Our updates for all of you

Idaho is the fastest growing state in the nation?  Really? Seems so according to various news agencies, 1.2% per year growth according to the Census Bureau, or at least that was the source quoted in one story. Even a rural area like ours gets some growth. You can see it in more cars on the area roads but even here many people are willing to commute. When we were in California, if we were working in the San Bernardino Valley, that was a commute of around eighty miles a day, four days a week. When we first moved to the high desert, in 1989, it was about thirty-five to forty-five minutes from point 'A' to 'B'. Before we moved to Idaho in 2006, and with the almost constant growth in all those areas, that same trip took up to an hour and a half on many occasions. Up here in North Idaho, I would NOT want to have to be at work by eight am in Spokane, Washington, often about two hours away, in good weather! But in "adverse weather" like now, like much of win...

How could that be? You might think, Christmas, the lights, the presents, all the holiday programming! How could there be doldrums? Well, I'll tell you,  days and days of overcast and kind of foggy weather. Pretty cold days and nights, like "highs" from 27 to 32 and the lows from 17 to 28 for many of those days. The cause? A stagnant high-pressure system over the Northwest. Stalled out and just sitting there with no strong enough cold front coming through to move the High Pressure away. With the stalled pressure system here, the storms are going North into Canada and coming back into the states in the mid-west areas and they and the eastern states are getting the snow and early winter weather. Add to that, these really short days this time of year with sunrise after 8 am and sunset near 3:30 pm, short dark days. No snow left from the ten inches in early November, the mountains have snow but on most days you can't see the peaks. It's cold but not "wintery...

Getting a 21st Century Assistant So I did it. Thanksgiving Day I did it. I had been wanting a Google Home since they had come out I think almost two years ago. I've really liked the idea of voice assistants and have tried some over the years with my Android phones. Before getting Google Assistant on my Note IV, and Assistant is only available if you have Android 6.0 or greater, I had tried other 'assistants' that did or didn't work as promised or expected with previous phones. Most recently I had been using "Dragon Naturally Speaking" primarily with it reading notifications, text messages and caller names occasionally like when driving and would rather not try looking at my phone or my watch display.   With buying a Google Home, I had been holding off for a couple of things, first the price to come down, and that happened over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which has become Cyber Week the last couple of years. But with fifty dollars off I felt that was a...