Thanks for your answers. It didn't occur to me that there may not even be any dogs! Now I'm thinking I should contact the attorney generals of both states before March 25 because its possible they will close up shop if they aren't going to deliver on that date as promised. Its funny that we have a bit of a shortage of dogs here in NE. There are some lab and shepard mixes at the shelters, but I just don't want a big dog. I don't know tho, maybe I can get dh to move up to medium sized. We are more likely to find a local one then. The want ad is a good idea. I'll ask on Freecycle too. Kathy

Don't think I suggested Amoco-Gas was only used in gas appliances but it was cheaper than buying a can of pre packed stove fuel. If it was not used in cars it sure would have been stale by the time anyone bought it for a camp stove. We just happened to have a Amoco a couple blocks from home so my dad would fill the gallon can before we left on vacation only times I recall buying stove fuel was when we went to Canada and ran out of Amoco territory. From wikipedia: "While most oil companies were switching to leaded gasolines en masse during the mid-to-late 1920s, American Oil chose to continue marketing its premium-grade "Amoco-Gas" (later Amoco Super-Premium) as a lead-free gasoline by using aromatics rather than tetraethyl lead to increase octane levels, decades before the environmental movement of the early 1970s led to more stringent auto emission controls which ultimately mandated the universal phase out of leaded gasoline. The "Amoco" lead-free gasoline was sold at American's stations in the eastern and southern U.S. alongside American Regular gasoline, which was a leaded fuel. Lead-free Amoco was introduced in the Indiana Standard marketing area in 1970.[4] The Red Crown Regular and White Crown Premium gasolines marketed by parent company Standard Oil (Indiana) in its prime marketing area in the Midwest before 1961 also contained lead." I think the explanation if their is one was cleaner burning and less lead deposits on pistons, valves and plugs. I think ESSO had the tiger in your tank shortly before they changed the name to Exxon

I refer to our two hundred year old home as a white elephant. I am in the greenhouse business and my husband is a rabid gardener, so the grounds are planted with rare trees and flower gardens and go on for acres. Over the years we have added a large gazebo and a spring fed pond. yadayadayada. Only a person who knows old homes first hand, and has the time or money to hire a professional full-time gardener, should ever buy it. There'll be lots of people to come look when it goes up for sale, but it would not be for the weak of heart. Heating bills. Put that at the top of your list. Even if you let the house fall down around you, they'll just keep coming. We've installed new double-paned energy efficient windows. Caulked. Weather stripped. Built a solarium across 2/3 of the northern exposure of the home for solar gain, replaced the roof, put in a new boiler, converted from electric to gas heat (yes we had to pay to have lines ran), and placed gas grates in strategic spots to take off chill or use when it wasn't too cold. Use reversing ceiling fans to distribute the heat. We've cut our heating bill IN HALF as far as energy consumption. But, rates rise and will keep rising. We still have six hundred dollar a month heating bills in winter. And this is an old farmhouse. It does not have fourteen foot ceilings. It also is nowhere near 6,000k square feet. And, until we put a small fortune in the energy efficiency items, a draft from a window on one side of the room could blow out a candle on the other. It's comfy now, and even cool in summer so we don't need air conditioning, but for the first fifteen years of my marriage you needed a wet suit to take a bath. Think also about the bones of the house. Redecorating is great, but get somebody in there who knows construction really well to look at the skeleton of the house before you even consider buying it. The last two winters, we replaced the beams and joists under our kitchen and dining room. They were logs with the bark still on them, or logs cut on site and hand hewn to nearly square. They were ENORMOUS,and likely dragged into place by teams of horses. We needed to chain saw them to even think about getting them out. We had to gut these rooms clean down to the dirt underneath and after we got new joists up then replaced floors. Moolah. BTW, we never thought about replacing joists and floor beams in this house. After all, they'd withstood two centuries before us. Then termites happened. LOL. The roofer left about a hundred bats homeless when we replaced the slate for modern shingles. We've put in a new entrance box and had to rewire the whole house and it has solid brick interior walls. The logistics of running electricals, and the plumbing for the boiler system were staggering. If you see fuse boxes that should send up a red flag to check out the electricals for modern wiring. Moolah. We had to restucco over the seventy five year old stucco over the bricks. (major, major moolah) We've had to repair or renovate chimneys and it's hard to find brickmasons here who are familiar with the old craftsmanship. That's another thing about very old houses. Nearly everything in seriously old house is done by methods not common to craftsmen anymore and that includes materials. If you have to replace parts of woodwork it's going to be something like oak or mahogany and large. Not box store kickplates. My walls are so old, it's not even plaster on most of them, it's a sandy almost concrete covering. If we put together all the money we have spent in the last two and a half decades breathing life back into our wonderful old home, we could be living in a really fancy new one. We don't want to. We love our old home and pretty much know it inside and out by now. But, it's like a marriage and yes.............we are the volunteer caretakers to an historic old building we couldn't see being left to ruin. But, it's going to take a very special person to want the job after us. Now, ask me about the plastering schedule where the doors and windows are. LOL. Old houses just keep settling. Not a door in this house even resembles a rectangle. They all have been trimmed or had wood added to them to fit the openings. Every window was custom made and no two are the same size. The house is nearly regained its integrity now, and I can see the end in sight of the major issues. But, if we had been forced to sell this at any point along our long path of renovation, and somebody else had to pick up where we'd left off, if they knew up from down, you can take it to the bank our money and sweat wouldn't have left much room for profit. There'd have been no quick sells. The end results perfect for us. It's rustic yet and even has a pitcher pump in the kitchen to pull up the spring water for the house. But you always live with a foot in the past where people lived simpler and made do in some respects. Some people can do that. Some people can't. It fits our lifestyle well.........simple and hard working. But, it was purchased because my husband wanted an old large home in a rural setting. If he'd just wanted "room" it wouldn't have even been in the game. Good luck whatever you decide.

amy, There are good points to both. (9&X) In X, I liked the fact that you could see each image in the layer palette without having to run your mouse over. I haven't used them (9&X) long enough to see but a lot of folks swear by 9 and I sure was lucky to get a PSP9 as I bet it was one of the last ones sold. Started to use X when I first bought it. Then I ran into a snag which my dear friend JOY gave me a solution to where when e-mailing our "dear" Coral, they gave me the run around and couldn't tell me what Joy did which was such a simple thing. I let them know too. But like I say, what I do do in PSP, PSP7 does it just fine as I only have been resizing, touchups, multiple printing, and copy/paste to MSWord from there what I want to insert. I can't remember which one stopped having Animation shop but as long as you have it now, or a disk with it, you are OK as Animation Shop is a program of it's own that works with 7, 8, 9, & X.