spot in memory for the weeks we were away, reminding me to bring the camera this time, knowing I'd never be content if I didn't have a chance to capture it as it was, as it changed. I didn't manage to catch the small flock of crows except in memory as they flew in, landed, and promptly left for better foraging elsewhere, though as they flew off, the tree stood strong, independent, a testament only of itself once unbothered, and proud in its silence once more. 

I did capture that.

I'm looking forward to it wearing winter.

AI... Predictably Stupid

Maybe it's the programmers, repeating the same mistakes. Maybe it's the website holders deciding they need more MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!

Maybe I'm just grumpier these days as the computer keeps getting more and more tangled up with "improvements" - like when cell phones claiming to be "smart" keep trying to become so.

It's not a new pattern. Especially with advertisers, my particular beef of the day. My beef is about what they believe is their pork. Let's go back to when I bought my last car, 2013. Immediately I got swamped with ads for buying all kinds of other new cars. Seriously, folks? I just bought a new one, have a modest but livable budget, and you think this is the time to deluge me with MORE NEW CAR ADS? Back then, if that's what passes for human intelligence, no wonder people started looking for artificial intelligence. I'm just still surprised that they think they've found/developed it.

What a shame they programmed it - when they figured out how to program it - using the same idiot mistakes as before. I bought something once, so obviously I'm in the market for lots and lots more of "whatevers".

BTW, I still own and drive that car. It still gets great mileage. Insurance is cheap enough and so are license tabs. It's had a couple repairs. A new one's price has tripled since then. No way I'm in the market for a new one. Not even a new-to-me used one. If any intelligence lived out in the advertising world, you might have considered additives to improve what I had. Cheaper, but handy, like the nice steering wheel cover I added to protect hands from extreme heat or cold. Or later, the set belt extenders I put in when the old ones - very well used - started to gum up instead of rolling smoothly. The new extenders for both front seats are absolutely perfect and about a 15th of the price for both than to replace a single belt. It's called"aftermarket" for a reason! Get creative! Or stop claiming intelligence!!!! Go find a useful job somewhere, please, for both our sakes.

My recent gripe is being inundated with ads now wherever I go, enough to crowd out the window I'm trying to work in. Good thing Blogspot hasn't jumped on that bandwagon... yet? First case in point comes from having misplaced a very special vest, polar fleece heavy enough to be more than decorative, bought during a trip to Alaska with my youngest son and my granddaughter when she was in high school. I know I still had it last year. I searched my closets again and again looking for it, my frustration trying to convince me I'd somehow missed it, perhaps having it share a hanger with something else, something I never do. Maybe it fell on the floor? Nope. I tried to find out if the company selling it those decades ago was still in business and still had them. Nope, or at least no online presence. Then I went generically online looking for heavy duty polar fleece vests. 

Still no joy. Topping it off, I'm now besieged with ads for all kind of MEN'S outerwear. Do the marketing idiots believe only men need good warm outerwear? Have they never experienced winters? Not only did I not find anything resembling the previous purchase, the forthcoming ads weren't supplying them either, not even at 4x the price! Nobody reads the word "fleece"? Had anybody had it the first time I likely would already have bought one!  Idiots! And had I bought one, I'd no need for two. Those last forever... until they go walkabout.

That's not an isolated event. If you're following me, you know I just completed a large project that is to become EVERYBODY's Christmas present this year, just variations based on the recipient. Completed means not only are they all ordered, I'm told by UPS they will be delivered to me tomorrow. The plan first was to split the order, spending half this month and half next, but the ordering process was challenging enough just to get started that I decided while I was doing it and had assistance, I'd just go ahead and finish it at one go. Then I wouldn't need to recall the little tricks for getting perfection or a facsimile thereof when next ordering the other half. I'd worried about weight of a single box with all in it, but instead I've arranged for assistance to bring it in off the porch. Looking ahead at weather reports, having it on the porch for a few hours shouldn't be a problem for the goods or the box. And besides, our helper can reset our highest wall clock back to standard time, since we can't reach it. (It's perfect for its spot. We aren't.) And he's good company, that son of mine.

