Chuck, it got down to 32 the other night here in Kentucky and the tomato plants made it through fine in the makeshift greenhouse. By the time I was outside at 7:30am it was nippy, but I didn't see any frost on anything. According to my photo journal from last year we got a hard freeze on April 14th 2008, so I'm not convinced we're 'out of the woods' yet. My photos showed me trying to cover tomato plants IN THE GROUND with pieces of old carpet, C2 Christmas string lights and loose straw. That was a pain to setup, but it worked. If we should have a freeze like that anytime soon I will simply add the string of lights to the patio table's support ring above the tomato plants. Those old style C2 Christmas lights put out some fair heat.

Hi Glenda, When I used to tell daughter's Female Canine to "sit" she didn't seem to pay a lot of attention. ______________________ Chemocurl, Well done. I didn't know the purchase price. I calculate, though, that one share grew to 144 ... which would make the 100 shares grow to 14,400. ... for better than $969,000. If the guy had started with 104 shares, which would have grown to 14,976 ... at Tuesday's closing price of $66.94 (somewhat lower than when you calculated earlier that day) ... today's value would have been $1,002,493.40. At your quote, it would have been $1,008,034.50 ... $5,541.10 more (a reasonably decent month's pay). Plus ... the dividend rate grew, over the years, more or less in tandem with the share price. Iva Mae, When you go to the "Stock quotes" on Yahoo->Finance, put in "RY.TO", for Royal Bank. If on Yahoo Canada, if you put in "RY" the ".TO" will be added on its own. Try "ENB" for Enbridge, "BCE" for BCE, "GWO" for Great-West Life, "TCK-B" for Teck Cominco, "TA" for TransAlta Utilities, "TD" for TD Canada Trust. There's a place where they offer "Symbol lookup" and if you write the company name in there, it'll tell you the symbol. If you ask for "Bar" chArts, instead of a line joining the daily closing prices over a period, it will give a bar linking the highest and lowest prices at which transactions took place that day, with a little line to the left showing the opening price that day, and one to the right showing the closing price. If, when you have a page where the price information of a given stock is showing, you look over to the left, near the top, there's a place where you can click on "Historical prices" and it will allow you to check the daily, weekly, monthly, etc. price levels of that stock over a given period. As a matter of fact, the price list for JNJ goes back to Jan 2, 1970. And, believe it or not, I didn't know that when I set up the project in the first place. The criteria that I used was to start a couple of years before the first split that appeared on the database that I was using. And not far from the 40-year period that I've heard to be the period during which they increased dividend rate every year. I must confess that I thought it more relevant to put this thread over on "Money Saving Tips" or "Household Finance" ... but thought that it would receive greater exposure here. And that a number of the residents here might find it interesting. Good wishes for managing your income and assets with increasing skilfullness. ole joyful

If anybody gives that new Hurricane spin mop a try, post back as to how it worked for you (or didn't!). There has been an infomercial on it recently. I dislike probably ever mop I've bought -- the string mop, the mop that has strips of a felt-like microfiber (like the Wonder Mop, like Libman makes), the sponge mop (I can never get the replacement sponges in easily). I don't use Swiffers anymore, but I do use a Libman Freedom Soft Mop, with the cloths you pull off the mop head and toss into the washing machine. Here is a link that might be useful: Hurricane Spin Mop

I've been breaking my own spaghetti for years. Just pick up a few pieces at a time (like ten or so) and they'll snap easily. Start at one end and snap away until you have a pile of several small pieces. I make my own 'rice a roni' by browning a big handful of those little bits in some butter and adding it to my rice dish a few minutes before it has completed cooking. My shrimp and sausage version is to die for!