Religious tolerance and Mohammedans

It seems the Swiss citizenry has voted not to allow minarets on mosques. Mosques will have to go unmarked by their traditional emblem of violence, the crescent moon of the scimitar.

The Swiss, who DO live in a country with state recognized and supported churches and do practice toleration of non-recognized churches and their adherents, are largely Christian, with 88% reporting that they are Christians of some flavor. Apparently the citizenry there recognizes the swelling Mohammedan population as a distinct threat to their religious freedom and their social values.

However, the really droll part of this is the remarks being made about the Swiss by various Mohammedans.

"The Swiss have failed to give a clear signal for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights," said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was "grief and deep disappointment."

Mr. Al-Rawi is Iraqi - Iraq being a country where members of the Christian and Jewish faiths have been persecuted diligently for centuries. Where women are and historically have been, treated as legal inferiors of men. Let's talk about diversity, Mr. Al-Rawi, shall we?

"It's a sad day for freedom of religion," said Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British youth organization. "A constitutional amendment that's targeted towards one religious community is discriminatory and abhorrent."

Mr. Shafiq is a Briton, born to Pakistani parents. Pakistan - that beacon of religious toleration, where Sharia is the law and where waves of anti-Christian pogroms and violence have swept the country repeatedly since 1971.

For a Mohammedan to complain of lack of religious toleration is as silly as hearing a Daley of Chicago complain about political corruption or hearing Hugh Hefner complain about a lack of chastity in the community.

Bravo for the Swiss. They've got more sense and more courage than most of Europe.

Sheepish

Last week at the Peachtree Road Farmer's Market, Charlie and I were quite tickled to see Karen Fincannon and her sheep. Well, Charlie is always delighted to see anyone who will scratch his ears and tell him he's a handsome boy - which is nearly everyone.



Anyway, Karen www.karenfincannon.com had a fresh crop of sheep and a new flock of chickens.




Ms. P suspects a few will become presents for friends this year. Karen's work is charming and a good part of the charm is that every one of her animals has a face that is very much its own and not a carbon copy of the next sheep or chicken.

Falling into Autumn

Although we had an early first frost, autumn has been a bit on the slow side. We've had a few warm days, but mostly, the weather has been normally cool. A couple of frosty mornings, with rime on the car windows, but not yet a blast of bitter cold. So the leaves have mellowed slowly, at least up until Sunday morning. Saturday, this is a tree that struck me speechless as we rounded a turn on the way to The House At The Top of The Hill.



And then there was this beauty on the grounds of the condo complex:



Sadly, Saturday was the only pretty day. By dawn's sullen light on Sunday, the sky was pewter and blasting down a cold, bitter rain. When Ms. P came in with Charlie from his morning walk, and the poor little devil was soaked and shivering so that we threw him in the tub and sluiced him down with warm water before popping him into his crate with a clean towel.

Weather like that was, however, ideal for Ms. Packratty's major projects - sorting through junk and making soup.

There are 2 soups Ms. Packratty loves to make and feels she makes well - one is leek and potato soup (with bacon) and the other is ham and bean soup. There's only one trouble with ham and bean soup. You need a ham bone to make it. And generally, the only way to get a hambone is from a ham. That means eating the ham. Which is simply not a practical matter for Ms. Packratty who most of the time is cooking for one. So she was delighted to discover mention that HoneyBaked Ham stores that have attached cafes use their own hams to make sandwiches and then sell the resulting bone. So a week ago, while erranding, Ms. P nipped into the Sandy Springs HoneyBaked and purchased 2, depositing one at Marleen's house.