Now knowing what I was planning with my order, and the size of it, it is possible to assume I'm wealthy I suppose, or perhaps a shop owner, and will continue to place orders like it on a regular basis, like daily, based on the fact that everywhere I go online that isn't already smothered in outerwear ads is now smothered in ads from various companies for what I just ordered, despite how erroneous that assumption is. Amazing how many companies like that there are. As for me, I'm looking at the bill for this time, and even accounting for elimination shipping costs for that sized order, wondering if I'll ever do that again! Some even have to be shipped out again, with family spread as wide as it is. This may forever be a one-off.

The ads are even messing up my email, which was already messed up enough because that company just changed everything, making decisions for me on what I did and didn't want to see, where I wanted to have it located, and now using the spaces I used to have for spillover and/or more space to view enlarged thumbnails as a sidebar of pictures I get sent by family, to fill them with ads instead. OK, you young folks out there with good eyesight, when the thumbnail comes in the size of keys on my laptop, and is supposed to show a group of people at a family birthday party, even if only three are in the group, and there's no way left to me any more to preview the shots in a larger format, can you actually still see them? I can't, and my trifocals are still in really great condition. I could go over to Facebook to view them since the sender posts all kinds of pictures of family there, and Steve actually does go there. I shouldn't have to. I don't use it. I don't like it. I worry about parents of young children posting photos for the world to access, no matter what protections one thinks are in place. Where do you think advertisers get their ideas for sending ads?

I have so many issues with my email system changes that I'm contemplating changing my service and address. The current email company has been my always company, if you consider the earliest small company  - frontiernet.net - got dumped by the phone company Frontier which originated them and sent us all over to the larger company, Yahoo. Basically nothing changed in that process. The new changes were sprung on us years later without notice. 

But hey, they ask for feedback! 

Whoopeeee!

It's just a tiny form they  give me to fill something in. I just add a new complaint each time I head over there. Nothing has changed/improved there. So....  what? I'm unique in the world?  LOL! How about they pay no attention? Maybe they will if enough of us complain about wanting our email to be ..... just email! Something we control for where incoming stuff goes, their choice between visible and hidden. A place where we can delete spam by our own choice instead of thinking people dropped communicating with us because the system decided we don't want to hear from them despite incoming email being the reply to outgoing! Not to mention a place where something once deleted isn't saved in the system anyway, not just the sender for future deletions, for so long after being deleted that I suddenly have 3,000 plus old ones clogging my world that it takes me hours to get rid of them individually AGAIN! And I can't  even trust now they ever went away!

Does it take somebody as old as I am to recall that "yahoo" used to be a way of describing somebody as clueless, rustic, even stupid?  For you younger folks, never call one of us geezers a "Yahoo" unless you want to face the consequences! Meanwhile Yahoo email seems to be trying to live down to its name.

When whoever runs a system as badly as that, decided to let ads come in and cover half their formerly usable space, let them run mindlessly with ads no longer relevant in one's life or budget, I conclude only a whole lot of stupid is at work out there. Whether I'm correct in thinking AI or actual humans are at work behind those scenes now, the original sources are stupid humans.  That makes it predictable. 

GIGO still rules.

Out The Morning Window

 This was our first frost this fall, very late for here. We just barely hit freezing, and was forecast to do so, making me decide to head out the night before to both empty and bring inside our rain gauge, which over the last couple of weeks has accumulated another two inches of badly needed rain in dribs and drabs, none individually worth emptying the gauge for.  I was kind to the garden spot it was perched on, and drained the water out there to make up for what was blocked. The gauge is now inside for the winter. Freezing water likely would break it.

With standard time back again, it's easier to get morning views of what's going out the window. I can sleep in a bit and not miss things. Today was almost a miracle, the first cloudless morning in what was starting to seem like forever. Lots of clouds, not enough for rain, way too many to see stars, seem to have been the rule for forever.

Today we have blue skies, no wind (yet), and two directions of large window views of the morning. Straight west the next roof over is the same level as ours despite the slight hill, dark grey shingles which turn black when wet. Many days we see crows pausing on it, though recently there has been an actual raven! This morning instead of wildlife their roof was covered with frost. 

