What a wonderful, varied, group we are! It's been fun reading everyone else's post, but I've been dragging my feet with my own. Mostly because I'd like to write a lot but am too lazy to do so :-) I grew up on a farm in Nebraska, and like so many of the folks here, loved and owned horses for much (actually most) of my life. I literally grew up on horseback, taking my mom and dad's cattle back and forth to pasture, riding for fun, and training a couple horses of my own. By the time I got out of high school I had several horses of my own and continued owning, riding, and loving them until my move to Minnesota almost 13 years ago. At that time, we couldn't find a place we could afford that had room for horses, so I gave my last two to my sister in Missouri and that's where they have been ever since. They are old now, one is fully blind (has been since he was young) and the other is nearly blind (old age) but they are loved and well cared for. I loved drawing and painting and might have made a career in art, but got married right out of high school instead. I did a little of this and a little of that, a few years later had two children (a daughter and a son, now adults), then went to work as..... a meat wrapper at a locker plant, then a part time cook at a hospital, then into the hospital's business office, then started taking part time computer classes and got an associate degree in computer programming. I eventually ended up as MIS director at that same hospital where I started as a part time weekend cook. Management changed, I wasn't happy any more and I went job hunting. That's when I came to Minnesota. My ex-husband and kids followed once school was out for the year. I currently work for IBM on the iSeries Support line (techincal support) where I provide usage and defect support for the iSeries computer and (mostly) certain IBM products that connect to the iSeries to access data. I've been doing my current job for almost 13 years, and like it better then I've ever liked any of my past jobs. I spend a great part of my day talking with customers all across the US. Most of the people I work with are very nice, even when under a lot of pressure due to the very problem they called me about. I love my current work schedule, which is 4 10-hour days a week. Although I drive 42 miles each way to work, I get to work at home on Fridays and that is great too. MONDAY, is my very own personal day and when I spend a lot of time in the garden and doing whatever I like. I love gardening, photograph, backyard bird watching, doing things on my (personal not work related) computer. I love and have done many kinds of crafts and other creative things, but photography is the lifelong creative love. I had to restrain myself a little bit with that, for much of my life, but then along came digital and I went nuts! I own two good digital Canon SLR's and take photos literally by the thousands. I've photographed a few weddings, but don't really want to make a career of it. When I retire (in 12-15 years), I'd like to have a part time (at least in the spring and summer) at a garden center or nursery. I'd also love to spend part of my time traveling and taking photographs of beautiful and interesting places and people. My daughter is married and she and my son-in-law live in Tulsa, OK. My son is married (as of last December) and he and my daughter-in-law are here in Minnesota. I can hardly wait until one of them makes me a grandmother :-) My daughter is in no hurry to do that, if ever, but I think chances are pretty good with my son. Cross your fingers for me!

At our house, we try to live like every day is Earth Day, because it truly is. Happy Good Friday and Happy Earth Day to all. I remember the first Earth Day and I have to say that in terms of polluted air and water, we've cleaned up a lot of our mess since then but still have quite a ways to go. If you remember the first Earth Day in 1970, did you do anything to celebrate it? And, if so, what? I was ten years old and I remember we rode our bicycles to school instead of taking the bus (of course, the school buses ran anyway, so it was a largely symbolic gesture). I also remember Earth Day buttons that we wore. At our school, we went outside with trashbags and picked up trash not only around the school but in the surrounding neighborhood too. It seems like the school cafeteria had some sort of special meal, but not I cannot remember what it was. The amazing thing about the very first Earth Day was that it was very much a grassroots (no pun intended) effort. Remember that personal computers were in their infancy then, and there were no cell phones, no social networking media, no 24-hour-news-stations to spread the word, and not much advance attention given to it by the handful of TV networks we had back then. What there was back then was millions of people who used Earth Day to make a statement about the ecological state of our world and our desire to make it better.

I have a small chair in the corner of the room they go on and under. The two large europillows are stacked on the floor. If I didn't have the chair, they'd be stacked on the floor. When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with our bedroom I thought all those pillows looked like a huge pain but after a while I noticed all the pictures I really liked of beds had LOTS of pillows. I went for it and don't mind moving them around every day.

maylingsmom - I have the Maytag Bravos XL w/Steam - MVWB755DW. (Model matters - many in this style and not all created equally.) http://www.lowes.com/pd_670292-46-MVWB755DW_1z140bcZ1z11pmg__?productId=50371126&pl=1 I have really bad knees that do not allow me to squat. My back isn't very good either. Budget was under $700 before taxes. Front loaders were out if they weren't going to be raised up on a pedestal and also I wasn't going to wipe out a seal each time. There was only one or two front loaders under $700 here at that time and pedestals were $200! We read reviews until we were blue in the face. One thing we realized about the bad reviews on this particular model was that many of them were based on people not understanding how the HE models work (both TL and FL) so they were docking it for cycle time or not using enough water or it was user error (using too much detergent for a HE, not reading the manual to see how to pause the cycle to open the door), or it seems like they really got a lemon (calling it the loudest machine versus most other reviews praising how quiet it was.) Also, many of the bad reviews talked about having it for years when this particular model (755) hasn't been out that long. With many of the other machines, it seemed like the machines were actually breaking. We crossed our fingers we didn't get a lemon and bough it and an extended warranty. Been pleased ever since although I have had to play around with detergent amount and have figured out powder just may not work for me and our hard water, at least on darks.