Hester, your butterfly bush is so pretty! Maybe someday I will find a spot for one. That white blooming plant is an alibertia. Mine is blooming now too and it is a great plant. You know I'm not fond of white, but when I saw it 2-3 years ago I had to have it, and it has not disappointed. Mine has only bloomed in the summer, but it is very eye-catching. Of course, I planted it it the very back of my property and I wish I hadn't. It's the color that made me do it. It does root at the nodes, but very slowly, so the expansion is quite pleasant and desired. I think I will have to find a better place for mine where I can see it more. Also, it is very cold-hardy and the foliage is disease-free and always looks nice. Great plant! I also love your bowtie and wish I had a spot for one, but no, notime soon. I will enjoy it at your place. Anna

I agree about the mega- pixel count. There will come a point where the mega-pixel count on camera's will be more than what the human eye can even see. Remember the big stereo book shelf speakers of the 80's? Many of them had a tweeter high range/bass reflex range higer/lower than what the human ear could hear. Overkill, but the dogs could hear that ultra high range! A good mega-pixel is needed for print photos. For showing pictures via the web many times people use the huge mega-pixels that make the pictures so larger you have to scroll around to see it even with a large monitor. This is because people don't resize the photo but never the less large web files can be a waste. My first decent digital was a Sony Mavica that used the crap floppy, however it had a 10x opitcal lense which was extremely great for taking macro's and the photos were decent at that time, thoough never as good as a good 35mm in general but you could take some decent close-ups of flowers. Optical lense zoom is important, digital zoom is IMHO useless and you can do the same sort of digital zoom with even a basic photo editing program. I don't ever use digital zoom. I think the most important thing is to spend a few extra bucks and get a camera with a view finder, do not rely strictly on a small LCD screen because you will be sorry if you are in bright light. You will not be able to clearly (if at all) see the subject to be shot due to the bright light. Pot luck photo shots in sunlight is what I mean. I have a small decent Olympus 5.1 mega pixel given as a gift but it only has a LCD screen, no view finder. It is no good for taking pictures of plants in the sun.

Jon, we were 10 years or so ago with a telephone provider which sold me a 2 year plan, but the phone stopped working after 1 year. When I cancelled, they kept charging me until I got the NY state attorney general involved. And there were those ridiculous charges and fees which we thoroughly hated. Tracphone became for us freedom. It was so bad to become a slave to phone calling which should be so unimportant in life. Good that you got a good deal, but watch out they will try to get you again! Imagine, some families have a bill of over $200 for cell phones per month, looks like full slavery to me (only my personal opinion). Bernd

This sequence may be helpful to someone taking out a wall. Addition is 12 x 26. We knocked out 26 feet of bearing wall at front of house. Girder trusses now bear the load. We had a construction company design consultant help us do the plan. Worth the money. DH and his squad of helpers worked from the outside in, but at a difficult day about a year ago, the wall had to come down. Wish I could show you the early work, but Flickr account has put the early photos into storage. The story picks up 5 months into the DIY project... Here is destruction day photo (red painted area is new area) Here is #2 after demo of the wall (note ceiling and floor) It was at this point that we moved the cooking into a camper trailer for 5 months. Here you can see new ceiling (upper right) meeting the old ceiling segments in former kitchen, stairwell, and front stoop. (Don't try to understand geography, just absorb the general concept that ceiling segs are merging.) Here we have removed former ceiling fixtures in original kitchen ceiling and installed wiring for a new light in our new kitchen hall. I've skipped the photos dealing with messing with insulation. This is where we were finishing new ceiling over new lobby. Rented jack scaffold for wallboard. Seam between old and new ceilings is red. Here is the beginning of trying to reconcile ceilings. DH used lots and lots of mud on this seam. This is the ceiling scar which persisted for many many days. Once we began painting, this area developed bubbles. (It's finally done bubbling, we hope.) The diagonal floor was made in 1954. The rest is new, including redone old front hall which now incorporates part of previous garage. Here is the eventual floor--can you find the merged section? You sorta can if you physically walk to the door opening at upper left because the floor had dipped 1.5 inches about a foot from the threshold, but we're generally proud of how things went. By the Install Day for countertops, the ceiling seems to look pretty good. I wish I had more appropriate photos that show the merged ceiling and floor, but I don't.