Good morning everyonbe. Still no package, and no mail today as we all know it's a holiday. We have been sleeping in so much later these last few days, that not sure we'll hear the alarm tomorrow when it's time to get up for school! My granddaughter had off as of Friday. I better get in the habit since I may be going back to work real soon...sooner rather than never! LOL Mary Ellen, I don't blame you for being partial to the photos. I would be proud as well. Dianne, I can't tell you the number of times I would "remmeber" something, anything...especially that stuff I package up and put in containers in the freezer! LMAO....sometimes it's a defrost everything to determoine what it is. Or defrost what you think were mashed p potatoes and find out it was buttercream icing! My promise to myself this year was to label everything, but I don't always. oh well. One time I had a box take the longest time. When it came down to it, it was never mailed as a priority box, so it took a longer time to get here, perhaps Vina that is what is happeneing? I'm still experiencing great problems with GW. I type to a blank page and then minutes later, the words appear. As of now, I see the paragraph where I mention MaryEllen. It will be minutes before anything else appears and then I have to go back and fix typos. So strange, not sure why this is happening. Spring, plesae come soon, I can no longer take this cold. Have a great Monday! Maryanne

Good luck with the HOSP's. I have taken 15 so far this year. I was using an elevator trap past years, works great but catches everything from chipmunks to native birds. It is invaluable to catch juvenile HOSP's however. I've now switched to a Crosman .177 pellet gun. It works and surprisingly, the HOSP's must know they are the target. I hardly get them anymore. I get every other native bird at my feeders, but HOSP's which pollute our neighborhood rarely land in our yard. They fly in and around, but I haven't taken a bird since February this year.

@writersblock- ">Everyone will tell you that if you replace, you are REQUIRED to get impact windows and doors Hmm, I live on a barrier island off the east coast and I have never heard anyone say that." - If you're not in Florida, you may not have heard this. It may even be just south Florida. It seems to come up in discussion with Realtors, contractors, neighbors, etc, and thinking about it, just conversations with people who live here in St Pete or more south (Ft Myers, Cape Coral, Marco Island, Sanibel, Captiva, Keys, etc). And it's not just limited to windows - people just don't check the code requirements themselves - they rely on what some contractor told them or how their neighbor had to do it - I saw this also with building our pool (setbacks and such, which changed dramatically the year we built ours) and seawalls and docks and lifts (the major improvements we did to our house) One particularly opinionated neighbor even asked if we had talked to our insurance company before we planted our Royal Palms. ">since they were impact, they had huge frames and tiny panes Confused by this. It's true that the frame of an impact window goes further into the wall, but it should not make any difference at all in the amount of visible glass. There are places, like my upstairs sliders, where I couldn't use impact glass because there's not enough wall at the sides to anchor them properly, but if there were, the amount of actual window would be identical with regular glass." - What you describe is exactly the problem. It was a grouping of (I recall) about 4 or 6 separate impact windows where one would normally put a large picture window (I don't know if it was less expensive to do this way or why they didn't put in one window - but even they now admit that this add-on was a mistake). And the window panes are slightly smaller and the frames slightly bigger on the impact windows you buy here (Maybe just Florida? Miami-Dade code we all have to follow now). But if you can imagine the framing support requirements for each window, it put about, I don't know, 8-10" between the window frames (seems like more). The main horizontal support between the upper and lower windows is right at my eye height (I'm 5'7") and I can't see into the upper windows without hopping up, and have to squat a little to see out the lower windows. Remember this is the waterview side of the room. There are new tenants moving in right now, but maybe I can sneak over and get a picture from the outside sometime... Your neighbors' insurance story is awful. I can't believe they need certification for shutters, but I assume it's the insurance company inspector and they can do whatever they want. The city inspector didn't even look at the certification for our one impact window (for egress) because he was familiar enough with the PGT brand that he took one look and knew it was fine. For the front door, he just looked at the anchors around the door, and saw the shutters stacked in the garage, and signed off. I had pictures on my camera to show him with the shutters installed and he just waved me off. My insurance company hasn't even asked, and we have almost all original single-pane Miami windows (with no shutters) and we don't want to replace them because you can't get them here anymore (unless we do it unpermitted). But we are concrete block, didn't insure the carpet, and the rest of the house is tile, and we have a newer tile roof. Those are bigger factors here for insurance.

tropic: deep foundations to avoid the frost heave After perking an area the depth of a foundation depends on two things 1) Primarily the weight load on top A heavier load on top would require a deeper foundation or better known as a deeper footing 2) Frost line depth relative to a persons zone. Walls are on the footing and are flush - 1/4 inch inner to it's outer ends Depth of any solid form foundation is considered as operational with FOUR inch solid footing buried Six inches lower than the frost line and would have at least SIX foot walls but the same depth footing would also allow for eight to ten foot walls of foundation depending on the height weight and size of the structure that's going to be on the foundation. Options for a no wall height are also considered but would be considered for single floor slabs and would need to be deeper than four inches Not considered in this comment is the possible use of an elevated foundation such as an exterior porch would have. All aside the avg depth of any foundation is considered operational @ four to six inches below any frost line relative to the structure on it. Perking is a controlled operation( test) of how quickly water moves to avoid any heaving ,sinking, swelling of a foundation and it's structure.