What a cheery birthday shot. It made me laugh, Wrecks would make short work of one of those hats... does not like to be made "sport of". And I would dearly love to see a shot of Dannie in her pool. Perhaps you will give us an update on Katie's wheels? I was fascinated by the sand art, too. Wondered if they used stencils to accomplish the intricacy of the design, chuckled at the havoc a sneeze could wreak... OR a curious cat. Wow, Deanne, a Fisher in your area? very exciting. I've seen one in my neighborhood and that was many years ago now. It was in the winter and it was coming down the hill across the street over frozen, crusted snow. I thought it was a cat at first, but it was too low to the ground and it moved down the slope quickly and very decisively. I described it as moving like oil down a slope, not the way a cat moves at all. BEAUTIFUL! My favorite nursery has one that has been stuffed; they found it beside the road where it had been hit by car. It was a great opportunity to study such a handsome, supremely adapted animal. My smpathies to all with the 3H blues. It was 100 degrees in Manchester, NH and it hit a high of 72 in Portland, ME.; it was warmer here, but not nearly as oppressive as what many of you have described. I am especially sensitive to the early "loss" of garden plants, feeling that way myself, though for other reasons. We had a late thunderstorm that made Vera nervous enough to seek cover under the bedclothes, lol. In retreating thusly she surrended the much prized and sought out "puffy box bed" to Spencer... who is STILL in bed. Marian, that shot of the two deer is wonderful. Very peaceful, but I was also thinkin' they'd look pretty nice strung up by their hind legs, "curing". ;) You've managed to supply us with some pretty good "nature shots" over the years. Time to think about saddlin' my pony and gettin' to work. The big canopy we laid out last Friday is slated for installation this morning. I have a really stupid project ahead of me, one destined to fail, I'm afraid. It's designed by the homeowner, complete with very detailed instructions that indicate clearly they have no idea what they're doing (specs using 1/8" don't exist in the world of of awnings and fabric, and there is no way a canopy the size they've spec'd is going to withstand wind or rain load fastened down with VELCRO!). They were advised repeatedly about the latter, but were hearing none of it... so make it we will and when it fails (and it will) it won't be our problem. But knowing something is doomed to failure rather takes the joy out of the project!

hello, the machine is only 3 years old,yes i did destroy all the data on it after i formatted.i still have the larger drive but it won't read it. last night a neighbor gave me a windows 2000 disc and i formatted the drive again and it worked;it saw the full capacity of the drive and is ready to use, however when i try to bring the second drive with 225 + gigs of data on it it will not see it no matter how i switch things around bios won't read it, so i took it out, the drive i have working is set to master and is the only drive in the pc but bios says it is a secondary slave drive but it is on the primary ide channel and set to master!!everything in bios is set to auto detect drives,but as soon as i connect the other drive as a slave drive and reboot, the computer freezes and gets stuck on the post screen and hangs.funny thing is when i take that drive and put it in the hard drive enclosure that converts regular drives to use with usb and plug it into the computer i am on right now and reboot, windows comes up and says : found new hardware,mass storage usb device,your hardware is installed and ready to use,it even gives me a new drive letter,shows the drive as a western digital drive but... when i click on the drive letter it says please insert a disk into drive j....hmmm

I definitely believe that the purpose of this forum is to point out possible downsides and offer alternatives for you to consider, then allow you decide which will work for you. We only want you happy with your kitchen in the end without having to ask, "Why didn't someone tell me?" That said, I feel I have to throw in one more post, because it would be such a major problem for me to have the cleanup and cooking zones overlap and criss-cross. I do like your original plan best, except for that issue. You said the kids don't usually clear the dishwasher while you cook, but I wonder why you'd want to limit that option if you can avoid it, and also wonder if they don't set the table while you cook. It seems so easy to me to swap the dish storage and fridge, and have the dw on the table end, which would separate your zones. You are trying to keep the fridge by the table, but that makes 3 cooling units in easy reach from the table. After working in zones for 10 months now, I can tell you that it's SO wonderful...So I had to give it one more push. ;-) I hate regrets and 2nd guessing, so work to help others avoid them, too. Best wishes. These are to show potential work paths. The first one has X's where people will stand or take up space. In the 2nd I moved the frig once more to give a more open corner by the stove.

Dedicated (integrated) LED lights have some significant advantages. However, one thing to consider -- if you buy one, that's what you're stuck with until you replace it with another entire integrated unit. Right now retrofit screw-in LED bulbs are still evolving rapidly. Their prices have fallen fast and far. It doesn't seem like all that long ago that a 40-Watt-equivalent retrofit bulb at $20 was a bargain. I suspect that retrofit LED bulbs have pretty nearly bottomed out in price, especially with new tariffs on Chinese goods swooping in. When CFs got to a comparable price point some years back, we started seeing specialized features added -- photo and motion sensors, for example. Now that's starting to happen with LED retrofits too. Also, the quality of light they produce continues to improve, though I'd like to see fewer hemispherical lenses and more traditional shapes, and there's less fudging on the actual lumen output and incandescent equivalence. On the downside, advertised design life for retrofit LED bulbs seems to be going down, which I suspect isn't accidental. To finally get to the point here, if you install a conventional incandescent fixture and put a retrofit LED bulb into it, in a few years you can upgrade fairly easily and cheaply with a new retrofit bulb. It'll be more complex and expensive to upgrade a dedicated LED unit, so you might be less likely to do so.