I did not drive to Santa Barbara so I was partially successful in my quest to avoid the beast. I wrapped my car keys in bacon and fed them to the dogs last night to remove temptation. I just finished watering this morning and life was good, I was on track. At 9AM this morning I became the victim of a home invasion. 2 men, bigger and younger than me, barged in my front door. I recognized them from my orchid society. Against my will, they forced me into their car and headed for SB. What was I to do, there were 2 of them, only one of me. Once in SB I would have stood out as someone odd and bizarre if I didn't buy orchids which is what everyone else was doing like crazy. So in order to preserve my good standing in this group of 'The Usual Suspects', I got 10 from the $7.50 table at SBOE and 8 of Cal Orchid's Epidendrums. I'll post pictures on the Gallery. My kidnappers were kind enough to drive me home. No real problem except now I have to follow my dogs around for a couple of days to get my car keys back. I'll definitely NOT go to the next function in Santa Barbara, I'm not addicted and I'm in full control of my life. Nick

Suebot - don't think i'm going to tell you anything that somebody else hasn't said, but since i've had too much experience with deer & rabbits, i figured i'd concur with the remedies that worked for me. i used to live/learned to garden on nantucket and martha's vineyard, where the deer are at least as unreasonably tame and probably more abundant than they are in ct. i've heard stories of people standing 10 ft away from them yelling at them while they chomp on their hydrangea flower buds. one woman i was talking to claimed she saw the deer attacking her dalmation!! anyway, my first thought about your original message was are you sure all damage is due to deer and not rabbits? - when they stand on their hind legs, they can eat quite high - on a couple of my client's properties on the islands, i had more problems with bunnies than deer, especially with my daylilies & echinacea. so, i also found success with the deer away spray products; i can't remember which one i used, but i believe it had garlic & mint in it and i actually liked the way it smelled. the directions said to spray every couple of weeks (??), but i found that i had to spray every couple of days or so & definitely after a rain. it was pretty time consuming. unfortunately, my other success was fencing in the gardens. i just tried to be decorative about it - i used nice cedar posts with caps, bird netting @ 4' high (you can't really see it, so the garden still looks nice), i hung rope along the top of the netting (for a nautical look...). I did throw netting on top of the gardens in the spring until things grew too tall, but i have to admit, the deer hopped in a couple of times (- that would've been a mess i kind of would have liked to see). i now live in maine and have a large cutting garden in my back yard, a good distance from my house and i use the bird netting as the fencing (simply because it was the only fencing i could find that would be high enough in one piece) and it works (doesn't handle snow load, though). i see deer in the back and they walk right around the garden. chipmunks are now my problem. unfortunately, my true feeling is that if the deer want to get to something, they will. sorry to be so lengthy, good luck. just out of curiosity, do you have phlox and is it being eaten - that always gets destroyed the worst for me. -mara

You can use two different operating systems. If you don't have a wireless router (LinkSys, Belkin, Netgear, etc.) you will have to buy and install one. You plug your cable connection that now goes to your computer into the back of the new router, and run another wire (Cat 5) from the new router to the back of the computer. That will take care of your current connection. Then you need to setup the new laptop to receive the wireless signal. This is pretty easy if you have some technical knowledge, but, since you're asking basic questions, I'm presuming it might be a challenge for you. Get a friend who is a knowledgeable to help, or call up the company that makes your new router and have them walk you through it if you can't follow the instructions that will come with it. Also make sure that you have security set on the new router so the teenager down the block can't steal your signal and/or get into your system and mess up the info on your computers. If all of this sounds like too much of a challenge, you should be able to find a computer tech in the Yellow Pages who does this stuff for a fee. Good luck.

Golddust, you don't have to agree or experience it personally, but it's not uncommon for people who are traumatized by a death to not know or remember what's going on around them, or to forget the details of the funeral afterwards. Some are even sedated. My family experienced the sudden and brutal death of my brother when he was only a teenager, and my mother became a grief counselor to bereaved parents for many, many years afterwards to help others make their way through it. I didn't say that out of ignorance. What I was trying to say, among the discussion on why or why not to, is that all that matters is to do what you feel in your heart and forget the rest. It doesn't matter. Even if it's someone you barely knew but admired or enjoyed for some reason. If someone wants to go, just go, because it will mean a lot to the family, whoever you are, and its a kind honor to the person who has passed. They will see how much their loved one touched others and that they meant something in this world. That's especially meaningful when it's a young life, that they did not live or go unnoticed. If you can't or don't want to go for some reason, the card or note that's in your heart will mean a lot too. And, yes, do sign the guestbook. It's there to be poured over and cherished later. Like Mona described so well, those who came to the funeral that we didn't expect to see or didn't know, but just people that knew my brother and shared hugs, tears, their sorrow, or stories and memories about him in cards or letters, meant so much to our family. Beyond anything words could describe, that it still makes me cry forty years later. I feel their loss also. I'm thankful to them for caring about my brother and for being there in some way, and am thankful to them for the gift they gave to my parents. They are all a part of his memory to this day.