I just want to caution you to tread carefully when interfering with teen love. Studies have been done on this topic, and it is NOT true that loves from your 20s are stronger or more important than young/teen loves. In fact, the opposite is true. Young, teen loves often form the strongest bonds of any love relationship in your life. Scientists believe that there is a hormonal "imprint" that these early loves have on one another's brains very similar to the "imprint" that babies and mothers experience. When these loves are disrupted because of parental interference/disapproval, it can have devastating lifelong effects on the couples' ability to form lasting and fulfilling love relationships in their adult years because they are haunted by unfinished business. Don't diss young love. It IS the real thing. I'm attaching a link to the website of Dr. Nancy Kalish, who has done a lot of research on young love, and the effects of reunions between teen lovers in adulthood. Although my children are both very young, I believe very strongly that you must allow your children enough freedom to form these attachments and see them through to their own natural course. Some WILL end up happily married right out of high school. Some will break up because they're not getting along. But the most important thing we can do as parents is talk to our children about the importance of love, what real love looks like, and make sure they are safe. Make sure your children know their values, are prepared and know what they need to and want to do when it comes to s*x, and encourage them to bring their girlfriends and boyfriends home so that you can keep an eye on the situation without making them feel like star-crossed lovers. I'm not looking forward to this period in my children's lives because it makes me nervous, but I do hope they find and know real romantic love. Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Dr. Nancy Kalish

Chubby Rat, what a great idea to get a Kindle at the pawn shop. I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and just love it. I downloaded a scanner ap and I listen to police and fire calls while I am doing other things around the house. The college students came back from break last week and the police are busier now. I want to get free books from my library. Amazon has some free books also. What a bonus yours has so many books that you like.

Ok, you all have me almost convinced to buy myself the Kindle. I just downloaded the app to my iphone. That's all I've done on it so far! The battery is low so I'll have to play with downloading books on it later. Lindsey, I love the idea of putting knitting patterns on it! I scanned some of my pattern pics with the materials list into the computer and printed them in photos, then put them in "brag books" to take with me to yarn shops so I would have the info to buy yarn, or not duplicate patterns, but I've always carried my knitting bag with a bunch of my favorite patterns in it, and my needles when we traveled. Luckily, we don't fly! When we took the train, I vacuumpacked each skein of yarn seperately for a sweater I was working on, and put them in the suit case. I could take out one at a time, and it would puff back up to it's original shape to work with. I knitted 2/3 of a sweater in 10 days that trip! But that bag is HEAVY! With the kindle, I could just carry that, my needles & accessory kit. Hmmm, guess I'll have to check the ccard balances. Trip to KS for a funeral=4 day weekend, gas, food, room. Trip to S. Ohio for bluegrass festival = room, gas, food, tickets, cd, banjo, music stand, & 3 instrument stands. Have to think about it. Tami

I have four Kindle e-readers, and two Kindle Fire devices (the original Kindle Fire, and the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9). Yes, you can read books on the Fire (great for cookbooks and magazines because it's a color screen), but the Fire is significantly heavier than a dedicated Kindle e-reader, and if you read a lot, like I do, you'll get tired of holding the Fire. Great for movies and tv shows, though! :-) I have the 2nd generation Kindle (white), with a keyboard. I have the first generation of the very lightweight Kindle (it's considered by Amazon to be the 4th generation Kindle) -- under 6 ounces. It's the graphite color. It doesn't have a physical keyboard. It has two "buttons" on each side, the top one for going backwards and the bottom one for paging forward. It is my very most favorite Kindle. You can hold it very comfortably in one hand (either hand - hence the page turn buttons on both sides), and can turn the pages without having to take your hand off the device. The latest generation Kindle is a newer version of this device, and they've done away with the page-turn buttons and now it's a touch screen. I like the page turn buttons better because with the touch screen devices (like the Paperwhite) you have to be careful where you touch. Sometimes I end up with the top menu when all I want to do is turn to the next page. I have the very first generation of the Kindle Paperwhite (graphite) and I recently got the newest version of the Paperwhite (in white). I love the internal light on the Paperwhites. If my little lightweight Kindle had the built-in light I'd be in e-reader Heaven. Having said all that, I use the newest Paperwhite most often, because the place where I read the most is in bed. Hubs will be next to me either reading on his Kindle Paperwhite or doing stuff on his MacBook Air. I always take a Kindle with me when we go anywhere (whether it's a day trip, vacation, or just a doctor's appointment). When I was still working, I had to go across one of two bridges to get to/from work, and sometimes the bridge would be "up" or "turned" for river boat traffic and you'd have to sit there for up to 15 minutes until the bridge was open again. It was nice to always have my Kindle to read when waiting. As Elmer said, a new Kindle is less expensive than most items folks replace without a second thought. Also, and not insignificantly, the screen resolution is so much better on the new Kindles than on the older versions. Oh -- not all books have a Table of Contents. The newer versions of the Kindles can show a page number in the lower left corner of the screen. You can touch that area with your finger tip and "scroll" through your choices -- location number, page number, time left in chapter, time left in book, or keep that area blank. So if you are on, say, page 132, you can tap at the top of the screen to get the book menu, then tap on "Go to" and you can either choose a Chapter, location, or page. When you're done looking at what you wanted to see, tap again on the top and you can either use the "Go To" again or you can tap the back arrow to return to where you were. SOME, but certainly not all, books have the X-ray feature enabled. Let's say you're reading a book that does have X-ray. You're progressing nicely through the book, then a character's name is mentioned, but you're not sure who that is because it's been quite a while since you first saw that name. Tap at the top of the screen, then on X-ray. You will see a list of characters, etc., and you can go to the place where that particular character was previously mentioned. Then back again to your current reading spot.