Well, such a deal. The bones cost $5 and they were hardly mere bones. Ms. Packratty sliced off ham sufficient for 2 sandwiches, a large batch of ham salad, breakfast for 2 and then tossed the bone in with 2 large packages of assorted beans (having found some bagged beans that included the beloved chickpea)and put them in the nice Calphalon pot with the dome lid and put it on the very lowest of simmers. There were also a couple of onions and a few other oddments tossed in, but other than that, all it got was a long slow cook. Sunday dinner and Monday lunch came from the pot and there are now about 12 serving either in the Packratty freezer or waiting to go to Mar's downstairs freezer. Total cost for about 18 servings of good soup? $8. Ms. Packratty is also very pleased with the inexpensive set of food storage items purchased at Ikea, although she figures she will toss at least 2/3 of the teeny-tiny containers and their lids. Typically, she does not need to store 4 tablespoons of anything and anticipates that keeping track of the teeny tiny containers and their lids will be an exercise in futility and a waste of space. At $5 the set, Ms. P can afford to keep only the sizes that please her and toss or give away the rest. The tiny containers would indeed be ideal for someone with a baby to feed, but that is not the case at Chez P.
Deciding that it is OK to toss items that she will not use and which will just take up space and be annoying is a big step for the Packrat. Formerly, she would have felt compelled since they were new and MIGHT be useful SOMEDAY to try to hang on to them. Not anymore. She might keep 2, but not 6. And the set is still a bargain even with the discards.

Ms. P also tracked down a pair of pinking shears and stuck them in the laundry where she has already used them to turn several t shirts and a nightgown that were too holey to wear into cleaning rags. Putting the scissors in the sewing basket might make more sense for most folks, but for Ms. P, having them at immediate hand when she decides to render something into rags is far more likely to be sure it happens. Sometimes you have to work with your quirks instead of trying to iron them all out.

Veteran's Day

Thinking about tomorrow - Veteran’s Day - I started remembering the July 4th and Veteran's Day parades of my childhood.

When I was a very little girl, perhaps 4 years old, there were plenty of World War I veterans. By and large, they were men in the late prime of their lives – a few years older than my grandfather, who came of age just as the war ended. Men who had fought and returned and worked through the Great Depression. Of course, to a child, they were elderly, but now I realize they were just men in their 60s, by and large. They were sturdy men, most of them, having survived the rigors of war and then the Depression.

I think I even remember having a few superannuated veterans of the Spanish-American War pointed out to me.

The ranks of the WWII veterans were immense – these were men and women just a few years older than my parents.

By the time I was a teenager, the Spanish-American War veterans were gone and the WWI veterans were showing their age – by 1970, most of them were in their mid 70s or older, but they’d still straighten their uniform caps with age-gnarled hands and
march. In turn, the WWII veterans were starting to grizzle – lines and gray making their presence known. And a new bunch of veterans – the Korean War vintage – had joined the parade.

By my 20s and 30s, it became rarer and rarer to see the occasional WWI veteran – by now, they were withered men, propped up in wheelchairs or tucked into a convertible, waving feebly or simply staring basilisk through thick glasses. Now, out of the millions who served in the military during WWI, there is only one former Doughboy left in the US and no actual combat veterans. In Britain, there’s not a Tommy left from WWI, but one sole naval veteran, now living in Australia, survives. He would, therefore, be the last combat veteran alive from that war.

Now it is the turn of the WWII veterans – their ranks thinning by the day. My high school principal was a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge and dozens of the officers just a bit older than my father had fought across Europe and the Pacific. Grey Wyman, who flew bombing raids across eastern Europe, night after night. His brother, Austin, a pilot lost on a mission he never came home from. Oscar “Ozzie” Duttweiler, fought his way up the spine of Italy with the 10th Mountain Division and
later married Valeria Fulvio. They were heroes, but everyday heroes. One of the unique aspects of growing up as a military brat is that you grow up surrounded by quiet, everyday heroes. Our WWII vets are in their 80s and 90s. Many, like Grey and
Ozzie, have died and left memories in their place.

Honor them tomorrow and remember that in a very few years, they too will have shuffled off this mortal coil. And pray for us that we have other generations as brave and disciplined as they to follow.

I have a little list, they never will be missed ...

Add this mook to the top of it. Someone with a Barrett and good aim needs to deal him out of the game.

WASHINGTON – The personal Web site for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers is praising alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero.

The posting Monday on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military base last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Anwar said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal."

And I'm thinking that mosque in Virginia would look sooooooo much better after a bulldozer treatment - preferably with all the devout gathered inside, if this is an example.

And, yes, I *am* a bigot. I despise Mohammedans and their degenerate, violent and woman-abusing creed.

Damn Political Correctness and "commitment to tolerance"

That commitment to tolerance just got people killed and it will get more killed in the future.

