I too am in Ohio, put my peppers out on those same days and have had similar problems with some of the plants. This is the cause in my case. 1) The peppers dry out, wilt a bit, and this causes sunscald. No wilting = no sun scald. I've had it happen in windowsills and outdoors. 2) Light to moderate wind whipping the plants back and forth causes damage just below the soil line. The stem dies in that spot and the plant slowly declines. If you move a bit of the soil and you should see a brown shrunken area of stem, with maybe a bulge above it where new roots want to sprout. You can cut the stem off below this and stick it down in the soil and hope roots sprout in time to save the plant. I have no trouble with all day full sun this time of year as long as the pots are saturated with water when they go out and the plants are protected from wind. It is also helpful to have the plants on the grass rather than concrete because of higher humidity.

We had baked tilapia with panko coating. I've been feeling side dish-challenged a lot lately, so I figured this salad had enough veggies in it to count for 2 sides. Oh yeah - we had lemon meringue pie, too. The recipe said "makes 6 cups of slaw" - didn't say what a serving size would be, but I would think one cup. To be honest, I'm not a very good judge of weight measurements when it comes to cabbage and bok choy, so I probably made more than 6 cups. Shredded chicken does sound good. I'm thinking that ramen noodles would be good, too,instead of cooked pasta, as the recipe suggests.

The Sizzix has found a good home!

Yes, I did take a quick look at the link. The machines they listed are more like the high end models. They're more for someone that do papercraft as a business rather than just a hobby like me. I've been doing more online searching and finally found some real good advises and tutorials on YouTube. I was able to narrow it down to 2 machines, the Sizzix Big Shot (hand cranking) and the Sizzix Vagabond (electric). While looking at these models, I spotted the latest one: the Sizzix Big Shot Plus. It is basically the same as the Sizzix Big Shot but much wider and steadier. One nice thing about YouTube, I was able to see that it didn't take much effort to manually turning the hand crank. Looked like something I can manage with. Bic Warehouse (through Amazon, Walmart & eBay) had a fairly good deal on this model so, I went ahead and purchased it. Now, I just need to start looking for the different embossing and die cutting designs. Oh, and to answer your last question. I don't know about cutting paper strips with these machine. I do have a shredder that can be used to cut paper strips for quilling. However, the pre-cut paper strips aren't very expensive when purchasing them overseas. The paper strips are more at a proper weight for curling, and are acid free. Nevertheless, your thought/idea to use the cut die machine is very appealing. I need to research on this a bit more. Thanks for the idea!