I started going to NYC completely alone in 2007. I loved/love it. I had to really take my brave pills as I had never one anything quite so daring before. I got off the plane at LaGuardia and took Dial 7 car into the city. I took my stuff up to my DB's apt . and immediately went right back out and walked to the local bicycle shop. I had planned exhaustively all the things I wanted to see and do prior to the initial visit. Within 2 hrs of getting off the plane I had a bicycle and was riding in Central Park ! I stayed 2 weeks !! Lots of trips later to NYC and I am an old hand now at going anywhere and everywhere alone. Never ever would you have been able to tell me that I would like doing this or be good at it. It feels like a second home to me and I know where everything is and how to get anywhere I want to go and how to get tickets and shop for food etc. I have rented a cabin alone in North Alabama and biked and run alone for 3 days up there. I have traveled to Arkansas and MS alone to do ultramarathons. Now I go on my bike trips. While not alone all the time I am on my own all the time. Two months at a time. Last year I stayed on for 2 days alone in San Diego. I then took the train alone back to AL. This year I stayed on for one day alone in Bar Harbor and flew home to Atlanta. I have become quite the adventurer. I can't think of others but I know there have been. Go for it !!! I am working on my next one....once you do it you will never look back. Start small and work up. It really is a growing experience and one I am so glad I pursued. c

I live in So. Jersey--which at one time, was a huge center for the glass industry. Now, there are a lot of high-end glass artists still around. One community college has a glass program--they teach both art and commecial glass working. A few years ago, I took a Pate de Verre workshop there from a very well-known artist. In between our P d V projects, she showed us how to make glass beads. It was a lot of fun. Wish it didn't take so much heavy duty equipment to do glass work--I'd have my own shop at home!

mdln, thank you for posting your information and experience. It is helpful. I appreciate your mentioning psychological therapy, especially CBT, as a non-drug treatment for depression. It is one I left off the list...my bad. My fear and experience may have led me to overstate the side effects of SSRIs, which are, as you say, supposed to be better than earlier generations of drugs. But then again, from the NIH However, questions about the safety and tolerability of SSRIs have emerged with their continued use. For example, in the original placebo-controlled clinical trials of fluoxetine in depressed patients, sexual dysfunction was reported in 1.9% of trial participants receiving fluoxetine. However, postmarketing clinical trials have reported rates of sexual dysfunction as high as 75%. Given that these drugs are viewed as relatively safe and efficacious heavily marketed by drug cos prescribed to larger populations including even preschoolers prescribed for use beyond depression prescribed for longer periods of time preferred by insurance cos as cheaper than therapy use of these drugs has skyrocketed. According to the CDC, antidepressant use has increased 400% from 1988 to 2008. Moreover, less than one third of those taking a single antidepressant have seen a mental health professional in the prior year. Add to that evidence that these drugs may not as effective as purported to be... Altogether, there were forty-two trials of the six drugs. Most of them were negative. Overall, placebos were 82 percent as effective as the drugs, as measured by the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D), a widely used score of symptoms of depression. The average difference between drug and placebo was only 1.8 points on the HAM-D, a difference that, while statistically significant, was clinically meaningless. The results were much the same for all six drugs: they were all equally unimpressive. Yet because the positive studies were extensively publicized, while the negative ones were hidden, the public and the medical profession came to believe that these drugs were highly effective antidepressants. Moreover, ...he observed that even treatments that were not considered to be antidepressants -- "such as synthetic thyroid hormone, opiates, sedatives, stimulants, and some herbal remedies" -- were as effective as antidepressants in alleviating the symptoms of depression. Kirsch writes, “When administered as antidepressants, drugs that increase, decrease or have no effect on serotonin all relieve depression to about the same degree.” What all these “effective” drugs had in common was that they produced side effects... See The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? So, IMHO, what we have are drugs with potentially serious side effects, of questionable efficacy being prescribed for mental health conditions and other conditions by non mental health professionals at increasing rates for longer periods of time. Especially when there...

Hello sunshine and by the way Happy Thanksgiving!! The turkey is in the oven and it smells so good .Sunshine I did a little research after I posted and it brought me to a thread from this same forum in 2011 . The general concensus was that it would die off or it should be cut off . I guess it's not that unusual for this to happen . Laura's pic was so beautiful love that white fruit . I am going to leave it just because it looks nice . Pic taken in daylight. Brian