This paragraph from the Associated Press says it all:
Dr. Val Finnell, a classmate of Hasan's at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, attended a master's in public health program in 2007-2008. Finnell says he got to know Hasan because the group of public health students took an environmental health class together. At the end of the class, everyone had to give a presentation. Classmates wrote on topics such as dry cleaning chemicals and mold in homes, but Finnell said Hasan chose the war against terror. Finnell described Hasan as a "vociferous opponent" of the terror war. Finnell said Hasan told classmates he was "a Muslim first and an American second."

Did you read that? A Muslim first and an American second? Uttered by someone in the US military to OTHER members of the military in a US military educational institution and he wasn't summarily bounced out of that medical school and sent off to Alaska to break rocks for 10 years? And his classmates who heard this didn't report it? Or has the military become so "tolerant" that it too has abandoned common sense?

Fort Hood - another consequence of political correctness

Can we please just make all the Mohammedans into martyrs? All of them. Because it's becoming increasingly clear that we can't trust them as part of our society and institutions.

They need to hang this Nidal Malik Hasan. For murder and treason. For violating his oath and betraying his citizenship. And while we're at it - the family who raised this serpent whom we have sheltered? Deport them. The penalty for any immigrant's child taking arms against this country should be the explusion of the clan, entire. Root and branch.

And to hell with the idiots on the tube calling him the "alleged shooter".

Atlanta Bizarre

Last week, while checking out the future relocation site of one of Ms. Packratty's favorite restaurants, she was flabbergasted to see this at the intersection of Buford Highway and Clairmont Road.

Ms. P reminds any readers that Atlanta is a good 5 hours from the ocean and notes that this "vehicle" appears to have wheels - not just be trailered.

One wonders. Deeply.








The restaurant in question is a planned reincarnation of the beloved and massively shabby Havana that formerly occupied a bright yellow/green building on the lower end of Buford Highway. Since junior high in Tampa, Ms. P has retained a great fondness for Cuban food and when the Havana burned down last year, and the owners announced they were not rebuilding, she was sad. Other allegedly Cuban restaurants have been found lacking and it was a joyful day for Ms. P when she checked The Blissful Glutton and discovered that the Havana was to be reborn.

Pleasantly surprised

Well, both miscreants got a talking to in the manager's office. Further action? I don't know if they were warned, suspended or whatever. Frankly, I think the filthy mouthed one should be fired and the one who was using the company Blackberry for personal use should have an unpaid vacation. But I don't get to decide. Frankly, sitting across from SBM now gives me the creeps.

Upsetting

To set the stage - in our department at TVCC (The Very Conservative Corporation), the Helpdesk has an on-call person. Currently, this duty rotates between Ms. Packratty, Our Hardware Wizard (a quiet man, packed with knowledge) and the Massive Minister (at least 500 lbs. + and a youth minister at some church). The drama also includes SBM, a co-worker who has usually been quiet and had hitherto projected a pleasant demeanor.

So anyway, Ms. Packratty had taken the oncall laptop and Blackberry from MM on Monday and assumed her weekly duties. Tuesday midday, while out at lunch, the Blackberry started chiming in her pocket. When she checked the Blackberry, she discovered that MM had apparently been using the device for personal messaging and that his IM ID was still signed in. What Ms. Packratty then read was one side of a disgusting conversation between MM and SBM in which she could see only SBM's messages.

In this conversation, SBM complained about co-workers and then launched into a vile discussion of someone in another department, speculating on her availability in the crudest sexual terms. Ms. P turned the Blackberry over to her manager upon returning for lunch Tuesday and showed her the nasty IMs, but here it is noon on Wednesday and both of the miscreants are still at work. Note, I did NOT say working.

Considering that a white male co-worker was suspended for 3 days because he was suspected of surfing naughty sites (it turned out that he had remoted a tower at a detached location and forgotten to log off and someone at that location abused his login), the fact that these two lumps, who were a> using a company Blackberry for personal use (MM) and b> while at work, carrying on a vile discussion and denigrating women (SBM) are still sitting here is a bit upsetting. Frankly, I feel queasy sitting across from SBM after reading the way he refers to women (think as "pieces of meat") and revolted that an alleged minister would participate in a conversation like that.

I'm beginning to think I should have taken it directly to HR, but since I have been dinged for going over her head, I did not, nor did I stand my ground when I asked her to call HR before I showed her the IMs. I'm beginning to think that it's all going to disappear. Big surprise.

