My clay soil is hard like Jeri's - we used a heavy-duty rototiller and the rocks in the ground broke it. We trashed the rototiller given by my Mom from her farm. I tried amending my soil everyway possible: big pile of coarse sand, tons of peatmoss, free mulch and free horse manure. The time and energy spent breaking harden clay wasn't worth it. Finally I ordered a big pile of dirt, less than $114 for 3 cubic yards, or 81 cubic feet. It was alkaline clay but at least it's fluffy, no rocks, and no weeds. Dirt is cheap, and saved me time breaking up hard ground. This year I ordered Suncast 8-panel Raised Garden Kit, it has 8 panels, dark brown resin. You click them together to make any shape you want: square, rectangle, etc. Each panel is 4 feet long. So you can make 2 raised square boxes with 4 panels, or 1 big raised garden with 8 panels. It's $100 delivered to your door from HomeDepo. It takes 10 minutes to put together. The wooden ones are half the price, but they rot in my rainy weather, so I opted for resin. The Suncast raised bed kit for $100 would hold 8 roses. If you work with peat moss make sure you wear a mask. Years ago I breath in peat moss, had pneumonia, coughed up blood, tons of X-rays, a Bronchoscopy, and a medical bill of over $4,000 - insurance paid all, but it was a waste of time with countless trips for X-rays. If you work with horse manure, get your tetanus shot updated every 5 years, rather than 10 years, as Prevention Magazine recommended. Getting tetanus shot from the County Health is faster ($24 charge here), versus going through the doctor's office. In my 12 years of gardening in hard clay, believe me, it's easier to order a pile of dirt, and put in a raised bed. I did the other hard way too: hauling 30 bags of 40 lbs. topsoil from HomeDepo, busted my car's shocks. I don't think the garden was worth the car's repair bill. It was time-consuming to open each bag of soil.

ccleaner and ATF are both very good legit programs however you can over do things, and with ccleaner there is the possibility to mess with the registry which I never ever advise. As stated if you use it in the default setting and only use the cleaner feature you are ok but daily use is over kill for sure. ATF is not as big a risk since it does not have the registry cleaner feature so it is the one I more often suggest using. In the old versions of windows defrag and clean up were pretty important in the new versions much of that is automated and extra work is not nearly as essential. what I would suggest one spend more time on is making sure all the essentials are updated because these days so many infections are coming in through holes in some of these apps. So use the secuina tool every few weeks or so and make sure you stay fully updated. Secunia Online Software Inspector (OSI) and running a malwarebytes scan every few weeks (update it first) is a definite. Plus if you do not have spywareblaster in my book it is a must have, no scans to do just update it once a week then hit enable all protection so the shield is green and it sits there protecting you. SpywareBlaster

Hi damccoy, Thanks so very much for responding! I was trying to download from: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/download/?installer=Flash_Player_10.1_for_Windows_Internet_Explorer&p=Google_Toolbar_6.5&d=McAfee_Security_Scan_Plus&os=XP&browser=ie&type=activex I made sure it was a download for Windows XP. Made sure I had enough room to download it. I am using IE8. I only use my AOL for email because I've had it set up since 1997 and I am too lazy to go around changing my email addy with all that have it for social and business. So I wanted the flash player to load for IE8 as that's the browser I use for all my searches/internet activity. I did just recently add service pack 3 to my computer and the first time I tried to download it I had problems. That's the first time my friend told me about this site here at GW. I ended up being able to get the service pack 3 on my second try. I tried a second time with Adobe Flash 10 and then again a third time but even though I get the message box that says it's been downloaded, I see that it's nowhere in the Add/Remove section. Again, thank you!

The cooking alcove in the posted kitchen...your DH is absolutely right...there's not much work or landing space around that range...it would drive me crazy! Refrigerator...I'm not sure what you're asking...in the layout I posted, the refrigerator is next to the french doors...yes, I like it there. It's much, much easier to get to it from the Breakfast Nook, which is probably the 2nd most common location of refrigerator use (1st is the kitchen). The 5' aisle b/w the Prep Zone & the refrigerator isn't really that far...mine is across a 6' aisle from the Prep & Cooking Zones and it seems pretty close to me. MW...You could put the MW b/w the refrigerator and cleanup sink, just either replace the dish hutch upper cabinet with a shelf under the upper cabinet to hold a MW or put a MW drawer in the base cabinet of the dish hutch. Hood...it's not a matter of how many burners are going at one time...it's a matter of how smoke, steam, grease, odors, fumes, etc. travel. As they rise from the cooking surface, they immediately begin to spread out..so by the time they reach the hood, they're already a few inches past the hood capture area. (It's also not a matter of the type of fuel your cooktop/range uses...it's how you cook that's the biggest determinant of how strong & wide the hood should be.) The recommendation is 6" wider than the cooking surface, 24" deep (27" in your case b/c of your deeper counter), and, IIRC, at least 600 cfms...more is better. The higher the cfms, the lower the setting you have to use for most cooking and the quieter your hood will be. Window...the window can stay in the same place & size...I just thought it would be nice to enlarge it a little. Cleanup sink location...it's not really any father from the Breakfast Nook and it's only a couple of steps farther from the LR. I think a couple of extra steps is worth it to get better workspace and better separation of the Cleanup Zone from the Prep & Cooking Zones. Your kitchen will function so much better with the contiguous counterspace in both the Prep Zone & Baking Center. Plus, the oven is often needed during meal prep...so keep it fairly close to our Prep Zone. If you're someone who starts things on the cooktop and finishes them in the oven, you will be much happier having the ovens on the same side as the cooktop b/c you won't have to cross a busy aisle w/hot food. Lastly, if that dutch door is your main entry, then it reinforces my feelings/thoughts about moving the Prep & Cooking Zones to the "bottom" wall...the zone that should be most protected from traffic is the Cooking Zone...with the Prep Zone a close second. If you have a lot of traffic coming in that door, I would not want a range or oven close to that door. As to groceries, it's not really any farther from the door to the refrigerator on the "top" wall than it is to the location you have it on the "bottom" wall, it might actually be closer b/c you'll be putting your refrigerator...