"So, just what was Walgreens trying to pull? They wanted me/us to turn over what I consider private information to a large corporation that I hardly use." Thanks for posting this Westelle. I'd read about it but hadn't heard any personal accounts. This might be what Walgreens is up to, and I don't like it a bit either. Seems like they haven't learned their lesson from 2011. "Customers accuse Walgreens of selling medical information Walgreens accused of selling medical information Posted: April 1, 2011 In early March, Walgreens customers filed a lawsuit in California accusing Walgreen Co. of "unlawfully selling medical information gleaned from patient prescriptions," according to Reuters Legal. But there's a twist. Instead of complaints stemming from a violation of patient privacy, the plaintiffs are seeking the commercial value of their prescription information. Data mining companies, which buy prescription information from drug stores like Walgreens, resell that information to pharmaceutical companies. The practice is used as a marketing tactic, so drug companies can pinpoint physicians more apt to prescribe new medications or those considered "high-volume prescribers," Reuters Legal reported....." A link that might be useful: insidebiz.com/news/customers-accuse-walgreens-selling-medical-information-walgreens-accused-selling-medical-inform

In 1998 DH had a really good-paying job for that time (actually even for now) & a pretty big 401k for someone not yet 30 years old. I had a pretty good job & fair balance in my 401k. We also had a house payment & one car payment. Then DH decided he wanted to leave the security of his job & start his own business. I didn't want to do that, but that was his dream. I worried that if I refuse to even try that he'd always resent it. So he left to start the business, which actually went very well at first. We weren't as prepared as we should have been with savings in the bank, etc. But we needed to make a fairly quick decision due to a large project that we would lose if we spent too much time considering. Then he decided that he should start another related business. I worried that the time he would have to put into the startup would take him away from our main business, but he was sure it would be okay. Several months before DH left his job, we found that my mom's cancer had spread again. She was given only months to live. DH left his job in Aug, my mom died in Feb, & I was laid off from my job in April. That's a lot of major life events in a short time. For quite a while, my life involved working full-time, helping my parents at night & on weekends & doing the accounting for DH's businesses when I had time. I admit that I was distracted by the demands of working full-time & helping care for my mom. My dad was very difficult to deal with during this time. He was having a hard time accepting that mom was going to be gone & he was very angry & demanding. This made my life even more stressful. After I was laid off, we decided that I would work with DH managing the office & doing the accounting. So I sat down one day & really began looking at the bills. I knew we had been charging a lot on our credit cards. DH's original business, which had done well at first, was indeed suffering because he was spending too much time getting the other business started. He was putting off projects & the cash flow had really decreased. We were more deeply in debt than I had imagined. Things began to turn around some, but we were unable to make any progress on our debt. I kept the bills paid & made sure that our credit rating wasn't affected, but I was paying minimum payments on most things. We eventually ended up forfeiting his 401k to help pay some of our debt. Even so, we still had problems because business had dropped off. I sank into a very deep depression & was suicidal. Those were really dark times. My doctor believed that it was just too much happening too close together. He felt that I might have been able to handle things better had they not all happened one right after another. I did go on medication & it helped a great deal. I finally got up the courage to ask my dad for a loan. I was raised to be very private about finances & to not get into debt except for something major like a house or a car. It took a lot for me to admit to my dad that we had so much debt. After I explained the situation, he had one question, "Why didn't you come to me sooner?" He wasn't happy that we had gotten in so deep, but he was more than willing to help. He told me to get him a list of everything we owed & bring it to him. We then went to the bank, where he used one of his CD's to secure our debt. Consolidating it into one monthly payment with a much lower interest rate made it so much easier to deal with. DH went back to work with his old company soon after. We closed one business & sold the other to a competitor. I learned a lot from those bad times. One thing is that I make sure to pay close attention to our finances regardless of how busy or distracted I am. The other is not to let my pride get in the way. My dad would have helped us much earlier if I'd just swallowed my pride & asked, instead of pretending that everything was fine. I also learned that depression is an illness & not something that you can control. I used to think that there was no such thing as real depression & that people were just weak because they gave in instead of forcing themselves to be happy. I now know the truth about depression.

Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences. I think it's clear now that asking the sink to do three things (prep, cleanup, and dry) is too much. So, I will just focus on it doing the first two. The exciting things about these new ledge sinks is that I can just put a rack on the middle ledge, right over the dirty dishes, where I can prep food. I've narrowed it down to the Julien Smart Station and the Franke Pescara. The franke has terrible pictures, but there is a ledge in the middle. Does anyone have feedback on either? I didn't consider the Galley because of cost. Nixed the Kohler Prolific because it has three ledges, which look like they narrow down the sink a lot. Cannot fit a Kohler Stages.

I culled many photos from the pile and kept only the best. Some of the ones that I kept include photos that, although you know who the people are, you can't see much detail about them. These, and some others, I included partly to compose a concept of what life was like for the family and to give some feeling for the times they lived in. My grandparents were born in the late 1890s. For my generation, born post WWII, we are probably the first generation that can document our genealogy and heritage through photos. It was only around that time that photography became available to more people and became more common. One of the oldest I have was taken circa 1900 and it is a photo of the old family cabin in east Texas. All of the family has come out into the front yard of the house and taken up a pose. Unlike our modern inclination to gather in to a group and have a group shot, they are all scattered about the large yard. Some are standing under the tree. Great great grandmother is standing by herself (she is a civil war bride) and some men are sitting in a small row boat. My own grandmother is but a young girl leaning against a tree. Of course they had no camera in those days. This was taken by a traveling photographer. I have seen other photos that are staged in much the sane manner and it leads me to think that reflects what they thought a photo should be about. It was a different perspective for them than it is for our modern world. Having the photos culled, sorted, arranged, notated, and sequenced and put into an accessible format brings it all to life. It becomes more than just having them all contained. It gives motion to those captured images and it gives voice to them, as well. Having a box of random photos of your old aunt, your cousins first grade school pic,a picture of the neighbor that used to live down the street and some of you eating ice cream when you were two years old is not a very engaging way to interact with the images and moments of life that have been captured and saved. Although, a box is a valid way to keep photos, it is not suitable for many of the varied sizes and vintages. It also is much easier and more enjoyable to be able to open up a book of images of your heritage. For the older ones, being in a book also helps to preserve them. One other thing that I have realized about the photos is that each generation, or era, of home photography had common elements that defined and exemplified what they thought at that time that a photo should capture, how it should be staged and what was deemed important enough to be captured in image. The reasons for taking a photo were much different from what they are today. Today we will take a digital image of our lunch, the cat sleeping, or the rash on our toes. It does not matter too much because it is almost unlimited in how many we can take. They are cheap and throwaway. That was not so before digital. You had to buy a camera, film of a limited number of exposures on each roll, and you had to pay to get each one developed. Every photo was kept, regardless of how it turned out. It was an investment, of sorts. It is interesting to see how our ideas about photographing our families, our lives and our world have changed over the course of the first full century where it became possible for so many to do so. This collection of images has become something more than just simple putting them all in a box or a book to keep them. I feel that I have been able to extract and bring into focus and to compose a story of who are the people who's DNA courses through our bodies and our lives. Families flow and change. It strikes me that how our concept of who is our family changes. Sometimes when I am with my kids and grandkids I look around and see these people that are so familiar to me as my family members. However, the family that I was surrounded with a few decades ago would not recognize and never knew many that I call family now. And., so it goes.