Before I play: Oakley, thanks for doing these little fun surveys! I usually don't like stuff like this but yours are a nice breezy online diversion. And I love learning odd tidbits about others on the forums. Do you have a nickname? My former (for almost 30 years) and much loved boss always called me 'Annie'. Nobody else does; a former and much un-loved stepmother had that name and my family knows better! From formerboss though, I never minded. My family sometimes calls me the dutchess (see answer to ordinal family position for explanation). My sisters also have another in-joke nickname for me. Years ago on usenet during a dust up somebody referred to me online as 'hatefulness'. So they will tease me occasionally when I've ripped somebody a new one by hauling that nickname out. Can you whistle an actual tune? Yep Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket? Nope Are you an only, a first born, a mid-kid, or the baby? First born. In so many, many ways. Oldest of 5 sisters, and one brother. See nickname question above :). Who was the first person who ever broke your heart? My first serious boyfriend. He was my 'first' in, ahem, every way. So glad I never married him though. We would never have lasted. Can you touch your nose with your tongue? No Wiggle your ears? No Raise one eyebrow independently of the other? Yes How old were you when you got your first kiss? ~13 YO, and the kissee sealed my preference for body types...tall, thin, rangy guys only need apply. He was, my first love/heartbreaker was and years later my wonderful husband was and still is. Can you speak a language other than English? Solamente un poquito; se habla Miami Spanish. Donde esta el bano? Un medio pizza con queso y pepperoni por favor... Name something you secretly dislike, that everyone else seems to rave about. Only one thing??? In decorating: tablescapes Otherwise: people talking about dreams-the single most BORING topic I can imagine. Theme parks and any kind of 'manufactured' fun Have you ever won a sweepstakes or contest (other than the lottery or a door prize)? Ten years ago, in the most lucky week of my life I bought my dream car, got unexpectedly tapped for my organization's highest honor and (prodded by coworkers to keep the luck running) hit for a low level lottery prize of $90. Otherwise, never, nope, nothing. Ann aka Dutchess but not Annie!

You are doing great! And it sounds like you are doing some of the same things that I am! At the moment, I'm procrastinating (taking a break) from cleaning up my worktable so it can get in gear for Christmas. It's been the world's slowest quilting station for the past few months (in that I only get to it a few minutes here and there), but now I need to change gears and put that away for a short while to start getting packages ready to ship- within the next 2 weeks :) Medical stuff is interesting in some ways. It's not something that I've had a great deal of experience with, but am getting a little more. From my perspective, I would keep the more bureaucratic end of things in a 'to be shredded' type situation, and keep information pertaining to your actual medical health in chronological order for the long term. Sometimes it's helpful to look back at your medical reports/results over the long term. In some cases you can probably do this online, but I can say for myself that keeping paperwork that you can lay out and look at can be very useful. I'll give you a very recent example. This week, DH got results from a routine blood test that said it was out of acceptable limits. Very quickly we were able to pull out paperwork results from the last time he had these tests from two different sources (4yrs and9 yrs) and the levels were almost identical- and considered normal then. This was incredibly helpful for us to not panic and to come up with suitable questions regarding what is going on (i.e. was it suppose to have been a fasting test they did, but they forgot to mention that to him?) This is a little bit difficult to write about, so I will try to keep it succinct, but last year a family member of ours overdosed on RX drugs. What happened was he messed up his brain and essentially made himself a dementia type patient for 5 months, unable to care for himself. During that time, we ended up setting out and tracking down as much medical information as we could about him, because he was not capable of answering questions from a standpoint of reality. It would have been much easier had we had paper copies from his home to begin with. For the first few months, we didn't have an accurate medical picture of who he had been for the past years (he is a hermit, for lack of a better word) which made his doctor's appointments a hit-and-miss proposition. In the end, my DH ended up collecting everything we were able to get from the past few years, and filing it in chronological order inside of a binder. I would definitely go that book-style route again with medical records and decide on the topic whether they should be kept for 2 years, 5 years, indefinitely. Right now, DH, DD and I are able to keep all our medical stuff in a small folder, but as we get older and have more things going on, I will probably look into using a binder, maybe even filing by year with page separators? Hope you find a good system and get your packages out on time :)

I get that reaction. What you might be looking for is a GC who can "get" with your building goals: Beautiful result, on a realistic budget. Let me be clearer: You don't really want to "bypass" builder's suppliers, but you ARE looking for the vendors that can build to your budget. That means: --- You're looking for a GC who will give you line-by-line itemization. ALL of it, to really lay out the cost. 190-300 line items, depending on the complexity. Don't shoot yourself- a bid like this is, truly, a "blue print" for you. My last custom build was a hybrid- fixed costs on 2/3rds of the bid (infrastructure) plus the 1/3 that was classified as "allowances". I was very specific with certain wants, so he knew to find a supplier for the best price on the cooktop I wanted, the tile I thought I'd need, the plumbing fixtures and on and on. SO awesome, since, at every stage? I was free to choose something more expensive, if warranted, but also saw my path to the budget I was asking for, It was TOTALLY important for me to have the majority of my budget at fixed cost, since I was building in a hot, hot, hot market where labor costs could go up in an instant- I mean that. A bid for labor that jumps 35% in 2 weeks? Screw you- we find other avenues. And by "we" I mean my contractor. Yep. He did, and it was great. There were places that I increased my own budget. For example- stucco. I had a choice, and I ended up choosing the most expensive option- an integral color, never paint the thing stucco. The upgrade cost on that (and my true Gavalume roof) was really small, and allows me the low-maintenance costs I want. All the allowances? Our contractor set me up with ALL his suppliers, who could help me affect beauty/function in my budget. The exception was lighting, where he told me "go- find it cheaper online. It will be fine". Fine? OMG- I saved 60% on my lighting- whole house- shopping on line from reputable sources, in comparison to what the local showrooms wanted for the exact same product. Major appliances though? Contractor was VERY negative on that. He told me story after story about clients ordering online appliances on the cheap, only to realize that they'd been delivered without any "guts" or a lot missing. Still? The place I shopped was a place where my contractor is a very big customer. So I still got a great discount, and local folks to help is anything goes wrong. Long story short- find a GC who understands your goals, get your line item bid and don't look back!

Years ago I did a family reunion cookout for 100. I did BBQ chicken. I bought whole chickens and broke them down into 10 pieces, leg, thigh, wing minus the tip, breast split 1/4's. I marinated the chicken in a salt and sugar brine with some garlic overnight then baked it in a 350 oven until cooked, cooled and froze it. Two days before the party the chicken was moved the the fridge to thaw. We set a 4' by 8' cooking pit about 12" deep, filled it with charcoal and topped it with a stainless steel screen. The chicken was reheated in two batches on the pit grill. We basted it with a thin BBQ sauce using a food mop. We made the sauce from scratch using ketchup, melted butter, garlic, liquid smoke, paprika, balsamic vinegar, worcestershire, hot sauce, dry mustard and black pepper. Don't ask me for a recipe for this, we winged it. I was lucky to remember to write down the ingredients. My cousins helped make the sauce and I believe there was a copious amount of spiritual fermenti involved. LOL The point is if you plan ahead, BBQ chicken for a crowd can be fairly easy. in our case, the pit itself was an attraction which kept me from being isolated from the party.