I hope you're feeling better, Patty. Around here allergies seem to be causing a lack of perkiness in a couple of friends. It's fun to poke around on maps looking for locations like mines and I see several in the area you mention. Please let us know what kind of minerals you find.

The friend I cat sit for was stuck at the airport for about six hours as they tried to fix a phone line glitch that stalled traffic at the local airports. I'm wondering if it was a regional outage—shortly after I heard her plane was finally boarding I was at a local grocery and had two credit card declined. Their system seems to have been down, though my debit card worked. When I got home I checked and no problems. I quipped to the clerk that I've said nasty things about Donald Trump, but these days one wonders. . .

Today I looked at stove hood vents online; there are some cheap ones and some nice ones that aren't cheap. I'm going to take down my existing one and give it a good cleaning again (including the motor) and see if that helps with the noisy episodes (sounds like an out-of-balance flywheel and screeches like a banshee at times).

Five more jars of fresh pickles packed tonight and okra distributed to neighbors. The cucumbers are slowing down, the okra is speeding up.