Ask and you shall receive! Sorry if these pics are so large. Still trying to figure out how to use this darn camera. Anyways, I'll put a few pics on at a time. Unfortunately I did not write down the names as I was taking the pictures so I can only guess at the names at this point. Enjoy! I have to have one of these: Another: I brought one of these home with me (Jean Pierre Crouteau: I'll post a few more shortly. Donna

You turned yourself in? Are you nuts? As my dear fire chief spouse would say "No harm, no foul.....keep your mouth shut!" LOL Yes, there often is a delay. I check the website every Monday afternoon and we call our county's EOC office if the ban doesn't update "on time" and then someone there usually has to fax the burn ban proclamation to the OFS office again. Our ban updates correctly about 80% of the time. Usually the problem is that the Forest Service fax is down. Lately our EOC manager has been e-mailing us on Mondays to let us know if the ban is "on" or "off". I hope you are able to sleep at night, you brush-pile-burning man, you! (laughing to self) Two of the three commissioners in our county voted to lift our burn ban.....man, oh man, I wish they hadn't done that! As near as I can tell (I don't stay awake listening to the fire radio all night long), we've had 17 fires, one of them a very major fire, in the 36 hours since they lifted it. I am so tired I can hardly see straight and I don't feel like I've accomplished anything at all this week. I'd say that, if your commissioners meet on Monday, you often won't see the update until Tuesday, and sometimes Tuesday afternoon. If in doubt, call before your burn. : I hope our commissioners reinstate our ban next Mon. because our firefighters are worn out and it is only Wed. evening. The smoke in the air is so heavy all over the river bottom near our house that it is hard to breathe. It's gonna be a long night.....we expect the major fire to rekindle when the cold front rolls through tonight and the wind shift occurs. Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. We need rain! You didn't tell me the most important thing of all....did you get all those darn piles burned? Dawn

Take them all down and store them until you move -- your goal is to sell your house for as much and as quickly as you possibly can and storing the pictures will (1) keep potential buyers focused on the house when they're looking at it and (2) depersonalize the offer process -- you definitely don't want them to not make an offer because they've make certain conclusions about you based on your photos. After you move, if you enjoy surrounding yourself with family pictures, then by all means do it. When I to to somebody's house that has their personal pics on display it feels a little "quirky" to me (albums on the table that aren't open 24/7 would be more appropriate, IMO), but it's your house and you should do what makes YOU happy -- after the sale, though.

Very likely not, Talley. Night with low illumination and an intruder in your home can make it difficult to impossible to determine which set of cheeks is facing you. That concept is factored into the law in any number of states that apply the "castle doctine." Numerous cases involving shootings inside the home at night, including several that have resulted in the intruder having holes in his back, have gone before district attorneys in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and other states with similar laws and have either been summarily declared justified or been no true billed by a grand jury. About the one one I can think of that did go to a jury is one where the homeowner apparently shot the intruder, then stood over him and shot him again at close range as the individual was defenseless. Shooting someone in the back as they flee during daylight hours is another matter, as is shooting them in the back when they're outside your home, but when night comes down and someone is in your home, the law in most states heavily favors the homeowner. More and more states have adopted the legal standard that if someone enters your home uninvited, they have just surrendered many, if not most, of their protections and recourses under law.