Intimidated by a rain gauge

A gardening friend of mine introduced me to the CoCoRaHS network, which is a community-based weather monitoring program. People all over the country have these nifty rain gauges and hail pads in their own backyards and report daily precipitation throughout the year. It's fascinating how a storm can be so inconsistent in the amount of water it dumps on an area.

Anywho, I've wanted to track my own garden's water gatherings for some time. I thought this program would be an inspirational and motivational kick in the pants...as well as a service to the research community :) I kinda thought signing up would include some sort of medal.

Instead of a medal, I have a fancy rain gauge gizmo that needs to go up in my yard in a very specific way:

"Mount the gauge on a post that you walk past each day so you will be reminded to read and empty the gauge daily. Ideally, the post should be a 4"x4" or 2-2"x4" nailed together. Where possible do not mount near buildings or trees that would prevent rainfall from reaching the gauge. The gauge should be mounted so that the top of the gauge is level and is 6" higher than the top of the post."

Here are the parts of those instructions that strike fear into my soul: "daily" and "gauge is level"

I, dear friends, am not a precision instrument. Attributes like "daily" and "level", while often part of my plans, do not always make it into the finished product. It shouldn't be a big deal, right? Just mount the dumb thing and get going...aargh! And yet I'm still sitting here whining to y'all instead.

Why does this small project inspire such dread?

I suspect it has something to do with rigid, universal expectations and third-party accountability. I haven't had any of that stuff in my life since grad school coursework (i.e. 8 years and counting). I'm kinda scared I'll do it wrong.

There you have it.

Now I'm off to nail two 2"x4"'s to each other and make this work.