Reading the above posts lets me vent my own frustation in this regard. I can mail them out of my home for two first class stamps, even including packages of seeds, I have sent a couple out for SASBE as well and recieved them back fine. BUT if I take them to the post office, they continually change the price , anywhwere between .80 and 1.30! I had my wife send a empty SASBE out a couple weeks ago and they charged her the full price, So no more post office for me, two first class stamps unless they start getting rejected. Post offices are not perfect, they have alot of irritating rules they have to follow, at my work we mail out ALOT of mail, enough to get bulk rates as little as .31 cents per. YET I had a phone conversation with a post mistress in a rural town THAT KEPT rejecting our mail, she said she wouldnt keep on stamping postage due on our mail!!!!!! I informed her that was our bulk rate, YET she had no ideal of what I was talking about!. It was insane.

I'd be interested in your beading supplies, my 9-year-old granddaughter does beading. I have mostly seeds for edibles. My list is not current but could send good amounts of pumpkins, zucchini, mixed gourds, beans, ground cherries, giant gray-striped sunflowers, mixed zinnias, mixed marigolds, mixed hot or sweet peppers, I also have seeds from my silver maple and debra maple trees. In the spring I can dig up some Jerusalem artichoke roots. You can email me at mamahack@hotmail.com, I don't get in here very much anymore, not much time, but I do check my email daily. Thanks very much.

Wow - I’m not even sure where to start . . . I was going to try to stay above the fray but when accused of intentionally scamming or cheating a contractor - I can't resist commenting. For starters, can you just imagine what would have transpired if I’d asked the painter and the fabricator to come together to discuss who was responsible for the granite breaking? The painter, I’m certain, would have washed his hands of the whole thing the very minute it was even suggested that the granite wasn’t properly installed. And the fabricator would have insisted that he installed it properly and dare us to prove otherwise. And once both of those parties denied any culpability, we, the homeowners, would have been left with no recourse at all. The MIA standards are ambiguous at best. They provide a guideline for installation and suggest remedies in various situations, i.e. shims to mitigate cabinets that are unlevel, etc., based upon a fabricators assessment of what's needed - which is totally subjective. There are “tolerances” for everything so that a “range” of conditions is considered acceptable, which would make it nearly impossible to "prove" an improper installation based upon them. They also speak at length about “stones of lesser soundness” due to fissures, hardness of the mineral matrix (whatever that is), etc. Our friends just installed Cosmos granite and were told to NEVER stand or sit on it due to its large mineral deposits and overall fragility, although I assume it was properly installed. Someone here on Gardenweb even posted that her granite cracked because she used her crockpot on it - was that a result of improper installation? Given the nature of stone, you simply cannot say that a properly installed granite countertop cannot be damaged “except with a sledgehammer” and there’s also no way you can say, sight unseen, that our granite broke due to improper installation. We look at it as iroll said - the painter’s crew damaged it - nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t broken when they arrived and it was broken when they left so we simply cannot be made to feel guilty for holding them responsible. We also did everything we could to make sure our painter didn't have to pay any more than was necessary. When the original invoice the fabricator sent was for $2034 and included an $848 upcharge for the exotic stone, we spent half a day arguing that we'd already paid the upcharge for that slab when we originally purchased a small piece of it. They didn't agree and were adamant that the upcharge was valid, saying they'd only charged us a premium for the small piece we used, but we finally convinced them to remove it. So in essence, I guess you could say the fabricator and the painter are sharing the cost of replacing our granite - one paying $1186 and the other $848.

I did a lot of trading a couple of years ago on the seed exchange, and for those who aren't familiar with how it works, hop on over and check it out. I think they still have their standard rules to go by. Trust is a big thing, and somebody getting shorted on their end of a trade is bound to happen unfortunately. But I am willing to take a chance. Maybe start with less expensive items first, like layout ideas or dollar store merchandise. Unsure if selling things would be allowed, but trading for other stuff or postage I think would be the way to go. Just a thought. Any other opinions? Emma in PA