Power outage

Hydro guy at door: they're about to cut off electricity for an hour, to replace a transformer.

Not the best weather for it, from several points of view. But I'm glad they gave me a bit of warning.

Heating pads?

I've been comparison shopping for a heating pad. Almost every local store I've checked sells essentially the same items made by Sunbeam, in some cases house brands labelled as "made by Sunbeam". There are a few other models around. Canadian Tire's website seems to show that they've switched to units made by a different company but haven't properly updated the site to reflect the changes.

Every model I've seen has instructions which specify that one should not sit on or against the heating pad, and that one should place the pad on and not under the "affected body part".

This is bizarre. It seems to be very close to "any plausible use of this device will void its warranty", since most of the pads are definitely not designed to be wrapped around the body nor conveniently attached to it. I've got back pain -- am I supposed to lie on my stomach and try to keep the pad positioned on my back? I've been to physiotherapy sessions and massage sessions in which I was lying on a heating pad -- were those "professional" units?