I'm late, I'm late, I'm terribly late

Actually, Ms. Packratty is just behind. She has housekeeping to do, laundry, desperately needs a haircut, must get to the library, and Home Depot and yesterday's flurry of activity skipped the regular shopping errands, so that too, maybe.

What did Ms. Packratty do Saturday? She got up early for an appointment in connection with a way to earn some extra cash over the next 2-3 months - always a good thing. That took a couple of hours. Then she went to see Marleen with Charlie and while Charlie hung out, Ms. Packratty and Marleen went to look at some puppies fathered by Master Jack, then hit Joanne's and bought yarn (Ms. P) and sewing stuff (Mar) and then went to Sam's where Ms. P did manage to get her biweekly supply of San Pelligrino water and looked at slow cookers. The only crock pot at Sam's was immense, but there was also a combination rice cooker, steamer and slow cooker that looked interesting and was small enough to store and large enough to be useful - there's a very small overlap for those 2 factors, you know when you have a teeny tiny kitchen like Ms. P's.

It's some cruel fate that keeps handing Ms. P, who loves to cook, small kitchens and no space for things like a freezer. Ms. P truly misses the days in Greenwood and Toccoa when she had space to put up jam and preserves all summer long and have the space to store things, even though those kitchens lacked a gas stove and a microwave and dishwashers. In retrospect, it's probably a very good thing that Lucifer never appeared to offer Ms. P a dishwasher at the pinnacle of peach preserve making, when everything was covered with peach puree and jam drippings and .... She might have been tempted at that point.

But unless Ms. P does some exceptional income enhancement in the next couple of years, she will never be able to get out of this place. And while she deeply loves the location of the current Chez Packrat, she craves a workshop, a garage, a larger kitchen and just the tiniest bit of a yard for Charlie and enough to spare to have a wee garden.

Off to the races - time to start tackling that pile!

Have we lost our collective minds?

NEWARK, Del. – A Delaware first-grader who wanted to eat lunch at school with his favorite camping utensil, a combination of folding fork, knife and spoon, now faces 45 days in the district's alternative school for troublemakers.

What sort of completely cockeyed and neutered moron could mistake a camping utensil for a weapon? Ms. packratty has been informed that in the 1930s, young lads routinely brought their pocketknives to school so that they might play an old-fashioned game called Mumblety-peg. In Ms. Packratty's own youth, any young gentleman would have a penknife in his pocket - very handy for trimming paper, opening parcels and multitudinous other minor chores. No one ever imagined that such a thing would be called a weapon.

Of course, Ms. Packratty clearly remembers her beloved grandfather telling her that there is little common about common sense. However, sending a 6 year old child to reform school over a Cub Scout device strikes her as madness. Sheer and utter madness.

Fade to Black

Once again, Georgia Power is providing their usual deplorable (lack of) service.

What, you say? Well, there is a reason that Ms. Packratty has the power outage reporting number on the speed dial of her phone.

Why is the power out? Well, it's raining. Big surprise. Most places that aren't located in deserts get rain every now and again, but here in Georgia, the power company seems to be unable to provide reliable service. The power goes out at Chez Packrat at least 2-3 times a month for varying periods and all too often, it goes out roughly once a week.

This morning, there was a SINGLE crackle of thunder and the power went out. It came back up and then 15 minutes later, we descended back into darkness. According to the morons at Georgia PPower, the service was supposed to be back on by 11:30 a.m., but now they have moved that estimate back to 4:30 p.m. God only knows when the power will actually come back on. If the power is out for 8 hours, that's roughly 5% of a week. I don't think there are many people who would consider it acceptable if their water went out for 8 hours a week.

Ms. Packratty is SOOOOO not happy about trying to shower and dress in dark - thank heavens the load of clothing she had in the drier from last night had dried. Even so, the load in the washer, which she had planned to dry first thing and which contained almost all of her standard wear black trousers, is still sitting undried and will probably turn sour enough to require a rewash. Which wastes water, wastes electricity, wastes gas (for a warm water wash), wastes detergent and hence sewer treatment capacity, wastes her time, adds additional wear and tear to the washer - all because Georgia Power IS NOT AS RELIABLE AS FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT WAS IN 1969. That's 40 years ago, folks. 40 years ago and Georgia Power can't meet the standards of another company from nearly half a century ago? Because Ms. Packratty checked with her mother, who told her that the only time she recalled the power going out in Tampa was when there was a HURRICANE.

