Ah special places. Nice warm cozy feelings. Thanks! I like your visual Suze. Don, heavy happy sigh. Naval Post Graduate school. Mmm. Bronzed beauties. I do mean the guys. Coppertone always brings back that memory. That and the big ball room I could envision the ball that had taken place just seeing the confetti on the floor. Mommy in her ball gown and daddy in dress whites. Aw, that makes me cry now. They were a beautiful couple. My first place after leaving home? You guys make me see how spoiled I have lived even if I've never lived in a mansion. Do you want to know about the dorm I lived in or the first real home I had after I left school? I'd waited a year to attend MTSU. My best friend throughout high school was a year behind me and I wanted to wait for her. I spent that year making friends at my mom's office, thinking, insurance, ick, but I can stand a year. Ended up loving every minute of the camaraderie and fun we had in that office. Little did I know I'd do that for 17+ years!!! But I digress. Staying in school during the week and at home on the weekend, we alternated driving "home". MTSU is known as a "suitcase college" for just that reason. There is nothing to do there, so everyone leaves. It was a reasonable size room with two huge windows that overlooked the lawn and trees the size of buildings. It was one of three of the original buildings built in 1911 for Tennessee Normal school and it smelled, looked, and felt like it. We'd have to take our key every time we left the room because the door automatically shut and automatically locked. My roommate friend came to be too dependent upon me having a key and one day she asked me if I had my key I said no. You shoulda seen her go ballistic! Good thing I did have it, but I think she learned how much she took me for granted. In those days, dorms weren't co-ed. Ever. There was visitation on Tues/Thurs for us, next door it was Mon/Wed and as I stated before the grounds were empty by midday on Friday, so no need for visiting. The hours were 6-9PM. How archaic? Since it wasn't co-ed, if the handyman came to fix something you'd hear "Man on the Hall!" once they entered. That's because there were only two bathrooms total for the whole floor and one might be in half dressed mode. It had two toilets and two showers, three sinks and a couple of mirrors. People would hang out in the halls smoking. Clove cigarettes were popular then and the halls would smell of cloves all day long. Not so bad I guess, coulda been cigars. There was good food and you could get anything you wanted that you'd get at home, from baked chicken to huge sandwiches. But no fast food. We had a vending machine in the lobby of our dorm and my friend would "borrow" enough to buy some candy while we studied (she paid it all back one year much later on when she paid for a trip to Disney World for me). Dr. Pepper and peanut M&Ms. Always brings back studying thoughts. And we had one tv for the whole dorm! We'd try to finish up lab work (beakers and scalpels away!) by 3 so we could watch Days of Our Lives. Those were the days. Little did I know how good they'd be. My grandparents had paid for the first year, my mom was too poor to pay for anything else, and I didn't know how to apply for and get FAFSA. Phooey on my high school for not telling me. Shame on them. I was poorly equipped. But I went to back to work at the insurance place and found a friend who introduced me to my first husband. He'd attended MTSU. He'd sold cars where I bought my first car. He'd even worked at Willis Corroon! Which is where he'd met my friend. We'd all go watch the Nashville Sounds play or hang out at Bennigan's eating and telling jokes all night long. Greg and I married and moved to Murfreesboro on the river. It was a beautiful place that had leaves that looked red and gold in the fall, pines that looked lovely sprinkled in white snow, and then the red and gold trees would be covered in blossoms come spring. I guess they were Bradford pears. That place was a two floor townhouse. It had a grill in the kitchen and huge dining room. There was a wood deck out back and you could sit with your morning coffee looking at the lazy river and trees or watch the fog lifting. It's also the place were I met the love of my life, Keegan kitty. He'd sit on the steps and headbutt Greg with such love and deference. Greg would call him Keegan bunny as those tiny little legs would hop from step to step until he reached the top. And the reason he picked him out is because he was orange and white, go Vols! I hated UT. At least Keegan was cool. We'd spend our weekends with TA, Jay, Rita, Kathy, Kenny, going to ball games, eating out, or just telling TA to shut up ;) He worked for TBI and said he loved to take homes from "widows and orphans", boy he was a pistol. Some days we went to the ball games, some days hockey, and some days they'd watch NASCAR. One particular New Year's Eve we had a party where Kathy and I sat talking to each other and staying pretty sober. There was a friend of a friend who got noticeably tanked and we saw eating dip with difficulty. We didn't remember it being chewy, so we went to see what was going on. The jar had been dropped and had broken glass in it! Kathy and I never forgot that. We were silly kids having fun. I miss those days some days, but mostly not.

My opinion on pot fillers. If the pot is too heavy to carry to the stove when the water is cold, I sure don't want to carry it to the sink when the water is boiling. For the effort/cost I don't need one. YMMV, though. I wish I had run my layout by gardenweb members for feedback. I wish I would have thought about a pull out cutting board. I haven't had one for about 30 years and had adapted. Would really like to have one again. The matt white Formica shows every speck of everything! Good, because I can wipe it off right away. Bad because if I haven't wiped it off right away everyone can see it. I live on a gravel road. I rarely use my a/c. Windows are open all the time. The FX stuff I originally planned might have been a better choice. Maybe next time. I do like the look of the white, though. I really hate my upper diagonals but I also hate the blind corner cabs. The more complicated pull down/out doesn't appeal to me. Problem still not solved. I don't like what I have but I don't like the other choices. I thought and thought about this and only came up with the three "I wishes", so all in all, my kitchen turned out pretty good. I am more than delighted to have the peninsula gone and every time I think about my new kitchen I suspect my face has the orgasm expression.

I think some opinions about facelift etc are relative to aging. I know friends and even myself who scorned the idea/vanity of cosmetic/plastice surgery in our younger years. However, as things begin to sag, some of us (not all of us but certainly myself) began to reconsider. Then it becomes a matter of priorities and money. When I see the need of new hardwood floors, driveway, basement remodeling, etc in my future, it's hard to prioritize something that would make me happy (plastic surgery - and why is it called plastic?) vs something that might improve the value of my home as I near retirement. I personally think a facelift/eyelift would be more gratifying than a new driveway! (but obviously didn't think the same about a new kitchen though I did have some regrets). However, I didn't mean to get serious and am glad a couple of folks had a good laugh!

I wish I knew then about making sure that the flooring contractor would check on how level the slab was. Midway through laying the ceramic in the kitchen, his guy came upon a hump in the floor and although they made it work, well that was stupid. Don't skimp on the floors if you get tile. Go for something that's nice and flat (no beveling) so the mop will at least touch the grout, and of a high hardness. Mine is chipping where they meet from things being dropped on it. If I had to do it over, I actually think I'd go for the highest quality, cushioned vinyl roll out on the market, or at least a very high quality porcelain tile. I had Kentile (sp) in my old kitchen that was 15 years old and looked like new. Can't get it anymore, but sometimes I wish I'd pulled those tiles up and brought them with me! I didn't want wood because I have an engineered wood, BR1111 Amendiom surrounding the kitchen, and it's entirely too soft and scratches too easily for kitchen use. And, what a nightmare that would have been with them trying to glue down those floors on a big hump in the slab. I'm waiting and gathering before I proceed further, to soak up as much as I can from the experience here.