Nice to see what some of my new ones will look like in the spring. I just got Silver Threads and Golden Needles in the mail today. Love your Montana. I've never seen that one before. Thanks for sharing, love all your ferns. My last one just started to unfurl a few days ago.

Thanks, Grandms. I couldn't reply right away because I had to go out for several hours. I go directly to the web mail via my browser, connecting to each type of e-mail separately by clicking on it in Bookmarks (=favorites). I never use Outlook E. and although I do use Hotmail, I decided not to have it gather all my e-mail in one place. I use one e-mail program for one sort of business, and other programs for friends, or i-Tunes receipts, and so on. It simplifies life somewhat. Hmm, although over the past three days or so, I had to give up on many of my attempts to bring up Lycos, this morning and again, just now, it came up with no problem. I can't help connecting the trouble with their switch to Zimbra, but on the Zimbra forum that I visited in hopes of a cure, Zimbra told someone else that it is entirely a Lycos problem and, in effect, washed their hands of it. When I was searching here for a solution, I came across a post I made in Dec. about something similar, but not as bad as it was this time. I guess if no one else is having this trouble and it doesn't start bothering me again, I might be smart to just let sleeping dogs lie!

How do you get yourself into these problems? Because you have a problem and are trying to fix it rather than ignore it or dump your problem on someone else. I find that to be very admirable. The good thing about this is you will be learning a lot in the process of getting things back on track. The down side is it is going to take a little bit of time if we do it here. Your are very lucky because there is a lot of experience her and, super people willing to help. There should be no fear of what to do with what fix-it finds if you decide to go that route. They offer several bits of information as to what found information does, and a suggestion of what you should let fix-it do, to fix your computer. You can undo anything fix-it does, with the click of a button. If you go to do anything that will screw things up, fix-it will tell you. If anything in any of the steps does not agree with what you see on the screen, don't continue and get back to us and let us know what the discrepancy is. There are several reasons why you might not be getting to the desk top you are used to and rather than a bunch of mumbo jumbo and jargon, we'll start with the simplest reason first. From what I gather at this point, you have multiple issues that are not necessarily "Computer Problems". To best help you get on track using a forum like this, I suggest we take one issue at a time. There are several ways to skin a cat so I am going to use what I know will get you to where you want to be. Of course, if you know a faster way that works for you, no problem, as long as we both get to where we want to be. We don't know what you know so if we describe a step that you well know, it is not to insult your intelligence or belittle you, it's just to get you where you need to be in a step by step manner. 1....The folder that YOU created named "desk top", rename it to "My Icons" and do so without the start and end quotes. The folder you created, from what you indicated here, has a space between the words "desk" and "top". That's the one you want to rename. 2....Click on the START button at the bottom left of you computer screen. Look for "My Computer" and click on that. 3....RIGHT click Local Drive (C:) In the left column at the top, you should see "Desktop" with no space between desk and top. Looking down a little further, you should see C: with a plus next to it. Click on that plus. When it expands, look down the list and you should see the renamed directory "My Icons" that you did previously. Click on that and in the right column, everything you moved should be listed there. 4....At the top of this window click on EDIT and when the menu drops down, click on SELECT ALL. Everything in the right column should become highlighted, usually in blue. 5....Take your mouse pointer over to the highlighted column click down on the LEFT mouse button and HOLD IT DOWN. While holding it down, drag everything over to the left column and up to the "DESKTOP", at the top of the left column. You will see the DESKTOP change color when you are on it and at that point, let up on the mouse button. Make sure you are on the DESKTOP name and that it highlights because if you don't, you may move everything into another directory, compounding the issue!!! Everything should now be back the way it was before you moved your desk top. If everything is back to what you are used to, we'll take the next step. My particular next step is going to ask for a list of everything in the task manager under the tab "PROCESSES". Do a "Ctrl" "Alt" "Delete". When the task manager pops up, click on the "Processes" tab. After you enter this tab, hover your pointer over the words "User Name". This will be the name of one of the columns. You have to hover over the actual words. Left click that and you will see everything organize itself. If you could then get us a list as it appears on your screen, we can work on the next steps. I have to go on an errand so it might be some time before I get back to you, I live in a rural area. Someone else here may pick up where I left off, I have no problem with that. The beauty of this particular forum is many knowledgeable people willing to help.

Also older than ... and glad to be above rather than under the ... dirt. Anyone remember 78 mm. ... no, that was r.p.m. ... records? And the needle being on a circular disk that one lifted off of the record and put up, over and back to be held in place above the arm that swung back and forth over the record but didn't move up or down? Our "Party line" phone was a big brown wooden box on the wall with a metal thing like a tulip sticking out of the front into which you talked, and a line with a black tube on the end that hung on a yoke sticking out of the side of the phone, that lifted when you took the receiver off to listen, which connected the phone to the line, by making the contacts with the large batteries inside. If you wanted to call some other person on your line, after listening to see whether the line was busy, you turned a crank on the right side to make the double bells on the front of the phone ring, in a code of short and long rings, which rang in everyone else's phone on the line, and the ones whose code it was answered ... sometimes others did, as well (almost always remaining silent while doing so). If you wanted to call someone on another party line, you pushed a black button on the left side of the phone and turned the aforementioned crank on the right side, which silenced all of the bells on your line and sent a signal to the operator on the central switchboard and she connected you to the other line and pushed a button or turned a crank to ring the code of the person to whom you wanted to talk. ole joyfuelled ... who liked eating at the dining room table ... in the large kitchen