If Ms. Packratty wanted to live in a Third World country with unreliable power, etc., she would go do so. In the United States, she expects her power to stay on unless there is remarkably severe weather or other natural disaster. A moderate rain with little or no lightning is NOT an acceptable reason for a power outage and there is NO acceptable reason for the power to go out weekly.

Color Ms. Packratty annoyed. Very Annoyed. Calling the Public Service Commission Annoyed.

The da Vinci that isn't

Sunday, I went to the High Museum and was greeted by this.

This is the Sforza Horse, the monumental statue that Leonardo never completed.

In the late 1400s, da Vinci envisioned the world’s largest, most technically challenging statue, one that would depict Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, on horseback. For more than 15 years, he studied the anatomy of horses, sketched and drew the statute numerous times, developed detailed plans for the sculpture and techniques to cast the immense horse and rider in bronze. He created a huge clay model, but war with France intervened and bronze for the horse was requisitioned for cannons. Invading soldiers destroyed the great clay horse, the one da Vinci expected to be a defining work.

This horse is a 26-foot-high recreation of the Sforza horse, manufactured by the Opera Laboratori Fiorentini and loaned for the exhibit. In order to assemble it in the courtyard ouside the main entry, it was lifted - in pieces - over the building and reassembled.

This may be the largest ppiece of the exhibit - ironic, considering it was the work that Leonardo never finished - but it is hardly the most amazing.

The sketches and ink drawings by the dozens and the terra cotta pieces from Verrocchio's workshop and the baptistry panel with comparisons between the pieces and Leonardo's sketches and the scholarly conjecture about what parts Leonardo did as a student. Plus three immense bronze figures by his student, Giovan Francesco Rustici:

Freestanding and somewhat cleaned up, these figures are vastly more imposing than in the picture above in their "native" setting. Awesome. Seeing examples of Leonardo's mirror writing was fascinating - equally to see how incredibly legible his handwriting remains. There were bits and pieces of notes written left to right where I could clearly read the Italian or Latin words.

I hope to go back again. I do find the herds of people with their audio tours standing about slackmouthed who appear to be listening more than *looking* to be annoying. I watched one man stand in front of a display case, blocking others from viewing, who was staring intent at the audio tour device for 9/10ths of the time that he was hogging access to the display. Read and look, people. Then stand back and play the little speech. Or vice versa.

My other gripe is that Americans clearly have no idea how to queue. They crowd in from left, right and center and don't follow any sort of traffic pattern. Of course, places like the High and the Aquarium could do things to encourage a traffic pattern and they don't. A few ropes and arrows would go a long way to make up for the fact that people are too stupid and rude to queue out of courtesy.

The rest of the weekend was trying to help out a little at the K9 Daze at Wills Park - I fear I was not much help - errands and a bit of reading, knitting and movie watching. It started raining right around 8 p.m. Sunday - not a pounding sort of rain, but hard enough to soak you in a minute or two and that rain was still streaming down at 2 a.m. and only tapered off to spots and spits around dawn. The front that brought it, though, was apparently moving much more quickly than our earlier deluge and while the creeks were higher than normal this morning, nothing seemed to be over its banks. We certainly don't need any more flooding while people clean up from last month's mess.

AND, a certain driveway got concrete Friday and Saturday so life for my dear friends should become much nicer today or tomorrow when they can finally drive on it!

Because sometimes you just need something silly

http://www.lutralutra.co.uk/squirrelizer/

ICK!

So Ms. Packratty arrived at The Very Conservative Corporation Friday morning to discover that the city water main up the road had broken again and the entire building was without water.

And not only does the plumbing not work, but because TVCC has a cooling system from the 1950s that relies on the water system for chilling power, the air conditioning is only working at about 1/4 strength.

Now, to Ms. P, the humane thing would be to send everybody possible home - especially since the main building houses a couple of hundred people and there are no working toilets. But TVCC did not ask Ms. P. Their solution? Four portapotties on the back loading deck, shared by men and women.

Ms. Packratty held it. She was unhappily reminded of the post-to-post treks in the station wagons of her youth, but the ... er ... fortitude acquired then stood her in good stead.

