Rickey, Of course it was Fred. Who else his age is out driving around visiting gardeners in the middle of the afternoon? LOL If you see Billy Fred, do see if you can find out what he knows because he may know more details. Nowadays, when I ask Fred "who" he is talking about, he often can't remember names and will say something like 'you know...that guy that lives over yonder' and, of course, I have no clue who he means. Having said that, I hope that when I am Fred's age (and I'm not sure what it is but think right around 90?) I still get around as well as he does. Sometimes I do have to get Billy Fred to tell me who his dad is talking about because, while Fred always seems to have his facts straight, he does have trouble remembering names now and then. I had wondered about those goats....about how he keeps them safe because I've never seen any kind of guardian dog like a Great Pyrenees out there with them. I heard a loud growling this morning from the woods oddly enough (and I was inside the house and it sounded like it was right there in the room with me!) and it about scared me to death. As far away as your house is from ours, it is odd we've both heard that growling sound recently. It isn't like we're so close geographically that we'd hear the same growl at the same time. I've never heard this sound before and I pretty much thought I'd heard everything there is to hear around here. The dogs were going nuts in their dog yard, and I ran downstairs and didn't see a thing, but the cats were on the porch wanting to come inside. After that growling sound, I canceled my plans to work in the yard. James, I feel like much of what you say is true, but we have both good and bad government employees and always will. I know sometimes the local wildlife people seem to say whatever the 'official' story line is but their eyes and body language are telling you something else. Our local law enforcement officers are pretty good about telling us to 'do what you have to do' to stay safe, because they know they can't be everywhere at once. They also come as quickly as they can when called, but with only 1 or 2 or 3 county deputies/reserve deputies on duty at a time, their response time can be frustratingly slow. Game bird, I promise, if you tell me you see three dinosaurs crossing the road, I'll believe you. And. on a funnier note....Chris was 15 when we moved here and had a huge iguana named Alex. He built Alex a nice roomy outdoor pen, but somehow Alex would escape and run around although he always came back to the cage when he was hungry. We alerted our neighbors, and I showed Alex to Bill one day. We were watching Alex from the road and he climbed to the top of the pecan tree, which was then losing its leaves for autumn, so you could see Alex very clearly. At that point he was about 5' long. When Bill saw him, he said he needed to warn his wife and daughters because he feared they'd about run off the road and wreck their vehicles if Alex ever ran out into the road in front of them. Bill was afraid the women in his family would think Alex was an alligator. Carol, I do think a lot of people know exactly how to play the system. Tim and Chris both work at D-FW Airport, which is incorporated just like a city, and has a large Department of Public Safety consisting of police, fire and emergency medical personnel employees. Their department has several hundred employees and most are wonderful, but there are a couple that of virtually worthless. How people like that keep their jobs is just beyond me. Dawn

Ok...California isn't in the lead on this. New York is. There was litigation in the NY Courts that led to what is known as their "Amazon Law" that lets NY force Amazon to collect NY sales tax by virtue of NY based third-party sellers having partnership agreements with Amazon. VT, MA, RI, IL, CO, GA, CT and now CA have since filed legislation to mimic what NY did. THIS DOESN'T mean the states can now compel remote sellers to collect their tax! It only applies where that seller has a partnership agreement with an in-state business pushing sales through their website. THAT said, we all owe the USE TAX. It's the law. I find it interesting that many of the same folks who rail about Democrats trying to raise taxes (which happens to be factually inaccurate) don't seem to care about breaking the law, resulting in budget deficits that leave states short of operating revenue that lead to discussions of the need to raise taxes! You can't complain about your kids getting a crappy education, the roads being bad, bridges failing, etc. if you don't pay the taxes you lawfully owe! That's as unpatriotic as you get. I find it hard to understand how the masses on the right fall for the complete ruse that they will somehow benefit from the Gov't giving tax breaks to the uber-wealthy and to Corporations who are buying those tax breaks with lobbying dollars. It's been proven to be bull time and again. Oil companies are reaping record profits while enjoying ridiculous tax breaks and shifting the burden of the shortfall to the rest of us! PLUS, we now have the privilege of perpetuating their ownership of the U.S. Government by our paying them $5.00/gallon! If you understand anything about investigative tactics in police work..."follow-the-money" almost always leads you back to the perpetrator. While there's plenty of blame to dole out on both sides of the aisle, it doesn't take a genius to figure out which major party is the prime offender. What can be said about this but wake up America! What happened to government for the people, by the people? The Constitution says "people" not "corporations!" As for the uncollected sales tax issue, there is an effort called the Streamlined Sales Tax Project aimed at encouraging Congress to lift the Supreme Court restrictions on requiring remote sellers to collect tax for the states in exchange for the states simplifying and making their laws more uniform so that it doesn't cost businesses so much to comply! Unsurprisingly, the bill continues to stall due to opposition by the majority of Republicans who don't want to be "perceived" as levying new taxes even though the taxes are already legally due and are just being criminally ignored. Thankfully this year there is some Republican support. Rep. Senator Mike Enzi of WY is cosponsoring the bill this session with Senator Richard Durbin of IL. Until REAL campaign finance reform is adopted and publicly funded political campaigns are MANDATORY and Corporate lobbying $ prohibited, this country will NOT be truly free.

I think you'll find "take ten eggs" is from Hannah Glasse, who predates Mrs Beeton by about a century, veer. And the health folks have decided that unrefrigerated mayo isn't the hazard it was once thought to be: the vinegar content in the mayo prevents spoilage. Other items mixed in with the mayo may not be so robust though- especially in potato salad if there are hard boiled eggs, for instance. Not changing the sheets between guests and leaving damp towels anywhere than on a towel rods is just ick. Australian flies don't hatch quicker than others: there is a fly species called a blowfly which gives birth to live maggots. DH (the biology graduate) didn't believe me until I demonstrated with one- when you kill them they eject all the maggots in an attempt to keep the line going I guess. I am very sensitive to perfume as it triggers terrible headaches in me; I can tell even if the person put perfume on hours before by the pain in my head. Lots of perfume makes me want to be sick (my mother never understood this). Once when I was working a coffee machine I had a customer on the other side of the counter who was wearing so much perfume I could smell it over the coffee I was making right in front of me. :-P Another time DH and I were walking down the street and passed an over-marinated young woman whose scent we could still smell about ten metres down the road :-/ What I also can't stand is the smell of smokers: clearly they don't realise how badly they stink to others. I'm working in a roadhouse/truckstop cafe and the number of customers who come in to buy food, who have filthy, verging on black hands, is stomach churning. I feel like suggesting they might want to go wash up first.

I hope you won't shut up and knuckle under, Bart. Sounds like you came from an intolerant background. But you all do sound like an echo chamber. Guess it's nice to have common values. I think I value human rights too. Maybe re the bathroom issue human rights trump people's comfort zones, but I think forcing people on this issue is itself intolerant. People change gradually. IMO gradual change can be more lasting and more valid as it may come from the heart. Sometimes maybe there is not time to wait around for that. It's debatable. IMO Martin Luther King had it right as he didn't demonize anyone. He treated people like he wanted them to exist, to be around, to contain a different attitude and to relate to better to. Not to pound into oblivion, shame into like mindedness, trivialized, etc. IMO race relations and acceptance of gays got a lot better through the last half of the century and beyond. I think it came from the heart. From just living, discovering friends, finding that relationships were valuable, people who used to live more apart could work together. I know I took joy in it. The demonizing and force work against all that. The appropriation of identity politics issues. Some do it in a cynical way I believe.