Foxy, I dread the day I start counting..lol..and last night, I guess I was depressed, so ordered a 2-3' Olive tree from worldplants..LOL..I know I said no more plants, but did so anyway..also ordered a Chilean Guava from them. Both will grow into trees..I hope.. It'll take over an hour to count all my plants..mainly because I plan on writing each down on paper. We'll see though..LOL..Toni

Looks pretty good. Weigh it! Subtract a pound for the basket. As I said before Staber takes 18 pounds of varied clothes with one gallon of triangular air space dry, 2 gallons without socks which are puffy so no the clothes are not jammed in. With that much clothes I find I need 4 ounces powder, or 2 liquid stead of one. I wait till the splashing drum is a bit muffled, this indicates suds. Powder must be melted first, at least with my junky detergent. I add it manuelly. Gotta get some Tide Cold, it was thee best in a recent CR shootout. Did some reading about FP this afternoon....."Fisher and Paykel was tops in energy efficiency of all the top loaders," (CR) I'm sure Smart Fill helped with that. Staber does 5 dollars a year gas. Staber also has "Auto Fill Sensing" however, and adds water depending on the size of the load, I see no use for this frivoulous feature however. Uh-oh....here comes Dross again... In case Angela is still wondering....According to CR "Do'nt overstuff the washer.... clothing needs enough room to move so it can be properly cleaned and rinsed, especially in a top loader. You can fill the tub of a front loader, but do'nt jam the clothes in." In addition to the 18 pound capacity, the Staber works really well for puffy items, pillows, comforters, and such. I can wash 3 full size bed pillows and a lite twin size comforter all at the same time. They are rendered clean and odorless, pillows are always puffier afterward. The machine spins out fine in that mode, and does so on MAX spin speed as the machine washes these items without my having to set it on delicate, so the wash is more aggressive also. Really wrings em dry. That's what I mean by EVEREST of gentle. CR 2005 observation "New survey data show that Fisher and Paykel has been among the most repair prone top-loaders" CR observes recently that stainless steel can stand up to higher spin speeds but "has no edge over plastic". Unfortunately, in my reasoning sneeky engineers can breathe on plastic formulas in the lab in such a way as to feed mold if they elect to as can be done with paints (which contain tasty vegetable oil for mold to feed on). Plastic just scares me. It can absorb odors also depending on the plastic. Especially after 5-10 years. Stainless steel is beyond just odor-neutral, it is an air freshener. Not only that, when an inner tub is stainless both sides of it are stainless, thus protected/ deoderized, plastic parts are often hollow and what if both sides are not glossed? Hollow parts increase surface/odor area as there are 2 sides to them. The finished glossy plastic is free of pores and stain resistant and in the same way, porcelain tubs are often finished on only one side. By pores I mean either literal or regarding retention as in odors. All this plastic jiberish is really just my own opinions/theorizing. But we have tupperware that definitly suffers from these problems, and even feel greasy and smells after hot wash or maybe because of it as these tuperwares soften with heat. On the Staber all 4 surfaces front and back of the inner and outer tubs are, well stainless, and have a natural permanent air freshening quality. One things for sure, the Staber always smells crispy fresh. Both tubs are thick as a butter knife, 18 gauge, and the frame base is stainless also on the 2404 model I went with. The outer tub can also be accesed and cleaned by hoemowner. Long story short a friend down the street has a speed queen porcelain top loader and while it does'nt smell horrible it sure does not smell crispy fresh like the S----r does.

Mtn - Fan deck is the only thing with accurate colors. The little folding giveaway color cards aren't accurate -- maybe better now but I wouldn't trust them. The colors included in the deck used to depend on when you buy it LOL. So some of us who have them from different times check in if we don't have the color we need. They have introduced quite a few new colors over the last few years and they retire some though no idea how -- trends I suppose. Years back there was a whole group of us painting at the same time. We practically had our own F&B forum. That's when we found how how these colors depended on latitude. One of my friends, who lived in VA, painted her old DR chairs Joa's White. When we went to lunch they looked fabulous. I tried that color in my apartment and it looked like I had pinned up old flesh-colored 1920s slips all over the wall. The color was literally nauseating in my house. Kitchendetective, who you may know, is in Texas. She was talking about using Brinjal in her living room. I'd need Vit D injections if I used that color in my house. So I always love to see the rooms after they are painted. I hope sis finds a blue that works for her.

I can see that the end is coming for Facebook due to their unethical practices. That said, social media and online communities in general have been very helpful for me. As a very unpopular highschooler, I came online in the very early stages of the Internet. There I could find like-minded people who enjoyed my personality, of all ages. Those friendships, while virtual, were extremely important to me and helped ease some of the loneliness of my high school years. I met many of my current irl friends and husband on a local music messageboard. Through Facebook I have founded a very successful book club and found other moms, I belong to a low drama mom’s group that is great for support and problem solving. I would be a lot more isolated and have feeer friends without social media. I think some of the things that we blame on social media, for example, people not getting out and having real life friendships, can actually be at least partly blamed on a much larger structural forces in our society. How in the world could we expect two working parents, with the world’s most minimal vacation time, working 50 hours a week, in many cases uncompensated for the extra hours, to develop thriving time consuming friendships outside of work? It is only for the superhuman to do so. Life would be a lot more social if we had two hour lunches, worked near where we lived, had reasonable work weeks and had eight weeks of paid vacation. I’ll add two years’ parental leave and quality universal daycare to the list as well, haha. And maybe the ability to live near our families and extended families if we so choose.