And, of course, by 8 p.m. it was uncomfortably warm and this was annoying too, since Ms. Packratty feels that some church somewhere should canonize Willis Carrier.

She is increasingly less impressed with TVCC's cheeseparing, uncaring ways. Ironically, it came the day after the annual United Way extortion session. She would have a higher opinion of TVCC if they skipped their United Way match and the endless hullabaloo and had an insurance plan that wasn't embarassingly bad. TVCC's biggest step into the second half of the 20th century was to start allowing women to wear open-toed shoes in the summer. With hosiery only.

Drying Out

The rain has stopped, and although the NWS warned us that we might have rain through this week, that has not come to pass. It's really terrible hearing about people who have lost loved ones or homes, but I suppose it is also a good warning that if you live ANYWHERE near a stream or at the bottom of a hill, you should have flood insurance. Of course, even The House At the Top of the Hill had water come in during the worst of it Monday, when the lower patio flooded into the kennel floor and the gutters on the east side of the house could not keep up with the sheer awful volume of rain. So really, anyone can get flood damage.
Fortunately, Chez Packratty mostly on the second, third floor and fourth floor of the building did not suffer any water problems except that pesky place in the upstairs bath where water comes in along the roof vent and drips near the exhaust fan. That happens about once a decade, so Ms. P really doesn't view it as an issue.

We are also waiting to hear about Miss Jill, who should be presenting Mar with a litter in the next few days - it will be nice to have little white polar bear pups around again.

Over the banks

By the time Ms. P left work on Monday, Peachtree Creek was over the banks and flooding the parking lot.

There is normally about a 20 foot drop from the edge of the parking lot to the creek. NWS said the creek crested at about 1 foot below its all time record, which is more than a century old. Wow.

Fortunately, the spigot seems to be turned off or turned way down. There has been no more rain today.

However, all this rain has led to some interesting new fauna on the grounds of Chez Packratty. While walking Charlie around the condo complex this morning, we observed:












Ms. P rather suspects that the variety and quantity of fungi sprouting will increase over the next week or so unless the weather predictions of off and on rain are completely wrong.

I suppose this is global warming too?

It's been raining - ranging from light to torrential - for almost a week. The remains of the old Civil War embankments behind my condo are full up for the first time in years and Peachtree Creek near my office (which flooded one of our buildings in 2004) is well over its banks - ironically as a construction crew has been trying to stabilize the banks and prevent future flooding. Here's the parking lot after my miserable 1:15 hour drive in:











Two hours later:



The building that flooded in 2004 is the one behind those picnic tables. Cars are usually parked down there where the water is covering them.







And why is this happening? Here's a precipitation map for the last 36-48 hours:
Atlanta is solidly covered by the 6-8 inch area, while the 12-16 inch area is just to the southwest. This is some major rain. To put this in perspective - when Hurricane Opal dumped significant rain on the area in 1995 (Ms. Packratty was visiting England at the time), N Georgia and the metro area got between 5 and 8.66 inches of rain. We have gotten close to double that in the last week in many areas. Ms. P suspects that many drought-weakened trees will come crashing down if there is the least little bit of rain in the next few weeks, because the ground is beyond sodden.

I'm pretty sure the drought is over

ATLANTA (AP) - A record rainfall has showered parts of the Atlanta metro area with more than five inches of water.

A new measuring station in East Point recorded 5.04 inches between midnight and 1 p.m. Saturday.

The National Weather Service said between daybreak and 1 p.m. nearly three and a half inches had fallen at Atlanta's airport. Meteorologist Kent McMullen said that crushes the previous record of 1.62 inches, set in 1953.

I kid you not, I think we had at least 3 inches here in Sandy Springs, based on how many times I emptied the plant saucers. And three times during the night, I woke up to really loud thunder within a 2 miles range. None of it right overhead, but there was enough rain to produce an audible drumming on the roof. All is soaked.

Ms. Packratty is on call this weekend and can't stray too far from home and it is gloomy and humid and icky, so she is sorting through books and some knitting and bookbinding supplies and working on peeling away the rest of the blue tape. If the sun would come out just a little, she would go try to find the new dog park AND hang the new blind in the lower hall window, but it is too darned damp to paint, even with the a/c on as she is reluctant to put up the new blind until she has painted the window woodwork. Silly, considering it takes 30 seconds to remove the blind once it is properly installed ...