Yesterday we got the schedule for the next irrigation cycle.  

The good news is that it's during daylight hours, which will make it easier to oversee how our new system runs.  Hopefully there will be no snafus this time, and we can get a good idea of whether we can adjust the duration of our water.

But the bad news also concerns the timing.  With the new schedule set-up, we will now be receiving water on Tuesday - and this Tuesday is when Tom G. is arriving for a visit.... with his 4 dogs this time because his wife is out of town.  He was concerned about descending upon us with all of them, but we had assured him that arriving with his dogs wouldn't be an issue, not realizing that the backyard would be underwater that afternoon (and then remain muddy in all those shady places where there's no grass...) 

 Had hoped Tom would stick around until Thanksgiving, 

but will have to see how that goes with the pooches.

Patti and Gary will be in Kentucky for Thanksgiving (she has now finished work, and is flying there today to start the house-hunting) and Aja will be working, so at this point we are looking at only 5 around the table on Thursday.  Still hoping to corral some "stragglers"  before then, because I subscribe to "the more the merrier" mindset for Thanksgiving!

Finally got to chat with Mom this morning (though even with the captions on her phone it was somewhat difficult to communicate) and learned that Sandy was in an accident on Thursday, totaling her car.  Mom didn't know much more than that, though luckily Sandy seems to have come through unscathed (though we all know that things can show up later!)  Am waiting to hear back from Sandy with more details.  Sure am hoping for clear weather/roads when I'm out there in a few weeks!