I DON'T THINK ANTBODY HAS MY NEW CELL, BUT i am checking my e-mail nowto see if BIZZO HAS MAILED ME. by the way, we actually ran the heater in this truck camper last night for awhile. THE WEATHER IS CERTAINLY BRISK! Sherry, whose frozen fingers keep hitting the caps lock.

Best of luck to your son. Although I'm not a mother I maybe have a tiny inkling of what you're going through since my "baby brother" (Army, 82nd Airborne paratrooper and occasional sniper) spent over a year in Iraq in 2003, right when things were getting really "hot", and we didn't find out until afterwards that he was right in the Sunni Triangle where the worst of the fighting was at that time. His unit's job was called something like "leapfrogging" (can't remember the exact name) - they set up the bare-bones forward camps for other units to occupy, as soon as the other unit arrived off they went to another spot to set up another camp. They were never in the same place for more than a week or so. They were often ahead of such minor niceties like, oh, their food shipments, tents, cots, etc., but somehow the mail got through, including packages. My mom, sister and I rotated who sent a crammed-full package and who just sent letters, but between the three of us we sent enough stuff to keep his squad (he reached sergeant and squad leader in no time, and most of "his guys" didn't have anyone to send things except lots of "Dear John" letters) fed (yay for dehydrated hiking food and granola bars!) and warm/cool (black mylar blankets that folded up smaller than a pack of playing cards - oh, and wasn't THAT a coveted item, so we sent about 50 packs once and he used them as currency! - and evaporative-cooling neck-bands) as needed. I remember our dining room was the staging area for making up packages, crammed almost to the ceiling because we bought stuff by the case, and people were always confused by the weird range of items, from fly strips to caffeinated mints/gum (the guys would eat the instant coffee from the MREs while on night duty for the caffeine, but it made a lot of them barf). He didn't reenlist when the time came, since he knew that his unit's stateside time was going to be cut WAY short (like a couple of weeks, not months as is normal) and they were headed for waydahellout in Afghanistan, to do the same dang thing they did in Iraq. Thank heavens he didn't get caught in the whole stop-loss mess. Your son's unit may have an Internet mailing list or forum for family members. My brother's did, run by the wife of the CO (the only stateside civilian who had contact with the unit) and Mom and I joined in, and if yours does too, join up! We knew about casualties before they were announced to the public, we learned what "the boys" wanted/needed and what they didn't (like we learned that Gatorade mix - a frequent request in the summer - will wreck a Camelbak like nobody's business), we had ALL the scuttlebut. When we found out they were being sent into battle in inadequate body armor (don't GET ME STARTED, but I've heard things are better now) we ganged up, raised money, and bought a bunch of mil-spec vests to ship over. Eventually we knew the names of all the soldiers in the unit, and we'd find out who wasn't getting mail and send him something. And it was also a place where we could vent and cry and talk about how d@mned scared we were...

Nice that the trip was not for nothing. I am hoping Holland Park will get a new batch soon. They have a group of four or five different Lithops I really covet, but it is in a $60 combination bowl. Ugh. Potful like that is sold for under $10, but I cannot get it separately. Did you get the one top right at Harpers? I think I saw them labeled P. bracteosum?

DH got his senior pass in March at a National Park Kiosk for $20.00. It has more then paid for itself for us. We have RV'd for 40+ years and spent more for one visit to a park then we did for this pass. Something some might not know is that if any of the places you go have a campground within the park that is ran by the Park service not a concessionaire then your camp fees are 50 percent off. Many places we have paid $10.00 a day. I recently made reservations to Fort Pickens, FL and for 8 days the total cost is 104.00! Also several times in our travels we pull into a park campground just to use the RV dump and water fill. As I said the Park Pass easily pays for itself. I would have been glad to pay the 80.00 then for it!