So many people are terrified of trees near their houses these days, and they call companies that make money (and a lot of it) cutting them down. Most of these people call themselves “tree experts” when the only thing they’re expert at is taking them down without damaging your property. If you ask them if your tree might be dangerous their answer will always be yes (ka-ching!). As a result, thousands of healthy, beautiful, old growth trees are needlessly destroyed. Trees keep your heating bills down in winter, your air conditioning bills down in summer, they cleanse the air and produce oxygen, and the biggest trees make the most oxygen. They provide food and shelter for birds and fauna. They‘re beautiful and increase the curb appeal and value of your real estate. The most exclusive neighborhoods where the old money lives (not the new MacMansion developments) are loaded with magnificent trees. Drive through the worst neighborhoods and you’ll see the opposite; a sorry zone of a few mangled, stunted trees. All old trees occasionally shed small branches - it doesn’t mean they’re sick, dying or dangerous. There are millions of trees in American neighborhoods, and only a tiny fraction of them fall on houses. You’re far more likely to die in a car crash than of a tree falling in you. Should we get rid of all the cars? It takes decades, sometimes hundreds of years to grow a magnificent tree. Before you hack one down, how about hiring a Consulting Arborist (one who treats and maintains trees rather than just taking them down) to find out if a proper pruning, bracing or cabling is what’s needed to maintain the health of your beautiful trees? I’ll bet it’s a lot cheaper than paying thousands of dollars to take it down.

Glad to. It's fast and easy. Only drawback is that it IS made with oil; however, I always degrease the dish before I serve it anyway so most of the oil is gone. Have your 'holy trinity' (celery, bell pepper and onion) already chopped up and ready before making the roux. Also have a jar of peanut butter out to judge color. Use a pyrex glass measure about 2 to 4 times the volume of the ingredients--so if you are using 1 cup each of flour and oil, that's 2 cups and you need at least a 4 cup measure; I usually use an 8 cup pyrex measure. Mix the oil and flour together well in the measure and put it in the microwave for about 3 minutes on high. In the first stage, it bubbles a bit. This is (I think) the water molecules being driven off of the starch molecules. At any rate, after 3 minutes take the measure out, mix well with a fork, and stick it back in for about 2 minutes on high. The bubbling will subside and it will begin to go from cream to light brown. Take it out again, mix it up again and put it back in for maybe a minute. Take it out, mix, return for 15 or 30 seconds--repeat until it's where you want it. Now the timings are necessarily inexact because of the variations in microwaves--wattage, cavity size, etc. So you have to judge it by color, and to some extent by smell. The main idea is to steadily decrease the nuke times, stirring well between nukings. For a chicken and andouille gumbo (my favorite), I go for a roux a little darker than peanut butter. You can continue to nuke it in 10 to 20 second bursts until it's the desired color. Now, once it is the right color for your dish, throw in your onions, bellpepper and celery. Be careful--it will put out a huge cloud of steam,and spattering roux isn't called Cajun Napalm for nothing. The water in the vegetables quenches the roux, and it arrests the browning. Once you add the vegetables, there is water present in the system so because of the laws or physics the temp can never get higher than 212 degrees and therefore no more browning will occur. From start to the point where you add the vegetables is usually under 15 minutes. Cook the gumbo according to your recipe. To degrease the gumbo before you serve it, use a cheap ecko half cup ladle, skim off the fat and some broth and ladle it into a 2 cup pyrex measure. Let it settle a few seconds, ladle the fat off of that (the half-cup ladle fits just right into the pyrex cup)and pour the fat into a styrofoam cup and pour the broth back into the pot. Once you've gotten most of the oil removed, ptu the styrofoam cup in the freezer and toss next time you put out the garbage. One of the most memorable gumbos I ever made was made with duck fat for the oil. Talk about good! My favorite Louisiana cookbook is Richard Collin's "The New Orleans Cookbook"--see the link. But my all time favorite way to make gumbo is as follows: Smoke a roasting chicken in a charcoal smoker. Remove the skin and bones, reserve the meat. Make stock out of the bones and skin and the drippings in the smoker's water pan, strain it through a cloth to get rid of the ashes and debris. Make the roux, add the vegetables, use the stock you just made for the liquid, add sausage and whatever else you do, then add the reserved chicken meat 10 minutes or so before it's ready to serve; degrease and serve. Bon appetit!! Here is a link that might be useful: new orleans cookbook

Apple has said that all 150,000 iPhone apps should work without a problem on the iPad. I will report in on Monday after I get mine. Pesh - you can create a macro in the ScreenLogic PC configuration setup. On page 2 of 5, you can create a new Feature Circuit and call it Lights. Then go into the Feature Circuit Configuration button and check off what existing circuits will come on when you activate Lights. After this, assign it to show up on the Water Features/Main page. Then it will show up on the Circuits page of the iPhone interface. Note: for a circuit to show up on the iPhone circuits page, it has to be assigned a location in ScreenLogic (Pool, Spa, or Water Features).

Lets just say they are not as well engineered as they were. Scott