Oh, gosh, my heart is breaking for each of you! Davissue has the best recommendations on the FAQ page. Make sure you do check it out. Christy, I have seen Lady Banks rose grown on Italian cyress and it is just stunning. Giant Burmese Honeysuckle sounds terrifying. Vinca might be an alternative to ivy for hanging outside your north window. Toothpick bamboo blinds hung from the outside eave will let in light and allow you to see out but it will be difficult to see in. Kat, I think your only option is to gain fifty pounds (hmmm, what if your neighbors prefer Rubenesque women... oh, it probably wouldn't work). Sorry, I can't think of anything else. RM, here are some of my experiences to add to Davissue's recommendations. Just something to muse on: I am a privacy freak, and I pay dearly for it in labor. I have new, one-year old texas privets growing BEHIND the wood privacy fence on the west so that I can remove the fence some day. As Sue says, must be sheared twice a year for density and control. I think it will be another two years before they are tall and thick enough to take down the wood, and then I will let them "go natural". Podocarpus gracilis screens my front yard from the neighbors to the south and east. TONS of work to shear three times a year, and once they fill in, they must be topped too. My old electric shears make a brown mess of the leaf tips. It is hard to keep it narrow: I think the narrowest, newest section is about three feet thick. I love the hedge. Algerian ivy covers a 360 foot chain link fence on my east property line. It's eight to ten feet tall. Back-breaking labor four times a year to keep it under control, and that only works because it borders a driveway for 200 feet and a lawn for the rest, so the bottom can be mowed. I didn't plant it, but I love it. I have redwoods and honey locust on my side and my neighbor has pyracantha, Chinese tallow tree, and pepper trees on his side to raise the height. "Plants on Sticks" up against wood privacy fences to give more height. I use Sprenger asparagus ferns and small leaved (or is it leafed?) ivies in containers on thick round posts. Expensive option, tough to water enough, but they can live through almost anything. A good alternative to hanging plants for privacy. Golden bamboo on the north side of the property. Wayyyy too much work. We dug a 28" deep trench on our side to contain it, and parts are filled back in with thick plastic "bamboo barrier". Auto mechanic neighbor behind me has concrete to stop it. It's pretty messy, filling the trench with large fibrous "stuff" from the stalks. The rhizomes that pop through the trench wall must be cut off and the trench maintained. Don't be fooled by those photos in gardening magazines! nothing will grow under it. It's gorgeous. I guess this is the lesson I have learned. Trying to plant tall, narrow stuff to give privacy and to maximize the remaining space in your yard is usually a fool's errand. It will always be a lot of work, and the results do not really save you much space. My bamboo system is more than ten feet wide. I could have planted any number of shrubs if I wanted to sacrifice ten feet! I thought I could keep the bamboo to two or three feet (ha). In my next life, I will plant citrus trees, bottlebrush, abelia, arborvitae, and other plants that never need to be trimmed. Renee whose neighbors can no longer see her sunbathing even on the off-chance they would want to

Thanks everyone. The more I learn the more uncertain I am. The Asus' sound good - and I know Raven loves hers - but when I look at the negative reviews (on varous sites), there seems to be significant quality control issues. Lots of lemons - and defects - and terrible cusotmer service. There's enough of that type of review that I hesitate to buy an Asus tablet. I saw a google nexus 10. I prefer it to have a microsd card slot - not have fixed storage like an ipad. It also just did not feel or look good to me. Genes - you may be right about not finding that kind of battery life for video play. I thought that ipads were (at least older generations) got 9-10 hours of video play. On the one hand, i would expect video to be one of the biggest battery drains. But perhaps surfing the web - downloading content, etc also consumes battery life. Urlee - I interpreted that quote about really killing the tablet - and what battery life it gets - to suggest that even using it to the max - he gets 6 hours - and thinks "regular?" use could get 10 hours. Of course, we don't know what "regular is". That kind of leaves the Samsung tablets - either galaxy tab 10.1 - or Note. The actual pen aspect of the note doesn't do anything for me (maybe I'd wind up loving it - but it's not on my list of desireable features). I just saw a refurbished note at Best Buy for about $330 (something like that - I had a small credit - and there was tax). 500-600. They're often closer to $So I decided to order it and give it a try. It's supposed to be fast - 2GB ram - with ICS. I have not seen one in person. This has just 16GB on board storage - but with a micro sd slot, that doesn't matter since I can add 64GB more. For some reason, this Note doesn't excite me in theory the way the Asus tablets did. But the relatively large number of complaints (and consistent complaints) on Asus have made me pause. Mike - I am aware that many international flights have power ports. But we have not been that lucky in our last international flights. These flights have been booked through an educational tour group - and therefore the airline has been very reluctant to give us any information. I know we're in a Boeing 777. But from Seat Guru it looks like there are 5 different versions. And the one that looks closest to the seating chart on Delta's website - does not have power ports in economy. One seating chart looked like it might. Another suggested just ipod/iphone charging in economy - no tablets or laptops. But none of the charts on seat guru quite match what's on Delta. If there were power ports, that would make this easy. But my experience is, don't count on power ports. First - they may not be in economy. And if they are, they may not be at every seat. And even if they're there, doesn't mean they're working. (Heck - 2 of the last 4 domestic flights I took - the readling light for my seat was not working - and the flights were full - no reading for me (this was before i had the Nook). If I could really count on power ports that work - I'd just bring my nook tablet for now. But it's been acting up in terms of battery drain lately - and I don't want to risk this as my only entertainment. I'll keep everyone posted. Thanks. Lynn.

I got the device yesterday. I installed it and tried it out some. It's fairly straight forward to install and use. It will suit my needs just fine. It captures video in a transport screen (.ts) and then converts it to mpeg2. So far I have only got it to work with the included video software. (WinTV 7). I tried Windows Movie Maker and I got sound but not video. I tried VirtualDub video processor but I got nothing when I tried to capture video. It didn't work at all. So far it will fit my needs. It makes DVD quality mpeg2 video. Pooh Bear

OP here: It worked good! The Sanus VisionMount VM400 full motion wall mount for $40 off Craigslist works EX-CELL-EN-TE!! Feels as solid as a rock! Oh, it also has the option of pivoting/folding up towards the left or towards the right, which in our case, where our stud was not centered on the wall, was the perfect offset to make the tv pretty nicely centered (the actual mount on the tv is around 3" offset). Like the 20" extention capability & 180 degree swivel feature too. Also, the Sanus website has an installation video which was more helpful than the written directions. So yeah, it worked out well, thank goodness! Thanks to all who responded!