According to Your Photos, You have a well developed case of Iris Borer. It is caused by a moth, that lays eggs on foliage in the fall, they hatch in Spring, and will look like tiny worm like critters. If You look in the folds of leaves that look like they are affected, You will find them. You can squash all YYou find. Remove the bad buds. They also will burrow into the rhizomes, and cause their problems there. When they start feeding on the rhizomes, the leaves will turn yellow. and will destroy the plant. There is no reason to discard your plants, they can be dug up in the fall, cleaned and replanted. By then the tiny borers will have grown to at least 1 to 1 1/2 inch long and fat. If You do a search for "The American Iris Society", and/also for "Iris Borer" You will find what to do. There are ways to prevent the problem. Good luck. Don't give up on Your plants. You only need to know how to deal with this. Genz

Thank you all. Tim and I, along with the asst. Fire Chief and the Chairman of our Fire Board have known for a couple of weeks that the grant had been awarded, but we kept our mouths shut just in case something went wrong and the grant didn't go through. Today I kept checking the grant list every 5 minutes waiting for the list of awarded grants to pop up. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve who stands at the window and peeks outside watching for Santa. Being awarded grants is very, very hard. It is so hard that some fire departments hire people to write the grant applications for them. We're lucky. We have a couple of folks on our fire board who have been writing grant proposals forever and are very good at it. It takes them many hours to write one grant proposal, complete all the paperwork, etc. Thousands and thousands of fire departments compete for a very limited pool of grant money, so it is a thrill to receive a grant, especially a large one. And, while we're on the subject of grants, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Noble Foundation in Ardmore. They gave us a $25,000.00 grant to help build our fire station. Without a station, you don't really 'exist' as a fire department and you cannot even apply for grants until you have a building. So, we really owe everything to the Noble Foundation because they helped us get our start. In the past, we have received grants a couple of times for firefighters bunker gear, air tanks and masks, etc. This is the first really large grant we've received. Y'all were polite and didn't ask the $ amount, but I'll tell you anyway. It is $166,000.00 and some odd dollars and cents. We have to match it with a little over $8,000. that we've raised. You have to hold a lot of garage sales and auctions and hot dog/hamburger cookouts to raise $8,000.00. Our community supports us really, really well. Our new truck won't be as flashy and fancy as the million-dollar Striker fire/rescue truck (or maybe it is a Stryker) that our son drives at work, but it will be the equal of any other fire engine in the county. OK, I'll stop babbling on and on about it, but you know, I feel like we won the lottery. Dawn

That's some pretty good information to work from. Let me start with the handling complaint, and work from there. A vehicle drifting to the right could have an alignment issue, a tire issue, or could simply be following the crown of the road. Roads are not flat, they are high in the center to help water run off, or they could be sloped all the way across as in a banked turn. There are specs that have a technician check for just how quickly a vehicle leads to one side. If the lead is less than a given amount, then no repairs are indicated. This is somewhat subjective, but can in fact be proven by an experienced tech. As far as why didn't they start the truck and drive it in? I have that answer right away. I can just hear someone saying, "WE TOLD YOU XXXX WAS LEAKING, WHY DID YOU START THIS UP???" You see sometimes no matter what the tech does, he/she is going to be wrong somehow, to someone. But think about it, if the tech is wrong no matter what they do, then that is not fair and if you were the tech you'd be the first to protest. I don't know what was wrong with the truck, but the fact that it had to be towed, and pushed into the shop suggests the leak was serious, and maybe the truck didn't even run. Turning the wheel without power steering assist is a hard thing to have to do. Ford knows this, and has built the system to be able to do that if necessary. Having to push it into the shop, without the engine running will NOT hurt the steering on the truck. Read this next sentence and stop for a second and think about it before you go on. "I never noticed the truck pulling to the right, before the truck went into the shop last week." Does that sound like your friends current statement? Tell me where in that sentence does it say that the truck did not in fact actually lead to the right before it went into the shop? The answer is, it doesn't. It simply says he didn't notice that it did and in that you are likely to find the greatest explanation of what is going on. Once the truck went in for the last repair, what ever it was. Now your friend is looking at the truck closer and noticed something he does not like. From there it's not a big stretch hor him to assume that turing the steering without the engine running had something to do with this percieved difference. Which brings us to the last part of the post. The steering wheel lock only applies in one position. If you want to test to see if it still works, jack up the front of the truck so both front wheels are off the ground. Now with the keys in your pocket, turn the wheels side to side by hand and see if the column locks.

My oldest cats first meeting of a dog ever went as so "Big old pitbull boxer walks in, snaps his leash off and chases kitty" This goes on everytime kitty braves the danger. He never hurt her, I don't know if that was because he couldn't catch her, or he just wanted to chase. And then we got a beagle, who loves to chase the cats. God old hunting drive. She still chases the cats. But she does not hurt or attack them, when she catches up to them she submits, onto her back. And if she ever gets too rough the cats chase her off. Big guy doesn't even notice the cats, they walk right up to him and sniff him and he doesn't even bat an eye. Except for when the crazy, furry black thing rolls around on him meowing and purring. That confuses him slightly. We achieved this with both animals by saying "No, leave the kitty" Of course after training "Leave it" and if they didn't, they were removed from the room, either to their crate in the beagles case, or the garage in the big guys case. They quickly learned if they didn't "Leave the kitty" They weren't allowed to be in the same room, and from that they effectively learned to leave the cats alone all together. I'm pretty sure the beagle would leave the cats alone, if they didn't like her so much. Especially our little black one, she loves both the dogs, and she LOVES playing with the beagle. And the calico pretends to hate her, but if she doesn't play with her for a day or two, she harasses her. She pretends to hate everyone and everything though, til it ignores her. However, we do still have gates in place where our banisters are, so that if ever the cats feel threatened (or annoyed, mostly) they can escape without fearing the dogs chasing them. Just because they're reliable, doesn't mean they will always be 100% reliable, and I think reconizing that is almost more important than the actual training. You hear too many stories of "Oh my fox killing dog would never hurt a fly, I dont know what happened!!" instinct!