I did not drive to Santa Barbara so I was partially successful in my quest to avoid the beast. I wrapped my car keys in bacon and fed them to the dogs last night to remove temptation. I just finished watering this morning and life was good, I was on track. At 9AM this morning I became the victim of a home invasion. 2 men, bigger and younger than me, barged in my front door. I recognized them from my orchid society. Against my will, they forced me into their car and headed for SB. What was I to do, there were 2 of them, only one of me. Once in SB I would have stood out as someone odd and bizarre if I didn't buy orchids which is what everyone else was doing like crazy. So in order to preserve my good standing in this group of 'The Usual Suspects', I got 10 from the $7.50 table at SBOE and 8 of Cal Orchid's Epidendrums. I'll post pictures on the Gallery. My kidnappers were kind enough to drive me home. No real problem except now I have to follow my dogs around for a couple of days to get my car keys back. I'll definitely NOT go to the next function in Santa Barbara, I'm not addicted and I'm in full control of my life. Nick

I opened a Facebook account right before I went to Oxford in 2009. I wanted a way to upload photos to something other thn photobucket (which i just hate to use, hadnt found smugmug yet) and be able to communicate with my immediate family. I started getting friend requests from people I knew and accepted them--- and soon I had about 75 people looking at my photos, remarking, innundating me with absurd and often untrue details about their personal life. Well.... Lets just say there are very few people I want to know that well, and I defriended all but the original seven. I haven't put anything on it (status changes) except pictures of trips because it is easier for a few of them to view them on fb than another site. Mainly because fb comes to them--- extraordinarily passive way of living ones life, among other things. I see many older people who use fb to try to project a public life that is painfully at odds with what is actually happening. I see younger people who can't go out and have a good time unless they have pictures on Facebook to prove they did. There's a tremendous amount of over sharing, it's sort of like a conversation between two people who are not listening to the other because they're so busy planning what to say next. I don't think that fb is evil, or necessarily stupid, but it can rob you of any vestige of privacy, a commodity that, once lost is difficult to reestablish. Several years ago our family went to Miami beach for Thanksgiving and unbeknownst to me I was logged into fb. It announced what hotel I was staying at, and I got comments from people about their experiences at it ! This was during a time when they changed the terms of their agreement with account holders and required an active opt out. Even with that there were problems, and after a hue and cry they expanded personal control of the accounts. I think twitter is a complete waste of time and an incredible conceit that anyone would actually think his/her tweets are worth "following." I turned 57 a few days ago and somewhere along the line seem to have become a curmudgeon!

Are you on antibiotics? I always take pro-biotics too -- want to avoid 'other' problems. Hope you'll bounce back fast. I came to Maui with a sore throat Jan. 4 and also waited until I had a little fever to go to a doctor. No strep, just rattles in my lungs. We played with Prednisone for a week; no improvement. I took my last of 14 Leviquin yesterday. Seems I've had pneumonia. Hoping the cough doesn't return now that I'm off the antibiotic (which was a Big Nasty).

Don't give up, my advice is to step back and realize there are other great choices and once you have selected one you'll forget the other one. I say that because in my master bath I fell in love with a beautiful European wallpaper, because I tend to dream up what I want in my head, look for it and find it. So, I asked for a pale blue background with large white flowers--much like yours, and looked everywhere myself. No luck. Then I asked a designer to find it for me. He did--the extremely expensive European wallpaper. For a bathroom. We figured the rolls and just did not want to spend that kind of money on a wallpaper, so I went back to looking. Couldn't find anything. My teenage daughter picked up one of the many books and flipped through and happened to look at the back page of one--one I missed, and the colorway was a pale blue background with white flowers. Perfect. I still love that wallpaper almost nine years later. I can't quite remember the other because it was so similar, and it was more delicate--no coating on it. We sometimes tend to get tunnel vision when working so hard to find just the perfect materials and decor for our homes. Most of my wallpapers are Thibault as they have a lot of designs that appeal to me, and I LOVE LOVE the one that Voila posted, from Colfax and Fowler, do the colors work for you in that one? It is stunning. Good luck, you have lots of great help here and good resources, would love to see what you eventually select. This post was edited by demifloyd on Sat, May 3, 14 at 9:45