As the sun climbed the frost sparkled, starting from the peak and slowly inching down as it cleared our roof. With no wind and no leaves on that roof, it was our heads moving that brought out the sparkles the frost produced. I wondered how long before the frost all melted. Just after the show eased its way down to the gutters the roof warmed enough to briefly go wet black,  then back to a dry grey. The sparkles were done.

Out the large window to the north, across the street and behind the home in our view, a huge tree resides. It has provided entertainment since we moved in, with fanned out branches gracefully curving away from the main trunk and each other, and then down to the sides, a superhighway for squirrels to play in, chasing each other back and forth and back again, usually in threes. It's not one of the trees with nests in it, just their playground. The closest nest is two large trees uphill from it, and our view of where they go in either direction from the tree we watch is blocked while in our chairs by the limits of the window.

Fall turned the tree a bright solid yellow gold. As it's on private property, I haven't gone to check any leaves for species information, but there are lots of maples and oaks in the neighborhood which it definitely isn't. The bark is too dark for aspen or birch, the leaves to fat for willow, so we satisfy ourselves with just enjoying it.

 Recent rains and winds have knocked about 3/4 of its; leaves off. We watched then steadily drop under light rain yesterday morning, with a light breeze carrying them across roofs and onto mown grass., even onto the paved street. This morning there is not a whisper of breeze - yet -  but they still drop. A small dark bird is hopping from spot to spot, searching, and moving on. Leaves still cover much of the roof directly under it, with more on the grass and pavement everywhere on that side of the street. We don't seem to have been "blessed" by any of them.

However, yesterday when I returned home from shopping, at the home straight across from ours, plenty of noise drew my attention to that neighbor's yard. Enough leaves had dropped that she had already hired somebody with a blower to round up the leaves for bagging. After looking at the leaves on her grass that the fellow with the blower hadn't gotten to yet, and then looking up at how many were left on her neighbor's tree,  I just thought to myself. "Yup. she'll be having to hire that done again this season!" A quick step out with my camera this morning proved my point. 

Our yard? The hydrangeas are dropping yellow leaves as well as holding on to them. I have definite plans to ignore them all... except maybe with a camera, which I've already used to document their fall color changes last week. We'll see.

My Other Civic Duty

 It was raining, should all day, and totals here are expected for .01 inch per hour. Judging by how drenched I am, the amount of rain running down the street, and how fast the rain is knocking yellow leaves off trees as witnessed from the living room window, they are wayyyyyy wrong on that amount.

It's all good. We still need it. And we went and voted anyway.  For most elections the city hall, our precinct's location, is stocked with election workers and devoid of voters that time in the morning. Today, in the rain, both of their parking lots and the street were full. That included handicap parking spaces. I dropped Steve off by the door and found a spot where somebody was leaving. That was our first planned-as-mandatory civic duty, come rain, shine, or ... well, that blizzard year wasn't an election year, so blizzards haven't actually been tested yet. We always vote anyway, but this time it's IMPORTANT!!!

We want our DEMOCRACY back! 

This month our second half of our property taxes are due. The first half was paid on time, a quick walk into the county courthouse, another town over.  As usual I enter talking my way out of the metal detector due to my pacemaker and letting them decide what they need to do in order to clear me. This is usually nothing besides emptying pockets and opening the other door for me, the one not holding the metal detector. I must have an honest face... or something. I usually start the process by introducing myself as that pesky lady with a pacemaker who can't go through their detector, back again. Maybe they have a sense of humor. Or maybe they recognize me by now. Or think my age makes me harmless. On the last, they're pretty well on point. I save my ammo for writing. So far that's still legal.

Over at the Auditor's window, I noted the that clerk assisting me was eying my "I VOTED" sticker, and just said I was here for my other civic duty, paying my property taxes. Somehow the sheet for my second half got misplaced, but a name and address was all that was needed, plus my phone number. I could do it online, but that requires a credit card, and they add 3% for that. These days this is about the only thing I use checks for. I say "about" but I can't come up with another use at the moment. I got those checks when we first moved back to MN and two are now used from this pad.  I was still using the old pad, same bank account but two addresses ago, and only for this.

Anyway, while drying out and writing this, I looked at our rain gauge. So far, while the weather site still insists we're getting .01 inches an hour, the gauge is sitting up just at the one inch mark. 

We'll take it.