> I'm trying to tell my girls that I need emerald green, the color of pastures and fields. They think I should be "pastel". Pah. What do kids know? That pastel thing does seem to be something we go through and grow out of. I guess it takes a real woman with a certain experience like thee and me to handle strong colours! Do you know, a jewel-like green was what I had originally in mind when I went fabric shopping before I fell for that red.... >> I love the way you did just what you wanted and made your wedding your own. There's aplace for tradition, I suppose, but we should all make our own traditions as we feel comfortable doing. Indeed. And we did follow many traditions. But for us it was important to think about the origins of them --- why they got to be traditions and whose traditions they are. In many cases some things that people think of are long and important "traditions" turn out actually to be pretty recent, at least in the context of how long folks have been getting married! (The white dress thing was started by Queen Victoria, for example. And the couple processing *together* as we did turns out to in fact to be a very old tradition; in fact, even the current official Catholic ritual (don't know about any other denominations) gives several options, NONE of which calls for the groom waiting at the altar while the bride's father "gives" her away. But I LOVED exchanging rings --- the symbolism of eternity in the circle is lovely. And we had a unity candle, a lovely newer Catholic tradition. We wanted a toast (who couldn't use all the good wishes anyone can offer them?) but R. doesn't like champagne that much and a good one was beyond our budget, so we toasted with the local apple cider, available in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions. And so on. >> Elery thinks we should write our own vows. I wonder if "you're only second in my heart to my horse" is appropriate. (grin) After all, he IS working on that number one spot..... Hee, hee. Well, I think it is very good to keep him working on it! After all, he who is #2 tries harder. ;-) Vows are one place where we surprised ourselves. I am a professional writer and editor, and assumed that of COURSE we would write our own vows. But as we looked at the standard Catholic version, we found that it said pretty much everything we wanted to say. So we did end up going with "tradition" there, though I have heard some very lovely and meaningful own-written vows, too. We did draft a few words for when we exchanged rings, for which DH's first suggestion was [deep, menacing voice] "I have you now, bwah hah hah hah." I think he was a bit startled when I called his bluff and started to write that down.... ;-) I know you will do things just right for YOU, when the time is right. (Wondering if you can involve the backhoe somehow....?) ;-) Zabby

My tv is worthless without the remote control that came with the tv. Well maybe if you have special near sighted wide screen glasses so you can sit on the floor in front of it while doing setup.... That one little setting button on the front just doesnt get-it - takes a half hour just to wade through the menus , sooooooo many settings. You certainly can't see the screen sitting that close unless you're a kid. ~ Half hour after delivery and install of a new HD digital cable box by brite-house ,,, that TV suddenly said I was stealing service and my service was disabled. Of course they sent out a second guy to fix it... who I again had to wait for,,, he spent 45 minutes on his cell phone to straighten out what the original installer or the office typed in wrong .... the box id.

I just checked, and it doesn't appear to be stuck. Then I checked the batteries, and discovered they were the original Sonys, now five years old. So I changed them, but that didn't help. The red light still goes on when I operate the remote, but it's off when I don't push a button. So that would indicate that the button isn't stuck, yes? Thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks fot the ideas and pics. Now that I know about remote control extenders (thanks, Natal) I may have more options. I plan to hit a couple of antique shops this weekend to see what I see. The real issue is the width of the space (meaning how wide the console/whatever can be). Ideally it would be around 48" so while I like the idea of a sideboard type of piece, most will be too big. OTOH, I did find a regular ol' console at Room & Board that I like a lot, so I could always go that route. Still holding out for a while to see if I find something cool, though!