This is a great thread. Karaoke Quilterswhat fun! I was about to say you can add me to the list of readers, but then I remembered the stack pile of books overflowing the coal bucket next to my bed......books I've bought but haven't yet read. So I guess you can add me to the list of book buyers. I love books and love to read, but I don't spend as much time at it as I used to. I do, however, keep an audio book, usually a mystery, in my car at all times. In winter I love old-fahioned rug hooking, the kind that uses strips of cloth cut from old woolen clothing. My current project is a table mat I started in 1997. (I took a long hiatus from hooking.) It shows the seven cats we had at the time, the ones we were always telling to "get off the table!" I grew up in my dad's darkroom, and love photography. I swore I'd never get a digital camera (silly me), but that went by the boards when I worked as a newspaper reporter/photographer and had to process my own film. When we switched to digital, that was that. I'll link to my Flickr page below. I inherited my dad's photos, negatives, and slides, and bought a sophisticated scanner with the intention of digitizing some of his work. The prospect of the learning curve has me somewhat paralyzed, though. I suppose one of these days I'll plug it in . . . When my kids were growing up we had a huge vegetable garden and I spent endless hours freezing and canning and drying and cooking. I made three meals a day from scratch every day. But I loved it. I also sewed a lot of their clothes, and some of mine, and did crafts with them all the time. I can't imagine having that much energy! Well, I know I never will again. These days I'm cooking for one, and it isn't nearly as much fun. I do have the occasional creative spurt in the kitchen, but not often. I would still love to bake, but like someone else who posted, I have to limit carbs so that's out. I enjoy blogging. I'm not skilled at genealogy, but I love to poke around the Internet looking for bits and pieces of family information. In that way, I managed to trace one line back to around 1720. Because I was so moved to see the gravestones of two of my great-great-grandparents on the Internet, and grateful to whomever took those pictures, I volunteered at Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness to photograph gravestones in my rural area. I received my first assignment last week. I've belonged to a poetry group since the late 1980s, and although these days the focus of my writing is prose, rather than poetry, I'm still active with the group. In fact, I'm organizing an event to take place this week, and the Scranton paper published a small interview with me about it this morning. Here's the online version. Amazing how many things trump housework! Here is a link that might be useful: my Flickr photos

Oh, You are not anal at all--LOL--I'm an electronics engineer by trade and software engineering manager in practice. That makes me really, really anal about data. Many fields in my db are drop-down or checkbox type. When I upgrade to the next version of base db software it will also handle attaching photos and export to HTML web page. Like Excel, it is very easy to add/subtract fields with this program and easy to sort on any field. Here are the fields my db has for each cultivar: 1. drop down for: want/really want/no thanks/have/ordered/auction bid/auction won 2. variety name 3. hybridizer 4. year registered 5. scape height 6. bloom size 7. foliage type 8. bloom season 9. bloom description bloom form nocturnal rebloom extended fragrant awards tet/diploid pollen fertile pod fertile 1st yr grown source property where grown (I've moved and not all plants I've grown came with me but still want to track my experience with them) landscape location (drop down that can be easily customized) additional notes (degree of info here varies by my interest/use of the plant. It might include: parentage, offspring, $ paid, when I expect order to arrive, etc) I'm trying to see if there is a way to link db's with this program so that I could use this initial data as the base for a hybridizer's tool that would link seedlings listed to the parents in the original list. It exports in a standard format so I was thinking about making my data available in exchange for DL trades sometime in the future as I get more of the data verified and/or importing data from other's Excel files to customize a db for them in exchange for DL trades if they were interested in purchasing the base program from Illium (I use the db tool for a lot more than DL too. I use it to keep all my shopping lists, recipes, inventories (books, reading lists, movies, collectibles, etc), to do lists, medical and perscription histories for my family, household/auto maintenance, special quotes, and much more- just about anything you want to organize in a list or small db format and carry with you on your pda. You can password protect any sensitive lists. So its a handy tool anyway. In fact I was already using it for all this other stuff before I decided to use it for DL & plants. LOL- adding plants was just another extension of my already over the top data obsessions...

Postum, I'll bet it won't take much persuading. Its an opportunity for free advertising, press releases and a target audience for them. I learned of this in the newspaper, not the library. Josh, wonderful suggestion about the historical society. We have a very active one here and I'm sure they can point me in the right direction, at least to an honest dealer. I'm not looking for profit but, as I said, someone who will appreciate it. Liz, Plow and Minnie the only pieces not packed away are ones we enjoy using, mostly in the china cabinet for holidays, so it's not really intrusive. I have no intentions of passing anything down to my daughters. One has no room or interest and the other cherishes anything "family" so much her house already overflows with things I absolutely refused to take (still packed up). I'm going to get rid of this excess without even mentioning it. Except for the player piano in the basement. She wants that too, and think she'd notice it was gone. But I also have the general clutter we all have to deal with which is why I'm looking forward to this program. Its not till mid Feb. but I'll let you know what I learn. Frankly, I think this forum might be more helpful but I can hope. Sandy

Well, I got it finished, now I just have to do a final print. What I finally did was scan each page individually, then went into Word and inserted each page. Landscape, .5" margins, 2 columns, more columns-(changes spacing) 4.5" margins, & 1.5 inches between columns. Then inserted page 1 and page 3, the next was inserted as page 4 then 2. This way, when I print the front then the back, the pages end up where they are supposed to be! I worked on it all evening last night, then started again this morning at 6:30, and finished it at 7:30. As I said, now all I need to do is print it and bind it. I will also put a note in my notebook of tips and tricks I have aquired over the years on how I did it for future reference! Thanks again for all the help and suggestions Tami