Kathleen...3 times around!! I'm sure you're whipped. I'm excited to see your purchases. I love seeing what you bought and compare different things they have. Did you see the white turkey dinner plates for $1? They had them with all the other white 'turkeyware'..lol Looking at your wagon, reminds me of when I shop up at the Cape, during the summer. The whole week I'm there, I hit one EVERY day. The closet at the Motel is usually jam packed with bags. By the end of our stay, DH is unloading and realoading everything to make it all fit!! Love It! Lucky gal...thanks. I'm looking forward to seeing the different looks, as you said with each holiday. Don't give up hope of a CTS being near you. lol Usually everyone who sees all the great buys, says the same thing...'Lucky I don't have one near me'! The stores are VERY addicting. As far as bookmarking them...they are really expanding rapidly throughout the states.. For those interested in finding one nearest you...I've pasted the list below. Connecticut Delaware Indiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan New Hampshire New Jersey New York Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island Vermont jane

Thanks Patti, I'm always glad to have a new book to read, especially if it's about cooking. I put it on hold at my local library, and appreciate hearing about it. I recently read Julie and Julia, and enjoyed it far more than I expected. I'd had the book for a while, but only recently picked it up to read when I heard about it being turned into a movie. Another book I just finished was called ''The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry'' by Kathleen Flinn, also enjoyable. (Obviously I like to cook vicariously.) I'd love to hear what everyone's been reading, and thought about starting a thread to ask, so I'm glad you're sharing!

I just finished Major Pettigrew despite reading it as slowly as I could; I really enjoyed the dry humor of the Major as well as his interactions with his son. Is there any tie between the Miss Pettigrew and Major Pettigrew books beyond the name and being set in England? I wanted the Major Pettigrew story to keep going even though I did think some of the events toward the end of the book got a little fantastic.

Veer I bring up this because I came across this article this morning in The Economist that made me recall your search. (IÂm not sure if it fits your quest properly) I cut and paste the whole article because is not available on the web unless you are a subscriber Hoping youÂre still interested. If not forgive me for having you wasted so many bits (I seem to remember there was another person searching a new book about American History for her/his father , but I may be wrong about it.) grelobe America's Three Regimes: A New Political History. By Morton Keller The American colonies were not like those in other parts of the world. Royal governors came to plunder but found that American planters and merchants could not easily be bossed around. Sir Danvers Osborn, a Briton who was made governor of New York in 1753, was so upset when the New York assembly refused to support him in the style he felt his rank deserved that he asked: "Then what am I come here for?" At which point he hanged himself. Morton Keller, a history professor at Brandeis University, likes to take the long view. Other chroniclers of American history talk of "ages" (Reform, Gilded, Jazz etc) that lasted no more than a decade or so. Mr Keller sees continuity where others see helter-skelter change. "Americans like to think of themselves as a people eternally young. But the reality of our public life is very different," he writes. The constitution, rarely amended, is nearly a quarter of a millennium old. America's legal system and political parties are among the most durable anywhere. Even in the revolution against King George and his pesky emissaries, Mr Keller sees not a clear-cut break with the past but "the product of nearly two centuries of colonial experience", in which the settlers took old-world ideas of liberty and expanded them. Mr Keller has somehow crammed the entire political history of the United States, from the first colonists until nearly the end of George Bush's presidency, into a single slim volume. He is breezy without being glib, and original without being eccentric. He divides American history into three regimes (as in ancien régime): "Deferential-republican", running from early colonial times until the 1820s; "Party-democratic", from the 1830s to the 1930s; and "Populist-bureaucratic", from the 1930s on. In the first regime, Americans clung to European notions of hierarchy even as they created a new andÂfor the timeÂunusually democratic form of government. Ambitious young men during this period, such as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, adopted the manners of the elite. Hamilton even fought a duel. This was an aristocratic pastime, but as Mr Keller observes, America democratised it somewhatÂHamilton's opponent came from snootier stock and would never have fought him had they both lived in Europe. In the second regime, the franchise expanded and politicians started to boast of having been born in...